Does Economics Require Selfishness?
I am ready to be corrected, but I think Bryan Caplan (and the approving Gene Callahan) have seriously misconstrued economics, at least in the Austrian version. Bryan writes:
applied economists habitually assume that people are selfish in the ordinary language sense of the word. Consider Yoram’s congestion example. Every applied economist says, “Raise the price!” But if drivers were unselfish in the right way, all of the following would be equally economically plausible solutions:
1. Ask everyone to drive less “because they’re inconveniencing others.”
2. Tell people they’re contributing to global warming.
3. Announce that if traffic doesn’t fall by 20%, we’ll abolish foreign aid to Senegal.
4. Denounce materialism so people quit their jobs and stop commuting.
Now you could say that applied economists are being closed-minded. But I think we’re correct to focus on congestion charges. Why? Because the assumption of human selfishness is roughly true. Almost everyone cares a lot about the price they personally have to pay to use a road, and getting their weekly paycheck. Most people don’t care very much about the effect of their driving on other drivers, global temperature, or the people of Senegal.
It’s easy to multiply examples. Rent control leads to shortages and/or declining quality – if landlords are selfish. If they loved their tenants as themselves, it’s a different story. Printing tons of money wouldn’t cause inflation if people were happy to build up unlimited cash balances for the “good of the country.” Yadda yadda yadda.
I’m not going to deal with every example Bryan raised, and I’m not here to deny that a lot of people–perhaps even Americans who are trained in Chicago School or Austrian economics in particular–are selfish in the everyday sense of the term. What I am here to argue is that modern economic theory does not assume people are selfish in this sense of the term. I think Bryan is simply wrong.
I would suggest that most of the problems with Bryan’s alternate suggestions for alleviating road congestion are due to strategic and knowledge/calculation issues, not to the fact that most people don’t really care about global warming, the Senegalese, etc.
To make things apples-to-apples, we should have contrasted those strategies with #5, for every mile reduced, put in $1 into a pot to be divided among all drivers. That wouldn’t work either, and gosh did I just prove that people don’t care about money?!
Of course not. So by the same token, if the government somehow could actually assure me that the number of Afghan civilians killed by a Predator drone would go down by 1, for every fewer mile I drove on the public road, then I definitely would alter my habits. I’m not saying every other American would took, but a lot would. So there, did I just prove people are basically altruistic?
Suppose we look over the books of a hospital or a group set up to send bottled water to Haitians, and we find that they buy the relevant stuff at Wal-Mart or other cheap vendors. Would we be aghast and say, “You selfish scoundrels! Why are you paying attention to price?!” On the contrary, we would salute them. The real scandal with such “non-profits” would be if they wasted their resources by not paying attention to prices.
Whether you had a world of Mother Theresas or Ayn Rands, the laws of supply and demand would still work, and price controls would still lead to shortages.
The law of demand doesn’t say, “People always buy the cheapest thing.” I am not violating the law of demand when I buy a $20 steak instead of a $5 burger.
Economics also doesn’t assume workers go to where they make the most money.
No, all economic laws (properly construed as the Austrians stress) are ceteris paribus. The demand curve holds everything else equal, and then traces the impact of quantity demanded by altering the price.
In the grand scheme, demand curves slope downward because of budget constraints i.e. scarcity. They don’t slope downward because of selfishness.
Like I said at the beginning, I didn’t think this through such that I’d bet my life on it. Maybe Bryan can convince me that the above standard schtick from Austrian economists is wrong. But he has yet to convince me.
Conceptually, I agree that selfishness is not an inherent part of at least the Austrian approach to economics. But I don't think you can coherently cut it out of economics more generally without changing the way people think about certain things.
For Misesian Austrians, demand curves slope downwards because as a matter of definition, they couldn't possibly do anything else. As the cost of an action increases, the profitability of undertaking it is diminished until performing it is no longer better than not performing it. And since, according to Mises, all action involves the attempt to achieve more valuable ends through intervention, one can't possibly do anything but demand less of a good as the costs increase. Selfishness is not an inherent part of that model: the valued object could be anything. The point is simply that the valuer has voluntaristically attached value to the object (his view, not mine), and has demands which follow suit. If the valued object in question is my mother's health, that doesn't cause any problem for the Misesian model — his framework is simply supposed to give us a toolkit for thinking about these sorts of things.
But now consider Public Choice economics. Public Choice is usually built on an assumption of opportunism, where we're to understand opportunism as selfishness. Without that assumption, we don't get any of Public Choice's interesting predictions. Technically, Public Choice could work within an Austrian-style framework and simply point out that political actors must act out of their own judgments of what's better or worse. Officials don't just magically come to take on social preferences when they are elected to office. But with Misesian actors in the government, we couldn't really make any predictions about opportunistic behavior: for all we know, government officials could all care very deeply about the social good and not have any desire to take advantage of their positions to divert funds towards their own personal enrichment.
I used to think like Bryan, that all people are selfish and there is nothing we can do that isn't selfish. even giving to charity makes us feel good. But then i realized the difference between self-interest and selfishness. Economics assumes self-interest, i.e. all people prefer better to worse and want to maximize their utility. Selfishness, at least by my definition, is when you put yourself first even if it would harm another persons property.
The missionary building a church gains utils/happiness/joy/etc. by helping others, she is self-interested.
The thief who takes your television gains utils/happiness/joy/etc by helping himself at the expense of you. He is self-interested as well as selfish.
Economics assumes self-interest, but not selfishness.
possible rebuttal: "Okay, but what if i choose to sacrifice myself to save someone else's life. How can that possibly be in my self-interest."
possible retort: "Because you subjectively fore-casted that life would not be worth living with the knowledge that you could have saved the other person, and decided to chose to sacrifice yourself because it gave more utils/happiness/etc. THEN THE ALTERNATIVES that you subjectively saw as options.
Maybe it's too obvious to point out, but self interest can be for the benefit of others, as in not being a burden.
right. I simply meant that for me, it was clearer once i used two separate phrases such as self interest and selfishness rather than throw the word selfish around to mean both.
maybe im splitting hairs
I'm not going to deal with every example Bryan raised, and I'm not here to deny that a lot of people–perhaps even Americans who are trained in Chicago School or Austrian economics in particular–are selfish in the everyday sense of the term.
Hm. Check out this article on whether economists tend to be more selfish than the hoi polloi.
Michael,
I generally favor your position. I think that plenty of people conflate the two, and that is a problem. Selfish implies a lack of "morality" (however defined) whereas self-interest does not. It is amoral.
As an aside,
There is an accepted viewpoint in Christianity called Christian Hedonism that discusses how self-interest does not necessarily conflict with the ideals of Christianity.
Michael, I agree completely. The dictionary does not distinguish between selfish and self-interest, but without a difference in meaning we are left without a word to describe such human activity as providing for one's family, saving for the future, desiring to drive a better car, etc. Socialists want to keep the two terms synonomous so they can bash capitalism.
Also, Adam Smith proposed free markets as a means of controlling selfish behavior, not as a way to promote it. Smith's major point was that selfishness finds its greatest expression in government because the selfish can bribe politicians and bureaucrats to do their bidding. They can't do that in a free market, so competition keeps greed and selfishness in check.
The Blackadder Says:
This Deirdre McCloskey article makes a similar point.
Michael makes a great distinction. It really bothered me a couple years ago when I realized that every human action is done out of "selfishness". It threw a wrench in my concepts of morality.
The distinction between selfishness (ordinary language) and self-interest (maximizing one's utility) really clears things up.
Bob's proposed #5 is a great counter-example to Caplan. It shows how self-interest is not the same as selfishness, and that people are not necessarily selfish if they feel like their actions are actually significant. All of Caplan's "plausible solutions" introduce an incredibly small marginal dis-utility to driving. That's why they wouldn't work. Adding one more driver (i.e. myself) to the roads is likely not going to significantly inconvenience others, affect global warming, or be the driver who could have brought traffic down below the 20% mark. If there was real dis-incentive added to each new driver (e.g. more people will be killed in Afghanistan) then peoples unselfishness could be used to reduce congestion.
The Blackadder Says:
It really bothered me a couple years ago when I realized that every human action is done out of "selfishness". It threw a wrench in my concepts of morality.
The distinction between selfishness (ordinary language) and self-interest (maximizing one's utility) really clears things up.
I don't think people always act out of self-interest either, unless you want to construe the statement as a tautology.
Bob Murphy writes: "No, all economic laws (properly construed as the Austrians stress) are ceteris paribus. The demand curve holds everything else equal, and then traces the impact of quantity demanded by altering the price."
I take issue with that.
In some cases, a good may be thought desirable partly because it demonstrates that the buyer has a great deal of money. The law of demand could then fail.
In other cases, we might use the price of a good to make assumptions about its quality. Here in particular, the law of demand might fail. If a mouse trap is unusually cheap, I might assume it's junk.
Of course, you can deal with these cases by redefining the term "good" as a kind of psychological construct. Thus, for instance, we can say that raising the price from $x to $y changes the good from "$x mouse traps" to "$y mouse traps." But then what meaning is left in the law of demand?
…unless you want to construe the statement as a tautology.
I did mean it as a tautology. People don't always act in their rational self-interest, but they are always acting to achieve their personal ends.
Of course, you can deal with these cases by redefining the term "good" as a kind of psychological construct.
I don't think it needs to be reduced to a psychological construct. With your mouse trap example, the buyer actually thinks the product is a different product–a higher or lower quality product. If the buyer shown the trap and asked what price she would like to pay, I do not think she would select the higher price.
With luxury goods, I think it comes down to more of a sociological construct that a psychological one. If no one besides the buyer could ever know the cost of an item, I think it would loose that value.
The meaning of the law of supply and demand is that, due to the nature of human action, we know it to be true, if there are examples (like your mouse trap) that seem to defy it, we can know that ceteris paribus does not hold–all other things are not equal and something else has changed.
NOTAL,
Your law of demand does not tell us whether an increase in the price of apples will tend to raise or tend to lower the quantity of apples demanded. It strikes me as an empty tautology.
Yes, other things have changed in those hypotheticals—but those other things have changed because of the price.
"maybe I'm splitting hairs"
I don't think so…nice distinction. I just typed what crossed my mind as I was reading the initial post.
Shouldn't Gene be working on his PhD instead of worrying about silly shit like this?
NOTAL: you are correct.
Philip: It is a tautology yes, but useless? Doesn't it (along with behavioral research and bounded rationality) have striking implications for policy and the possibility (or impossibility, as the case may be) for calculating actual utility?
The law of demand that plots simple price and demand is not a law at all, more like a tendency.
"Shouldn't Gene be working on his PhD instead of worrying about silly shit like this?"
Oh, ow. My sides are splitting with hilarity. Such wit can only be a product of the Karen De Coster school of comedy.
Bob, Brian and I explicitly acknowledge that you can devise a definition of 'self-interest' that makes it tautologically true. The point is that, when it comes to applying the definition, it either:
1) Says things that are very odd (even if true per the tautological definition); or
2) Is dropped, and 'self-interest' in the common-sense version is applied.
Also, see Danny's point on Public Choice. I was just reading an article by Pete Boettke where he explicitly says, (I quote from memory) "To view political actors as altruists contradicts economic theory."
"I used to think like Bryan, that all people are selfish and there is nothing we can do that isn't selfish."
That's not what Bryan said. He said there are things we can do that aren't selfish, but most people don't act that way.
Beefcake, I am handing in my dissertation this week.
But, as a philosopher of social science, why would you think this is 'silly shit' for me to worry about.
Oh, and see my post here: note that Collingwood explicitly acknowledges that mental gymnastics such as Mises engages in to get everything on a single scale of values are an intellectual tour de force, but then notes that they in the process wipe out very important distinctions between very different sorts of action.
Wow. Very poor. I think you guys are giving this silly argument too much thought and respect.
The Law of Demand is for society as a whole. The higher the price, the less the quantity demanded from all participants. It also assumes that all other things are equal, which is quite an assumption.
Phillip: "In some cases, a good may be thought desirable partly because it demonstrates that the buyer has a great deal of money. The law of demand could then fail."
Example? So in a society there would be a very expensive good that is worthless for anything else other than status and this good wouldn't have more demand at a lower price and less at a higher price?
Original Post : "Why? Because the assumption of human selfishness is roughly true. Almost everyone cares a lot about the price they personally have to pay to use a road, and getting their weekly paycheck. Most people don't care very much about the effect of their driving on other drivers, global temperature, or the people of Senegal."
This is a very poor argument. The author is not taking into account people's personal preference. I would love to have so much money that I pyscho-analyzed every action that I did, but people have to rank their activities in order of importance.
Yes, if I drive less then the chance that I am causing global warming would lessen. However, if I didn't drive at all I wouldn't be able to achieve my current income level. This would hurt my children's chances to eat. I put my children above global warming possibility. Same with aid to Senegal. Is it selfish to care about your children more than other children?
I explicitly acknowledge that you can devise a definition of 'self-interest' that makes it tautologically true. The point is that, when it comes to applying the definition…
The same could be said for Newtonian laws of motion. Take the first law: An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. The way Newton uses the term "acted" and "force" might not be exactly the same as the common meaning for those terms. You normally wouldn't say that the air is acting on you as you move through it.
Sciences need precise definitions for terms, and common definitions are not usually very precise. This is common throughout all sciences. Think of the terms energy & power in physics, code & translation in genetics), logical (as in formal), and significant (statistically).
By accepting Newton's first law of motion as absolutely true, just as accepting the law of supply and demand as absolutely true, you do come to some surprising conclusions; The seemingly passive air and ground are actually acting (via friction) on a moving object.
We can't predict perfectly using the law of supply and demand because we don't live in a world where "other things are equal", but neither do we live in "perfect physics land" where we can neglect air friction and things really do keep moving in perpetuity. Does that mean that the law of supply and demand is useless? Or that Newton's laws are useless? No! That means we we know that objects don't slow down by themselves, so when we see and object slow, we can look for another influence. Likewise, when we see a case where demand seems to increase with a higher price, we know to look for another influencing factor, because we know that demand decreases when the price goes up.
Well, Gene, from the Collingwood quote you provide it's pretty obvious he doesn't understand the point Mises is trying to make.
No wonder it took you so long to get your PhD.
No wonder it took you so long to get your PhD.
Ouch.
Right, Beefcake. Why don't you explain how he "doesn't understand it"?
Well, NOTAL, given that Beefcake actually has no idea how long it took me, and, in fact, the time it actually took me is somewhat shorter than average, the "ouch" factor goes down to about zero.
NOTAL, you are arguing against someone who claimed the laws of supply and demand are useless. WHo is your opponent here.
Collinwood is talking about a psychological theory of value, so perhaps his criticisms would have merit against a neoclassicist formulation. But Mises' conception of value is clearly not psychological, that's the whole point of characterizing praxeology as a distinctive form of economic science. (No doubt your buddies at GMU wouldn't catch this either, although I'm sure Pete Boetkke would love to name-drop Collingwood here.)
Perhaps my problem is not really with Collingwood but with you, Gene, for thinking that he's critiquing Mises' position. Let's hope your thesis committee doesn't ask you about this.
Of course this is directed at views like Mises: "cannot succeed better than, the utilitarian's effort to drag moral action into line with economic. "
Collingwood is explicitly rejecting (as did Weber) Mises contention that there is only one type of action, and noting that Mises is wrong to say everything is placed upon "a single scale of values." There is nothing "psychological" about Collingwood's theory at all — perhaps you didn't notice the title of the paper it is from?
BTW, how many years did it take you to finish your PhD, Beefcake?
Matt M: "I think you guys are giving this silly argument too much thought and respect."
Matt M. will illustrate what he means by making a post showing little respect and no thought, as we ought to have done!
"No wonder it took you so long to get your PhD."
Comments like this exemplify that the LVMI/LRC camp is essentially comprised of petulant trolls, who go out of their way to be incredibly nasty toward their critics. Really, this reflects badly on no one except yourselves. Such is true, as quite a few specific people already think that LVMI is stiff necked to new ideas, and that is what is holding them back. Orthodoxy ain't a virtue.
Took me 4 years to get my PhD, Gene. And, I knew the difference between ordinality and cardinality when I got out, something you're apparently still struggling with. You know, some of this is made a bit more clear in Rothbard as opposed to Mises, too bad the GMU crowd has its own "stiff necks" in regard to Rothbard's work.
Gene: WHo is your opponent here.
Well, you and Philip seem to both be saying that if something is defined as a tautology it is useless.
Philip: It strikes me as an empty tautology.;
Gene: …you can devise a definition of 'self-interest' that makes it tautologically true…Says things that are very odd (even if true per the tautological definition); or
My point is that the tautological ideas of self-interest and supply and demand are meaningful and useful. I may have misunderstood you Gene. Were you not implying that a tautology giving rise to odd conclusions is a bad thing? I took you to be arguing that defining something as a tautology makes it useless.
You may say that it is a bad comparison because Newton's laws aren't tautologies. I'm not sure that aren't. Newton's laws are at least tautologic-ish. They seem to meet the logical definition of being formulas which are always true regardless of which valuations are used for the propositional variables.
Why does Beefcake exemplify the LvMI/LRC camp? I've never seen anything by him at either.
The law of demand as commonly understood is very useful; but it depends on empirical axioms. It is the a priori law of demand championed by Austrian economists that I dismiss as empty. It does not tell us whether an increase in the price of apples will tend to raise or tend to lower the quantity of apples demanded.
I agree with Beefcake, except for the ad hominems. ("shit-head". . . really?)
Philip: It does not tell us whether an increase in the price of apples will tend to raise or tend to lower the quantity of apples demanded.
Both an a prori and an a posteriori law of demand will tell you that an increase in price will tend to reduce the apple demanded. The difference is that the a prori law of demand concludes that an increase in price will always reduce the demand. This difference significant only when one encounters an instance where it looks like the demand increases with the price. A prori law of demand says that you must be missing something, re-examine your assumptions, etc. An a posteriori law of demand says, well it's just an observed trend, so sometimes it doesn't hold, and that's all you can know. Which one helps you to better understand what is happening and why in the "outlier" cases?
So Beefcake:
1) I'll have finished slightly faster than you; and
2) I know enough to see that the dispute here between Collingwood and Mises has nothing to do with ordinality versus cardinality.
Perhaps you could explain why you think that's what is at issue here?
"Philip, you shit-head…"
So apparently they got Beefcake through in four years by keeping him in a cage and beating the difference in ordinal versus cardinal utility into him.
Stella, I bet he doesn't publish his "serious work" under the name "Beefcake" — he hides behind that so he can call people names.
OK, Notal, I see what you are saying. Yes, Newton's Laws, taken together, are not empirically testable. (As Kuhn noted, you have to assume to to test the third.) And they are useful. The justification is in the pudding, as it were — it is the spectacular results that justify the definitional move.
So where are the spectacular results that justify the odd definition of self-interest employed by Mises? (And note, as Kirzner points out, that the Misesian theory of the market process does not depend on a-prioristic praxeology at all.)
Collingwood's point in the quote I offered is that such a definition hides more than it reveals.
The a priori law of demand says that the price of a good* is inversely related to the quantity of it demanded. But once one recognizes that an apple at price x may, for some people, be a different good* than an apple at price y, one also has to recognize that the law does not speak to "goods" in the ordinary sense (apples, milk, Kindles, etc.).
Incidentally, I don't want to the base the law of demand purely on observation. I'm just saying that we have to combine the a priori law of demand—the one that Austrians champion—with the assumption that the utility of an item is not affected (in the eyes of potential consumers) by its price. That is, of course, a common-sense assumption, and I'm not denying that it holds true in the vast majority of cases. But it isn't true of logical necessity; it's founded on experience.
Oops, that should have been "As Kuhn noted, you have to assume TWO to test the third."
Come to think of it, maybe I can make what I'm saying clearer with an analogy:
The Pythagorean theorem, by itself, tells us nothing about the world of space and time. That does not, however, show that it has no application to that world. The point is that we have to add the empirical proposition that whatever physical object we're dealing with is, in fact, a triangle.
Similarly, the Austrian law of demand, by itself, does not tell us what effect a price increase will have on the quantity demanded. We have to add the empirical assumption I mentioned.
Gene, I went to a real school (MIT) and got a real job afterwards, and didn't flunk out of a previous grad school beforehand.
Makes sense Gene, however I don't see how that connects him to the LvMI/LRC. From what I've read about LRC that would mean he doesn't exemplify them, as they use their real names while lobbing insults
Ha ha, Beefcake. Now, of course, since you are hiding, we have no idea if you're making this all up or not. But, in any case, Cardiff University is a "real" school, ranked 8th in the UK.
It's nice you didn't flunk out of any previous graduate programs. Neither have I. You seem to have bought into some propaganda — once I began publicly criticizing some LVMI stances, immediately ugly rumours began circulating about me, for instance, that I had "flunked out of numerous grad schools." Well, sorry, you just got taken in by a totally made up lie. Never flunked out of anywhere, my friend.
Stella, the above is pretty strong evidence associating Beefcake with LVMI. No one not associated with them would say this, because it never happened and someone at LVMI is the source of it. Also his mechanical trotting out of LVMI tropes is telling: "Oh, you don't realize that Collingwood is talking psychology, not praxeology!" (I point to the title of C's Paper.) "Oops, I mean you can't distinguish between ordinal and cardinal utility!" (I note that has nothing to do with Collingwood's point. Silence.)
It's very nice to see you reduced to purely hurling insults, Beefcake. I guess that's what the dissertation committees at MIT look for, hey?
"And the UK is a fourth rate country, even below Brazil, its universities don't impress me anymore."
because it's not like ucl, warwick and lse are top research universities or anything.
Right, anonymous! And there are those piece of crap "universities" like Oxford and Cambridge, to boot.
When Beefcake can't make an argument, he'll resort to trashing entire countries to cover up the fact!
I think both Philip and Gene have made a good point. Empirical knowledge is required to verify the a prori conclusions or hypothesis we come up with, or the proof is in the pudding. Not only because we fallible humans who can and do make logical errors, but also because multiple perfectly coherent logical systems can be created which are contradictory to each other, and the actual world. The best example I can think of is Euclidean Geometry and Non-Euclidean Geometry. Each system is perfectly coherent and compatible with itself, but contradicts the other. We need to look to the external world to confirm with of our systems or hypothesis are accurate (if any). I think physicists now have shown that we are actually in a Non-Euclidean universe, but it's very close to a Euclidean one.
Regarding Gene's specific question regarding the spectacular results coming from the the tautological understanding of self-interest, The spectacular results I see are in how I see the world and understand myself. I'm not sure if Mises's definition of self-interest is exactly the same as the one Michael gave near the beginning of this tread, or the one I was first defending. But understanding that every action I take, I take because it is what I,myself, subjectively value most, is not the same as selfishness, in the common sense meaning, has given me a much more coherent understanding of morality than before I realized the distinction between the tautology of self-interested action and selfishness. Personally I can say that it's pretty spectacular in my own understanding of the world I live in.
Thanks, NOTAL — it's nice to actually DISCUSS this, rather than simply be repeatedly insulted!
I certainly have gotten a lot out of reading Mises as well — and Rothbard, too! — but I think that ultimately, the points Weber and Collingwood make show that, while Mises' system is logically valid, it obscures important distinctions. And even accepting that doesn't make it useless — it is still a tool of analysis one can have at hand.
(By the way, you might see my paper from The American Journal of Economics and Sociology discussing the relationship of Weber and Mises on rationality: Here.)
gene, on that note, i tried finding your pubs page the other day to avail, have you got a link?
Gene, I'm not familiar with Weber or Collingwood, but you've got me curious. I'll take a look at your paper.
Gene, that link doesn't work for me. Something about a cookie error, or that I'm supposed to be logged in.
Anonymous, there is one at my uni, but it is not up-to-date — there are a few new pubs not listed:
Here.
NOTAL, you may need a university login to get to it. Send your e-mail address to gcallah@mac.com, and Ill send you a copy.
I'm not so sure about that Gene,
I recall reading that vicious lie from a post by you on the LvMI site.
http://blog.mises.org/archives/011153.asp
And Beefcake even posted on that thread.
So, if associated with the LvMI means reading the site then it looks like we're all guilty there.
I read Gene's compare and contrast post and couldn't see where the two quotes come into conflict. They seem to be talking about different things.
Collingwood is criticizing those who would argue that all actions spring from the same motive or are determined by the same criterion.
For Mises there is a single value scale as regards action because there is a single actor who can only perform certain actions at any one time, not because there is a single 'type' of action.
It is not an argument that financial and moral decisions to act are made on the same basis or evaluated in the same way. Only that they are subject to the same constraints which necessitate that they must be valued against each other.
Teqzilla,
Exactly, well put. Plainly Collingwood (regardless of what his paper is titled, what a twit comment by Callahan) is referring to the psychological motivations of an action (ie, in the context of a cardinal conception of value), whereas Mises is referring (as he does throughout his works, I would think Callahan would be aware of this) to a ranking of ends, the realization of one precluding the realization of others (ie, in the context of an ordinal conception of value). I'm not going to take the time to explain this to Gene (maybe his thesis committee can), all I can say is that if philosophy is his new career choice, he must have been a really lousy programmer.
And Anonymous, you know a lot about stiff cocks, I'm sure. What a bum-boy, as they say in the UK.
Teqzilla, "plainly" I, as someone who has published several papers on Collingwood, is presenting to this year's Collingwood Scoeity meetings, and whose advisor is the top Collingwood scholar in the world, no nothing about what Collingwood was up to, and Beefcake the Flighty, who seems to have read only the one paragraph I quoted, knows more than me. But if you are still interested in my uninformed thoughts here:
Yes, a Misesian would have to say that Collingwood is talking about motivation. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT COLLINGWOOD THOUGHT HE WAS DOING. He believed he was giving a conceptual analysis of action. So there is a conflict. Mises holds:
1) All action is economic action; and
2) All choices can be placed on a single scale of values.
Collingwood holds:
1) Economic action is NOT the only type of action; and
2) All choices cannot be placed on a single scale of values.
So, while you may disagree with Collingwood, there certainly is a conflict.
In any case, Beefcake the Blighty is too obnoxious *even for me*! I'm going to sign off — write me at the e-mail address above if you wish to discuss these opints further.
"Yes, a Misesian would have to say that Collingwood is talking about motivation. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT COLLINGWOOD THOUGHT HE WAS DOING. He believed he was giving a conceptual analysis of action. So there is a conflict."
Um, who cares what Collingwood "thought" he was doing, the passage you put up on your website, that you obviously thought presented a compelling contrast with Mises, gives the clear impression of referring to motivation (ie, something Mises is NOT talking about). Try putting more than one paragraph if you're trying a different point across.
I'm wondering if Cardiff is the #8 university in Wales, as opposed to the entire UK?
Just popping back in for a second with a finding (no, Beefcake, I did not read any of your recent verbal tantrums). Just found this from Roderick Long (You can easily Google and find the whole paper):
"Unlike Mises, however, Collingwood denies that the a priori principles of economics
apply to all action whatsoever. For Collingwood there are three kinds of action: those in
which means and end are distinct, those in which means and end are united, and those to
which the concepts of means and ends do not apply. Economic principles, he maintains,
apply only to the first of these:"
Hmmmmmm, so Roderick Long ALSO thinks there is a conflict between Mises and Collingwood here. Man, I guess Long must be a twit as well, and a really aawful philosopher! In any case, as I said, I've unsubscribed to comments here — feel free to e-mail me if you want to discuss any of this further.
Sometimes I wonder if Beef cake is even a fan of Austrian economics. the theorist in me says he could be an anti-misesian simply fronting as a fan of Mises/Rothbard, and insults people regularly to turn people away from that ideology (by associating such behavior with that school of thought.)
Its actually a good tactic (alo called "Trolling" in the nerd world), to have people hate an ideology due to one or two bad apples who do it on purpose (think Muslim extremists or violent pro-lifers).
Then again, maybe he is an Austrian and Misesian who is just rude to others. There is nothing about the ideology that says all people who believe it act a certain way (he is just the only one I've come across that is that rude).
This comment board clearly got derailed though, so i'm done paying attention to it.
When i say "Good tactic," i don't at all mean i condone it. i simply mean it seams effective at achieving the end goal of having others hate the ideology you claim to represent.
Technically, Michael, I'm a Rothbardian who is rude to others. Hope that clarifies.
And BTW Gene, the issue isn't about "conflict" between Mises and Collingwood, it's about whether the quotes you provided are addressing completely different things and taking completely different perspectives (and hence not really comparable). Glad to see you learned the art of obfuscation at Cardiff (although based on your earlier writings when for whatever reason LvMI thought highly of you, I think you had that skill down pat long ago).
And admit it: you've been reading my shit, you can't fool me.
"You know, some of this is made a bit more clear in Rothbard as opposed to Mises, too bad the GMU crowd has its own "stiff necks" in regard to Rothbard's work."
Yes! You're either with us or a left-anarchist that performs satanic rituals at GMU! There is nothing beyond Mises and Rothbard in this world except Hayek, and he's a social democrat. discussion outside of the staitst paradigm are so much more enlightening.
Ugh I just felt a wave of euphoria writing that master thesis. I gots me a hammer and now is time to find some nails. I'm going to go celebrate by superimposing subjective value theory onto everything.
hey beefcock almighty, fuck off.
"hey beefcock almighty, fuck off."
Interesting, that's almost exactly what your wife said to me, just replace "off" with "me."
Dr.Gallahan says
“Mises holds:
1) All action is economic action; and
2) All choices can be placed on a single scale of values. “
1)No Mises doesn't hold this. Only stupid believers in “homo oeconomicus” do.
2)Yes he holds this. ( even stronger, all choices ARE placed on a single scale of values.)
“Collingwood holds:
1) Economic action is NOT the only type of action; and
2) All choices cannot be placed on a single scale of values.”
I've never read the guy but 1) is very true 2) is patently absurd. This actually means that every man has numerous heads or at least numerous personalities in his head. He might be right only in the case he an expert in non-existing science of praxeoscizophrenia.
Even Bob thinks Callahan is full of shit on this one:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7225373&postID=6568391503783395384
Hey Bob, where there's smoke, there's usually fire.
Alexandra K.:
"1)No Mises doesn't hold this. Only stupid believers in “homo oeconomicus” do."
So here's what Roderick Long, whom the Mises Institute repeatedly employs as their top praxeological philosopher, says about this:
""Unlike Mises, however, Collingwood denies that the a priori principles of economics apply to all action whatsoever…"
So Long asserts that Mises believes all action is economic action, in that the principles of economics apply to all action. Perhaps the Mises Institute's top philosopher is a "stupid believer in homo oeconomicus”, and doesn't really get Mises either?
"2) is patently absurd. This actually means that every man has numerous heads or at least numerous personalities in his head."
So if someone asserts that "musicians do not place all notes on a single scale" does that mean he is asserting that there must be multiple musicians in each musicians head?
There's a deeper issue here that has gone unaddressed: who gives two shits about what Collingwood thinks, anyway?