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Some Confusions of Language in Economic Thought

August 7, 2018

SOME CONFUSIONS OF LANGUAGE IN ECONOMIC THOUGHT

Fifty years ago, in 1968, Austrian (and Austrian school) economist Friedrich A. Hayek published a monograph called The Confusion of Language in Political Thought [4]. Hayek argued that the words we use and the meanings we give to them greatly influence how we think about the political system and the wider social order in which we live. This is no less so, I would suggest, in the language and the meanings of words used in economics.

Hayek’s focus was on the misunderstanding created by the false notion that society is the product of design. He emphasized that many, if not most, of the institutions of the social order are not the result of human design, but are the cumulative results of multitudes of people interacting over many generations.

Social Order Without Political Design

This is a theme in social analysis that has been a part of Austrian economics since the founding of the Austrian school by Carl Menger. He explained that markets and money, language and much of the legal system, social customs and cultural traditions, and polite manners are all the evolved outcomes of a vast number of individuals, each pursing their own personal self-interest for the most part. Their interactions and associations with each other slowly form into behavioral patterns, informal rules, and interactive procedures by which and through which human beings come to arrange and adapt their conduct with one another in a wide variety of social settings.

It is not that human beings do not consciously guide their actions according to a plan. Indeed, all meaningful human action is pursuit of a chosen set of ends with selected means the use of which is believed most likely to bring about the desired ends.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Leonard Read’s Vision of a Liberty-Loving Government

October 30, 2017

Leonard Read’s Vision of a Liberty-Loving Government

In a dramatic contrast with political candidates’ promises to violate moral principles and other people’s property, Leonard Read recognized that “Nothing is in our nation’s capital except that which is taken from individuals.”

In Richard Ebeling’s “This Is What a True Liberty-Loving Politician Would Look Like,” he provides a sharp contrast between politicians as we know them and politicians who would advance liberty. But there is another little-remembered source that provides a similarly inspirational example of a politician “who loves liberty better than power” rather than panderers who love power better than liberty. That is Leonard Read’s 1948 Pattern for Revolt, written for that year’s presidential campaign. Revisiting some of his insights also remind us of how invaluable our liberties, and all the blessings they provide, are.

The all-authoritarian state marches on…abetted by an ever-increasing number of gravy-trained citizens.

The people [have] no choice except between power-seeking personalities and groups, each offering a superior administration of government-as-master. Such a choice…is no choice at all.

The voice of expediency…must mislead because it represents the rejection of moral principles for the hope of temporary gain…a truly liberal party would have been asking “How can we liberate the individual from the tyranny of the State.”

Transfer of power from one party to the other is important only if the ascending party has principles which it is important to substitute for the principles of the party in power.

Government should not be so expanded…Men in government, therefore, should be those who aim at making government as unnecessary as possible.

In every field where arbitrary authority is imposed we shall inquire how it may be removed and replaced by a reliance on the initiative and enterprise of individual citizens. We must give to the art of self-government its American renaissance.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Governments Create Monopolies and Cause Worker Exploitation, Not Free Markets

May 19, 2016

GOVERNMENTS CREATE MONOPOLIES AND CAUSE WORKER EXPLOITATION, NOT FREE MARKETS

The world is threatened with a renewed wave of anti-capitalism and anti-business sentiments and policies. Many who cheered the demise of Soviet communism in the early 1990s, presumed that this meant that, by default, the case for free markets and competitive enterprise had won in the battle of ideas. Over the last twenty-five years it has become clear that the same misguided arguments against free market capitalism constantly reemerge, like an ideological vampire waiting to rise from the intellectual grave and drain market freedom of its lifeblood by more government regulations and controls.

One of the most persistent of these misguided ideas is the belief that left on its own, competitive markets tend to bring about concentration of wealth, inequality of income, and “market power” to exploit workers and consumers of what justly should be theirs.

The most recent example of this is an article on, “Monopoly’s New Era,” by Joseph E. Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in economics, which appeared on Project Syndicate website on May 13, 2016. Professor Stiglitz is one of those thinkers who seem to see a “market failure” at every turn and apparently has rarely found a government intervention he did not like.

Two Ways of Looking at the Market Process

He contrasts two differing views of the market economy. One view, an outgrowth of Adam Smith and those who followed in his intellectual footsteps over the last 250 years, argue that freedom, prosperity, and income equity are generally assured wherever the market is kept open and competitive, with minimal government impediments.

The other “school of thought” that he interestingly identifies with no one particular thinker of the past “takes as its starting point ‘power,’ including the ability to exercise monopoly control or, in labor markets, to assert authority over workers,” Stiglitz explains.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How I Became a Libertarian and an Austrian Economist

May 14, 2016

HOW I BECAME A LIBERTARIAN AND AN AUSTRIAN ECONOMIST

I suppose I can date my interest in both libertarianism and Austrian Economics from the day I was born. The doctor grabbed me by my little feet, turned me upside down and spanked my tiny bottom.

I began to cry out. That is when I realized the fundamental axiom that, “man acts.” In addition, I appreciated that what the doctor had done was in violation of the “non-aggression” principle.

The rest is history. Well . . . maybe not quite.

For some reason, I had found history and current events interesting when I was in my early ‘teens in the 1960s. I had a part-time job at the Hollywood Public Library in Los Angeles when I was in high school. Part of responsibilities was to maintain the magazine collections on a balcony in the building. I would finish my work, and hide up in the balcony reading new and old political and news publications.

The Confusions of “Left” and “Right”

But I soon was confused. When I read “left-of-center” publications like The Nation or the New Republic, they always seemed to have the moral high ground, making the case for “social justice,” “fairness” and morality.  On the other hand, when I read “right-of-center” publications like Human Events or National Review the argument was made that all that “bleeding heart” stuff just did not work. There was a “bottom line”: it cost too much, screwed things up, and socialism and communism seemed to kill a lot of people.

When I was about seventeen, and living in Hollywood, I met two men who introduced me to the works of Ayn Rand. I ran into them at a restaurant called “Hody’s” that was at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Do As You’re Told! – The Case For Social Engineering

January 15, 2016

Do As You’re Told! – The Case For Social Engineering

Wherever we turn we are confronted with politicians, political pundits, television talking heads, and editorial page commentators, all of whom offer an array of plans, programs, and projects that will solve the problems of the world – if only government is given the power and authority to remake society in the design proposed.

Even many of those who claim to be suspicious of “big government” and the Washington beltway powers-that-be, invariably offer their own versions of plans, programs, and projects they assert are compatible with or complementary to a free society.

The differences too often boil down simply to matters of how the proposer wants to use government to remake or modify people and society. The idea that people should or could be left alone to design, undertake and manage their own plans and interactions with others is sometimes given lip service, but never entirely advocated or proposed in practice.

In this sense, all those participating in contemporary politics are advocates of social engineering, that is, the modifying or remaking of part or all of society according to an imposed plan or set of plans.

The idea that such an approach to social matters is inconsistent with both individual liberty and any proper functioning of a free society is beyond the pale of political and policy discourse. We live in a time of piecemeal planning and incremental interventionism.

The Reasonableness of Individual Planning

It is worthwhile, perhaps, to question this “spirit of the times,” and to do so in the context of marking an anniversary. Slightly over 70 years ago, on December 17, 1945, the Austrian economist (and much later economics Nobel Prize winner), Friedrich A. Hayek, delivered a lecture at University College in Dublin, Ireland on, “Individualism: True and False.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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The Government Must Stop Printing Phony Money

January 10, 2016

THE GOVERNMENT MUST STOP PRINTING PHONY MONEY

If advocates of freedom were to make up a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2016, one of the most important items should be ending government’s monopoly control over money. In a free society, people in the marketplace should decide what they wish to use as money, not the government.

For more than two hundred years, practically all of even the most free market advocates have assumed that money and banking were different from other types of goods and markets. From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, the presumption has been that competitive markets and free consumer choice are far better than government control and planning – except in the realm of money and financial intermediation.

This belief has been taken to the extreme over the last one hundred years, during which governments have claimed virtually absolute and unlimited authority over national monetary systems through the institution of paper money.

At least before the First World War (1914-1918) the general consensus among economists, many political leaders, and the vast majority of the citizenry was that governments could not be completely trusted with management of the monetary system. Abuse of the monetary printing press would always be too tempting for demagogues, special interest groups, and shortsighted politicians looking for easy ways to fund their way to power, privilege, and political advantage.

The Gold Standard and the Monetary “Rules of the Game”

Thus, before 1914 the national currencies of practically all the major countries of what used to be called the “civilized world” were anchored to market-based commodities, either gold or silver. This was meant to place money outside the immediate and arbitrary manipulation of governments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Central Bank Money Printing—-The Rotten Philosophy Beneath

January 5, 2016

Central Bank Money Printing—-The Rotten Philosophy Beneath

If advocates of freedom were to make up a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2016, one of the most important items should be ending government’s monopoly control over money. In a free society, people in the marketplace should decide what they wish to use as money, not the government.

For more than two hundred years, practically all of even the most free market advocates have assumed that money and banking were different from other types of goods and markets. From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, the presumption has been that competitive markets and free consumer choice are far better than government control and planning – except in the realm of money and financial intermediation.

This belief has been taken to the extreme over the last one hundred years, during which governments have claimed virtually absolute and unlimited authority over national monetary systems through the institution of paper money.

At least before the First World War (1914-1918) the general consensus among economists, many political leaders, and the vast majority of the citizenry was that governments could not be completely trusted with management of the monetary system. Abuse of the monetary printing press would always be too tempting for demagogues, special interest groups, and shortsighted politicians looking for easy ways to fund their way to power, privilege, and political advantage.

The Gold Standard and the Monetary “Rules of the Game”

Thus, before 1914 the national currencies of practically all the major countries of what used to be called the “civilized world” were anchored to market-based commodities, either gold or silver. This was meant to place money outside the immediate and arbitrary manipulation of governments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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