Author: Curt Doolittle

ECONOMIC METHODOLOGIES AS CLASS PHILOSOPHIES

(good piece)(useful)(for austrians)

Just as in physical science, information the model by which we fallible humans least inaccurately carry on a discourse and achieve understanding. Perhaps more importantly, as economists, we are more accountable for the externalities produced by our use of ‘terms of convenience’ than are thinkers in other fields. And these externalities matter.

For example, the Cantorian fallacy of multiple infinities rather than ‘the rate at which we pair off positional numbers’ has led to intellectual externalities in popular culture if not philosophy and physics departments as well. Just as very few of those entities that mathematicians refer to exist as numbers, but instead exist only as functions. Just as economists refer to the movement of the curve rather than the behavior of individuals resulting in a change in an aggregate measure. These are habituations but they are unscientific terms in that they fail the test of existence unless stated operationally. And that is the problem with much discourse in economics.

DEFINITIONS

1) Natural : evolutionarily extant deterministic patterns absent the intentional or accidental intervention of man, and/or outlier events such as shocks. –“the natural rate of interest refers to the amount that would balance supply and demand for money (or maybe investment) in the evenly rotating economy.”–

2) Austrian: the program whose members search for improvements in institutions of cooperation within the voluntary organization of production, distribution and trade through improvements in information, improving the ability of actors to plan. Purpose: improve symmetry of information.

(Long term – Conservatism – K-selection – Capital – Aristocracy – Force/Law – Virtue Ethics )

3) Chicago: the program whose members search for rules by which to extend non-discretionary rule of law by incorporating economic policy, such that interference via disinformation in the voluntary organization of production distribution and trade is procedural and non-discretionary, preserving the ability of actors to plan. Purpose: repair asymmetries of information.

(Medium term – Liberalism – “Production-Selection” – Productivity – Bourgeoise – Exchange/Trade – Rule Ethics)

4) Keynesian: the program which seeks the maximum discretionary limits of disinformation insertable into in institutions of cooperation within the voluntary organization of production, to accelerate consumption without dis-incentivizing consumption and production. Purpose: produce misinformation as an incentive to produce and consume.

(Short Term – Progressivism – r-selection – Consumption – Working Classes – Gossip-Rally-Shame/Boycott – Outcome Ethics)

5) Socialist: the program which seeks to circumvent the volatility and meritocracy of the voluntary organization of cooperation by providing information and institutions necessary for the involuntary organization of production, distribution and trade. Purpose: Eliminate individual need for information and decision.

(Authoritarian – dysgenic selection – Proletarian Class – Revolt – non-ethical).

This spectrum from NATURAL to SOCIALIST, constructed by changes in discretionary information, provides limits, and therefore greater tests of necessary truth content than any analysis of the meaning individual terms.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine