Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • Deception: The Test of Aggression Instead of The Test of an Imposition of Costs

    —“Depending upon one’s conception of rights and what they logically entail or are incompatible with, it’s not difficult to see, for example, that the corpus of the libertarian program, in logical terms cannot countenance “add-ons” in so far as they are obligations that legitimate the use of force. The shortest, most concise illustration of how this follows from the premise that there is only one negative right, namely to not be aggressors against. Philosophers, such as Roderick Tracy Long argue that this positive thesis of one negative right entails a second negative thesis that logically denies and additional positive rights. If the former is granted, the latter follows, in virtue of the logical character of the obligations it entails.”— Skye Stewart

    [O]k, so, the reason it’s a nonsense argument is because the definition is circular. More precisely, “petitio principii”, or less precisely, “begging the question”. Like many cosmopolitan, authoritarian, questions-that-are-not-questions, aggression is a conclusion, not a premise. It is a justification. And like many cosmopolitan arguments it is reinforced by the use of in-group guilt (shaming), despite the fact that it is an out-group argument (attempt to preserve separatism.)

    So lets look at it….

    The term “Aggress” is like “Good”. It means nothing without context. And that is the first deceptive use of the term aggression. One must aggress against something. So we must know what that something is. Otherwise it is, like all obscurant verbal deceptions in incomplete sentence – left incomplete as a means of deception. Just as use of the verb ‘to-be’ is nearly always a means of obscuring one’s ignorance, or one’s intentional obfuscation of causal relations.

    It is impossible to define aggression without defining property. So the principle deception involved when most moral intuitionists state their position is that they rely on the INTUITIVE definition of property of the audience, while assuming a narrower definition of property themselves. In the Rothbard Hoppe case, they refer to physical property – intersubjectively verifiable property. However, this eliminates all possible commons, and licenses all unethical and immoral action.

    Then, when questioned, Rothbardians give one of the following excuses:

    (a) people can make contracts for that. But if they did, then what would the basis of that law be? and would they not ostracize all non-adherents in order to reduce transaction costs and increase compliance? Isn’t that the rational and demonstrated action – everywhere?

    (b) “the market will take care of it through competition.” Except that we can prove empirically that it doesn’t. In fact, we need extraordinary levels of suppression of immoral and unethical behavior for market competition to form.

    (c) “It’s meant only to be a guiding principle, not a basis for law.” Well then why not just use the definition of property necessary for a basis of law or morality?

    I could also just say that do we not force people to pay restitution in the case of accidents? Are accidents aggression? No.

    They are violations of property. Are immoral and unethical actions that cause loss to others mutually productive? (No) So are they rational to tolerate? (no). Do we retaliate against others for immoral and unethical actions? (yes) So aggression is insufficient for describing necessary conditions of human cooperation (Yes). And aren’t all attempts to justify defining these things as aggression — even though they are not — just verbal deceptions? They are ’caused losses’, right? So don’t we retaliate against caused losses, and isn’t retaliation what we seek to eliminate – just as much as seeking to eliminate caused losses?

    Well a rothbardian then attempts another deception: “Well that would mean competition is a ‘bad’, since it imposes losses.” But the honest man says, “No, in fact people do treat price competition as immoral (although not quality competition) and we have merely trained one another out of objecting to it by explaining that it is a cost of producing the incentive to innovate.”

    [W]hy is it that Rothbard picked aggression, out of all the possible criteria for moral definitions? Why does no other group select this argument?

    When, I could just as easily ask,” How can we prevent retaliation for immoral and unethical actions – how can we license parasitism?” And conclude aggression.

    Or I could ask “How can we free ride upon another’s expensive-to-produce commons?” And come to aggression.

    Or I could ask, “What defines both criminal, ethical, and moral, conduct?” And come to aggression.

    Or I could ask, “How can I define ethical, moral and just using the terms of prohibited actions between states (aggression), between internal polities (separatism), and just ignore the fact that internal polities pay the costs of defense?” And I would come to aggression.

    Why would anyone in the world pick aggression as a definition, UNLESS the purpose of picking aggression was to justify the conclusions contained in it?

    Why, if aggression is not sufficient for law, and not sufficient for ethics and morality, is it meaningful? If you start with the presumption of aggression, WHY start with it?

    [I]n propertarianism, I start with the question: “Why should I not kill you and take your women and your stuff? Oh? Cooperation might be more beneficial? Under what conditions would cooperation be more beneficial than killing you and taking your things? I see! As long as it’s mutually beneficial. As long as I get more than I would if I killed you and took your women and your things.” That would be the evolutionary attempt to solve the problem.

    I could also start with the question: “What incentives make it possible for the rational formation of a voluntary polity?” In that case, transaction costs prohibit the rational formation of a voluntary polity under aggression; and furthermore, other polities demonstrably exterminate such low trust competitors. That would be the rational solution to the problem.

    I could also start with the question “Under what definitions of property has liberty demonstrably evolved?” In which case I would see that only under total prohibition on immoral and unethical as well as criminal actions. That would be the empirical approach to the question.

    I could ask the question, “How can morality and law be constructed synonymously?” That would be the institutional approach to the problem.

    I could ask a lot of possible questions that are much more obvious, and NOT circular. So why is it that I would make a circular argument?

    [T]he only logical reasons to start with aggression are (a) to justify prohibition on retaliation for immoral and unethical actions, (b) to justify non-contribution to the commons (free-riding separatism). Aggression is a means of defining low trust, parasitic, separatist ghetto ethics as ‘good’ despite the fact that all empirical evidence suggests that it makes a people unable to hold land, dependent upon a host population, and open to perpetual attempts at extermination.

    So, why would an honest person start with something as arbitrary as the rather elaborate concept of ‘aggression’?

    Well the answer is, he wouldn’t. Which is why no honest person ever has.

    The libertarian is unaware that any argument sufficiently complex to overwhelm reason must be resolved through intuition – and that libertarian moral intuition is false (incomplete). In other words, libertarians are suckers for certain categories of lies.

    Just like all humans are suckers for certain categories of lies – all for the same reason.

    (ASIDE: This overloading, suggestion, and appeal to intuition as a means of using internal biases to deceive the audience is the secret to the cosmopolitan and rationalist verbalisms. My goal over the next year or two is to fully undermine the cosmopolitan and german rationalist argument structures and demonstrate them for what they are: lies. The anglo enlightenment argument is wrong: universalism, aristocracy of everyone, the rational actor. But it isn’t a lie. And that’s what science does for us: it unmasks lies.)

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv (City of The Lions) Ukraine.

  • Improving On The Main Message – It’s Getting Easier

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    [T]he scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify.

    Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).
    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law
    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)
    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.
    (e) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)
    ii) correspondent (correlative)
    iii) empirical (observable)
    iv) operational (existentially possible)
    v) falsifiable
    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.
    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one Mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute 

    L’viv, Ukraine.

  • Improving On The Main Message – It’s Getting Easier

    (reposted from elsewhere)

    [T]he scientific method consists of a set of moral rules on what scientists must consider truthful testimony. Otherwise no ‘method’ exists. The scope of these moral rules has evolved during the twentieth century in ways that I think very few people, scientists included, understand. (I will go into this a bit later if need be.)||

    Scientists do not practice (or even pay any attention to) philosophy or philosophers. Philosophers tend to be justificationists, but scientists do not practice justification. So no, scientists do not defend arenas using logic at all. That is what philosophers do when they try to defend one epistemological justification or another. Scientists demonstrate. They do not justify.

    Philosphers justify. So no, they did not evolve nor are they practiced by similar means. Rationalism and science are practiced by opposite means: justification versus demonstration and warranty.

    Scientists, and the discipline of science operate upon these epistemological principles:

    (a) we know nothing for certain, and may never be able to know anything for certain. (the most parsimonious non tautological statement possible).
    (b) we know what works and what doesn’t work. Everything else we say is just hypothesis, theory and law
    (c) all knowledge is theoretical (intuition, hypothesis, theory, or law)
    (d) we can combine theories to create models, which themselves are theories.
    (e) To publish a theory (‘distribute an intellectual product for consumption’) one must subject it tests (Provide a Warranty) stating that it is:

    i) consistent (logical)
    ii) correspondent (correlative)
    iii) empirical (observable)
    iv) operational (existentially possible)
    v) falsifiable
    vi) reasonably falsified

    The scientific method consists, if anything, in meeting these moral constraints upon their statements. It is their job to speak truthfully. But they never claim to state the truth. Even mathematicians (of any degree of sophistication) will say that truth is a problem of philosophy, while proof is a problem of mathematics.

    Mises’ argument is false because there are no non-trivial, non-tautological, certain, premises. If, as Einstein demonstrated, even time and length are concepts that we cannot count upon (length is the argument used to demonstrate the fallacy of even geometric premises). While we may imagine a point or a line, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine infinite sets, we cannot construct one. While we may imagine the square root of two, it cannot exist without a physical context to determine its arbitrary precision and therefore its existence.

    So no. Mises’ rationalism is a good story. But it’s just a story. An analogy.

    In order to warranty a statement as truthfully represented, it must meet the criteria that scientists have put forward. Science is merely a moral discipline for the purpose of truth telling. If we cannot say it scientifically then we cannot warrant that we are saying it truthfully: free of all possible error, bias, and deception.

    Mises was trying to combat the abuse of pseudoscience in economics, but he did not, as Brouwer did in math and Bridgman did in physics, discover Intuitionism, Operationalism and Operationism: the necessary test of existential possibility that checks our premises against the context in which we apply them. Praxeology was very close. But he got it wrong. If we see him in this light, as failing in economics where others succeeded in math and science, we can see Mises as part of a triumvirate that tried to add a new moral constraint to the sciences consistent with, or perhaps as an extension of falsification.
    It is unfortunate, since the reason Brouwer and Bridgman were not influential was that they failed to grasp that they were making a moral argument to the externalities caused by failing to demonstrate tests of existential possibility. whereas in economics, EVERYTHING WE WORRY ABOUT IS A PRODUCT OF EXTERNALITIES.

    Had Mises gone with Science rather than Rationalism we might have saved a century of semi-pseudoscientific argument only recently overthrown. Because in economics, externalities matter. It matters that Keynesian macro is an attempt to justify the manufacture of vast, slowly accumulating, negative externalities that burn down social and genetic capital. It matters that mathematicians talk about a mathematical reality that does not and cannot exist; that Cantorian sets are a bit of verbal nonsense by which to substitute quantity in timeless state, with frequency in a state where time is present. It matters that mathematical physics has seem to be nearly fruitless compared to physical experimentation, and that the entire multiple-world hypothesis was as nonsensical as we intuited.

    Externalities matter. And that is before we start talking about postmodernism: the most elaborate lie developed since the invention of theism.

    So the truthful, testifiable statement, is not the one Mises makes, but that no economic statement that cannot be reduced to sympathetically testable operations can be true. AND any economic proposition that has not been reduced to a sequence of sympathetically testable operations can be stated to be ethical and or moral.

    So no statement that is not open to sympathetic testing (falsification) by operational means (sympathetic testing) can be ‘true’, nor ‘scientific’ since ‘scientific’ refers to morally warrantable constraint upon one’s statements.

    Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute 

    L’viv, Ukraine.

  • On Matt Breunig’s Criticism of Hoppe

    Regarding: Matt Breunig’s HHH, Libertarian Theoretical Historian?

    [M]att.

    Better criticism than is usually thrown at him. I think most of his justification can be seen as nonsense.

    I also think that at this point his primary contributions are:

    (a) the difference in incentives between the private german micro states and the corporate bureaucratic states. Fukuyama would probably argue that this is weak, but only because Chinese were low trust peoples and the germanic peoples were already high trust peoples by the time of the Hanseatic league. Napoleon adopted the same strategy as the Chinese bureaucracy as well as total war and fiat credit and proved that small states cannot resist bureaucratic-war-states.

    (b) he also contributed the means of arguing across heterogeneous moral codes by reducing all rights to property rights.

    The latter is a profound innovation that no one other than he has mastered to that degree. And his particular insight, if written as Elinor Ostrom wrote her nobel prize winning study of institutions, would have placed him as the natural consequence of that line of reasoning.

    Unfortunately he was trained by German, Rationalist, marxists (Habermas) and then Jewish Cosmopolitan Rationalists (Rothbard and Mises) and his frame of reference was rationalist, (justifiactionary), and authoritarian, rather than scientific (demonstrative) and skeptical.

    Which is horribly depressing from my position, as someone who is attempting to reform (correct) his work by dragging it kicking and screaming into the ratio-scientific fold.

    Nice piece really.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv, Ukraine

  • On Matt Breunig’s Criticism of Hoppe

    Regarding: Matt Breunig’s HHH, Libertarian Theoretical Historian?

    [M]att.

    Better criticism than is usually thrown at him. I think most of his justification can be seen as nonsense.

    I also think that at this point his primary contributions are:

    (a) the difference in incentives between the private german micro states and the corporate bureaucratic states. Fukuyama would probably argue that this is weak, but only because Chinese were low trust peoples and the germanic peoples were already high trust peoples by the time of the Hanseatic league. Napoleon adopted the same strategy as the Chinese bureaucracy as well as total war and fiat credit and proved that small states cannot resist bureaucratic-war-states.

    (b) he also contributed the means of arguing across heterogeneous moral codes by reducing all rights to property rights.

    The latter is a profound innovation that no one other than he has mastered to that degree. And his particular insight, if written as Elinor Ostrom wrote her nobel prize winning study of institutions, would have placed him as the natural consequence of that line of reasoning.

    Unfortunately he was trained by German, Rationalist, marxists (Habermas) and then Jewish Cosmopolitan Rationalists (Rothbard and Mises) and his frame of reference was rationalist, (justifiactionary), and authoritarian, rather than scientific (demonstrative) and skeptical.

    Which is horribly depressing from my position, as someone who is attempting to reform (correct) his work by dragging it kicking and screaming into the ratio-scientific fold.

    Nice piece really.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv, Ukraine

  • More Examples of Arguing With Well Intentioned But Misguided Folk

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    [T]he question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

  • More Examples of Arguing With Well Intentioned But Misguided Folk

    –Still not a peep about: “Even though it is perfectly true and perfectly logical that humans are subjective beings there are some who cannot fathom a scientific subjective methodology.”– Bruce Koerber

    [T]he question is not whether we can practice a subjective methodology. Nor is it honest to use psychologism as a criticism when the question is whether such a method is a logical possibility or is empirically demonstrable. (It is dishonest actually – and psychological criticism is immoral because it is dishonest.) Instead, the question is whether subjectivity yields results – empirically it doesn’t, empirically it hasn’t, and logically it can’t. This is because of a tragically simple reason: subjective testing is not axiomatic in that it is complete (the distinguishing property of an axiom). But it is instead, that economic laws, constitute “laws” (in the spectrum of intuition, hypothesis, theory and law) meaning that it they are general rules of limited precision, widely accepted, that we cannot find false.

    We can certainly TEST economic statements. But we cannot deduce economic phenomenon, nor can we observe economic phenomenon, particularly emergent economic phenomenon, without empirical methods. We can test data all day long. We do.

    The logical possibility does not exist. We cannot and do not imagine (deduce) economic phenomenon, because economic phenomenon are emergent and inter-temporally equilibrating without every reaching equilibrium. Man is also fraught with an increasing number of cognitive biases. In other words, those phenomenon are too complicated to observe and predict. This is why there are so many outstanding problems in economic theory – it’s terribly complicated.

    So the unique property of economics is that we can test first principles (human subjectivity),rather than resort to purely correlative tests. In this sense we can know if economic theories can be true, in a way that we cannot know if theories in other science can be true. And even if we know that they CAN be true, we do not know if they are ‘true’ in the metaphysical sense, of being the most parsimonious theory possible.

    We can for example, construct a mathematica proof given any set of axioms. this mathematical proof demonstrates that any mathematical expression is can be constructed using mathematical operations. We can also demonstrate a proof in economics if any economic statement can be constructed from sympathetically testable existentially possible, human operations. But mathematical models cannot demonstrate innovation due to self awareness, and intentionally bend or break axioms in order to satisfy self interest – but humans can, and do – that is what even Keyensian economics combined with trade, fiscal and monetary policy attempt to do – and successfully do.

    It is therefore immoral and unscientific (an abuse of science) to claim that economic theories that are not operationally tested are true and moral. Whether we use empirical methods to observe and test our observations of economic phenomenon is merely a necessity of observation, and a necessity of compensating for our cognitive biases that forever jaundice our reason.

    There is no exit from the above box. Sorry.

    (Plenty of ‘peeps’ in there.)

  • An Example of Confusing Positivism and Empiricism

    —“Empirical science requires controlled experiments. In economics no such experiments are possible. Even in physics the study of a lone particle does not give us enough information to predict its movement in a many-particle environment, which is basically indeterminate.”– Shivank

    [I]ntelligent response, thanks. But common errors.

    You are confusing Empiricism with Positivism (which is a common fallacy of libertine argument). Empiricism requires observation (sense experience); and measurement is an operational means of ensuring our observations are not as erroneous, biased, or deceptive as they would be without measurements (operationalism). Just as we can observe red shift in physics, we can observe economic phenomenon by means of the measurements (recorded monetary transactions). Furthermore,

    (a) while controlled experiments are helpful in the ascertainment of first principles (reductions), we know the first principles of human cooperation: we can sympathize with intent. We cannot likewise intuit the operations of the physical world – although we seem to be able to model it at various levels of precision. And;

    (b) property rights and rule of law are experiments in economics, and so are fiscal, monetary and trade policy. And we can, and do, experiment and observe them and the emergent (complex and unpredictable) effects non-neutral, pre-equilibration effects of those policies. Also;

    (c) I agree that local phenomenon are kaliedic, and that economic phenomenon equilibrate (are largely neutral). But that does not mean that the effects of actions do not produce consequences that influence the organization and rates of equilibration of the ‘particles’ (people). And finally;

    (d) we can construct theoretical models from economic laws. We cannot construct axiomatic models from economic axioms. This is because in any axiomatic (prescriptive) system all information is present, while in all theoretical (descriptive) systems, information is always incomplete.

    And so it is either erroneous or disingenuous to state that real world (incomplete) models, are identical to imaginary (complete) models. Even geometry failed Mises’ test: length was not what we thought it was at very great or very small scale.

    So while complete, prescriptive, axiomatic systems, and incomplete, descriptive, theoretical systems, are are similar – analogous – they are not identical. Deduction is possible in an axiomatic system, but such deduction is not possible in a system of laws with an equal level of precision. This is because in an axiomatic system, the principle of arbitrary precision remains constant, while in a theoretic system, the principle of arbitrary precision does not remain constant – local variation due to dynamic interaction in real time, as you suggest, produces kaleidic results, and attempts at measurement influence the the outcome.

    It is not that economic phenomenon cannot be stated as laws. It is that emergent phenomenon cannot be deduced from the axioms in economics for precisely the reasons you suggest that mises is correct. This is why economics is an empirical science just like any other science: because science is a set of moral constraint upon us, independent of the subject matter, in an attempt to eliminate error, bias, and deception. And Mises’ himself makes fairly significant errors in conflating the prescriptive, logical, axiomatic and deterministic, with the descriptive, theoretical, empirical and kaleidic.

    Mises was ostracized from economics for reasons. They were good reasons. He embraced pseudoscience.

    Ergo, my argument stands.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine.

  • An Example of Confusing Positivism and Empiricism

    —“Empirical science requires controlled experiments. In economics no such experiments are possible. Even in physics the study of a lone particle does not give us enough information to predict its movement in a many-particle environment, which is basically indeterminate.”– Shivank

    [I]ntelligent response, thanks. But common errors.

    You are confusing Empiricism with Positivism (which is a common fallacy of libertine argument). Empiricism requires observation (sense experience); and measurement is an operational means of ensuring our observations are not as erroneous, biased, or deceptive as they would be without measurements (operationalism). Just as we can observe red shift in physics, we can observe economic phenomenon by means of the measurements (recorded monetary transactions). Furthermore,

    (a) while controlled experiments are helpful in the ascertainment of first principles (reductions), we know the first principles of human cooperation: we can sympathize with intent. We cannot likewise intuit the operations of the physical world – although we seem to be able to model it at various levels of precision. And;

    (b) property rights and rule of law are experiments in economics, and so are fiscal, monetary and trade policy. And we can, and do, experiment and observe them and the emergent (complex and unpredictable) effects non-neutral, pre-equilibration effects of those policies. Also;

    (c) I agree that local phenomenon are kaliedic, and that economic phenomenon equilibrate (are largely neutral). But that does not mean that the effects of actions do not produce consequences that influence the organization and rates of equilibration of the ‘particles’ (people). And finally;

    (d) we can construct theoretical models from economic laws. We cannot construct axiomatic models from economic axioms. This is because in any axiomatic (prescriptive) system all information is present, while in all theoretical (descriptive) systems, information is always incomplete.

    And so it is either erroneous or disingenuous to state that real world (incomplete) models, are identical to imaginary (complete) models. Even geometry failed Mises’ test: length was not what we thought it was at very great or very small scale.

    So while complete, prescriptive, axiomatic systems, and incomplete, descriptive, theoretical systems, are are similar – analogous – they are not identical. Deduction is possible in an axiomatic system, but such deduction is not possible in a system of laws with an equal level of precision. This is because in an axiomatic system, the principle of arbitrary precision remains constant, while in a theoretic system, the principle of arbitrary precision does not remain constant – local variation due to dynamic interaction in real time, as you suggest, produces kaleidic results, and attempts at measurement influence the the outcome.

    It is not that economic phenomenon cannot be stated as laws. It is that emergent phenomenon cannot be deduced from the axioms in economics for precisely the reasons you suggest that mises is correct. This is why economics is an empirical science just like any other science: because science is a set of moral constraint upon us, independent of the subject matter, in an attempt to eliminate error, bias, and deception. And Mises’ himself makes fairly significant errors in conflating the prescriptive, logical, axiomatic and deterministic, with the descriptive, theoretical, empirical and kaleidic.

    Mises was ostracized from economics for reasons. They were good reasons. He embraced pseudoscience.

    Ergo, my argument stands.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv Ukraine.

  • What Does “Kaleidic” Mean? (In Economics)

    –“As a propertarian I’m assuming you follow the Lachmann rather than Shackle tradition in your appreciation of kaleidics.”— Chris Shaeffer


    (Note For Readers: Kaleidic, as used by Shackle, refers to the way groups and individuals in an economy rearrange, much like a kaleidoscope image, into new patterns – constantly, in response to changes, demand, innovations and shocks.  However, the term also implies that this process is unpredictable: uncertain. But this is just the first of three metaphors.  The second is flocking-and-schooling: an analogy to how fish and birds move in response to external stimuli. Humans flock and school toward opportunities and then groups break off if better opportunities present themselves, and the whole group splits in multiple directions when circumstances radically change.  The third metaphor, and the most concrete, by Arnold Kling, is “Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade”, or “PSST”, which reminds us of the stickiness of relationships in the economy, the high cost of organizing them, and the high cost of changing them.   I try to use all three of these metaphors depending upon whether I am talking about uncertainty (kaleidic),  costs (PSST), or psychology (flocking and schooling).   However, the term Kaleidic was used by Lachmann to refer to the fact that the economy does not ever fully equilibrate and eliminate all possibility of profit. But it does tend to move toward efficiency that minimizes profit.)

    [G]reat question.

    I use the term ‘Kaleidic’ primarily in the broader sense as “indeterministic”, and less frequently in the narrower sense “never reaching equilibrium” or “never reaching neutrality” in which profits are no longer possible. And in practice I follow Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Arnold Kling more closely than either Shackle or Lachmann in the cause for indeterminism: that shocks are more influential than regularities (Taleb), and that rather than Lachman’s argument, flocking and schooling (in my terms) or more precisely, “Patterns of Sustainable Specialization and Trade” due to changing opportunities rather than ‘mechanical rearranging’, and that informational asymmetry, opportunity costs, transaction costs, are less meaningful. In other words, I see opportunities as more frequent and influential than frictions. This is because the costs of increasing efficiency are often higher than the cost of seizing new opportunities in a dynamic economy. As such, companies ‘sort’ by which tactic they are able to pursue.

    Cost cutting hurts your allies (employees). Which hurts you. And amateur Austrian economists treat human relationships (alliances) as a funglible resource, when, as dynamism increases, people are the most expensive, least predictive, and most influential resource you can possess.