Curt Doolittle

Source: Original Site Post

  • 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.


  • Fukuyama Continues His Justification of The Monopoly State

    (Note: I kind of wonder what will happen when people figure out that the difference between Fukuyama/Asian monopoly statism and western polycentrism, is TRUTH TELLING.  Chinese lie and deceive as a matter of course, whereas in the heroic model, we pay the high cost of truth telling as demonstrated contribution to the commons. – Curt Doolittle)

    [F]rancis Fukuyama got hooked on the idea of meritocratic bureaucracy from his study of Chinese history, and in his two most recent books, works to explain the construction of the modern state, by justifying select bureaucracies. His attempt at justifying his priors is approaching the most exasperating work I have read by someone who appears to be honest and merely flawed.

    I value his work, because his comparative analysis, like that of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Pareto, Weber, and more recently Olson, is at least marginally scientific.

    However, when discussing Europe, he identifies then glosses over the most important attributes of european civilization: we developed contract rather than authority. And our ‘priesthood’ (lawyers) and contract (voluntary association) are sufficient for the production of all commons other than defense. He does not address the church-state-commerce balance of powers. Nor the incentives of a bureaucracy.

    Where most of us want to re-nationalize liberalism, and return to the contractual association of man, using law and militia as a means of policing the state, he wants to turn us all into Chinese peasants.

    He doesn’t describe why bureaucracies fail, and seems unaware of the criticism of bureaucracies. He assumes professional bureaucrats will have good interests and be accountable, rather than that such creatures only exist at the margins, and the benefit that they add is less than the damage that they cause AFTER rule of law has been implemented.

    He also ignores Putnam’s illustration of the ills of diversity – and it appears that he does so intentionally.

    So, I have work to do:

    1) demonstrate how the contractual state is superior in every possible way
    2) elaborate on the transaction cost theory of government.
    3) expand the ills of corporatism to that of anti-tribalism

    I cannot work as fast as these other people. I look at some of these guys who put a book out every year or two, and I just work so much more slowly.


  • Fukuyama Continues His Justification of The Monopoly State

    (Note: I kind of wonder what will happen when people figure out that the difference between Fukuyama/Asian monopoly statism and western polycentrism, is TRUTH TELLING.  Chinese lie and deceive as a matter of course, whereas in the heroic model, we pay the high cost of truth telling as demonstrated contribution to the commons. – Curt Doolittle)

    [F]rancis Fukuyama got hooked on the idea of meritocratic bureaucracy from his study of Chinese history, and in his two most recent books, works to explain the construction of the modern state, by justifying select bureaucracies. His attempt at justifying his priors is approaching the most exasperating work I have read by someone who appears to be honest and merely flawed.

    I value his work, because his comparative analysis, like that of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Pareto, Weber, and more recently Olson, is at least marginally scientific.

    However, when discussing Europe, he identifies then glosses over the most important attributes of european civilization: we developed contract rather than authority. And our ‘priesthood’ (lawyers) and contract (voluntary association) are sufficient for the production of all commons other than defense. He does not address the church-state-commerce balance of powers. Nor the incentives of a bureaucracy.

    Where most of us want to re-nationalize liberalism, and return to the contractual association of man, using law and militia as a means of policing the state, he wants to turn us all into Chinese peasants.

    He doesn’t describe why bureaucracies fail, and seems unaware of the criticism of bureaucracies. He assumes professional bureaucrats will have good interests and be accountable, rather than that such creatures only exist at the margins, and the benefit that they add is less than the damage that they cause AFTER rule of law has been implemented.

    He also ignores Putnam’s illustration of the ills of diversity – and it appears that he does so intentionally.

    So, I have work to do:

    1) demonstrate how the contractual state is superior in every possible way
    2) elaborate on the transaction cost theory of government.
    3) expand the ills of corporatism to that of anti-tribalism

    I cannot work as fast as these other people. I look at some of these guys who put a book out every year or two, and I just work so much more slowly.


  • Explaining “Sympathize With Intent”

    CURT: CAN YOU EXPLAIN “SYMPATHIZE WITH INTENT”?

    —“Can you please elaborate on this statement: ‘We know the first principles of human cooperation: we can sympathize with intent.’” —Chris Shaeffer

    [C]hris – Another good question.

    Apes cannot seem to sympathize with intentions to any degree, in the sense that they cannot imagine what we mean by cooperating. The example given is that you can train a monkey to wash dishes but he does not understand the idea of cleaning the plate as an objective, only the experience of playing with water and plate. Dogs however, can understand our intentions. If we point to something they can understand the idea of acting on a subject. We are capable of doing this it appears, from a very young age. And moreover, if we use language to describe a situation another will ‘understand’ our motivations under those conditions. If someone does not understand, we can likewise explore how he or she might not understand and attempt to assist them in forming associations. So we can ‘sympathize’ with other humans. And we are marginally indifferent from one another (at least within our peer groups).

    Conversely, we can also subjectively test theories of incentives: whether an actor subjected to certain stimuli would either be able to make a decision, and which decisions are rational. So we can ‘test’ the first principles of human actions: incentives. And we can do so without the assistance of instrumentation (at least in cases of demonstrated preference – otherwise people are notorious for error, bias and deception). We cannot make the same claim of the physical universe. We cannot ‘intuit’ the universe’s first principles. Although Hawking seems to think we are within a century of discovering them. And should we be able to, we may be able to explain the universe with the same degree of explanation we can apply to economic (human) interactions.

    Mises attempts to express these phenomenon in axiomatic (logical and informationally complete) rather than scientific (theoretical and informationally incomplete) terms. Which is what got him cast out of the discipline and marginalized – rightfully. Despite his other contributions.

    If we see science as the universally accepted language of truthful speech, consisting of a set of warranties we expect each other to provide, rather than as a methodology for determining truth with which to persuade each other, then it is easier to make the argument that it does not matter how one investigates any particular discipline as long as when one publishes it, he does so in the formal language of truthful speech.

    This is, in practice, how the world actually functions. Although we still wrap all our disciplinary language in justificationisms.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv, Ukraine

  • Explaining “Sympathize With Intent”

    CURT: CAN YOU EXPLAIN “SYMPATHIZE WITH INTENT”?

    —“Can you please elaborate on this statement: ‘We know the first principles of human cooperation: we can sympathize with intent.’” —Chris Shaeffer

    [C]hris – Another good question.

    Apes cannot seem to sympathize with intentions to any degree, in the sense that they cannot imagine what we mean by cooperating. The example given is that you can train a monkey to wash dishes but he does not understand the idea of cleaning the plate as an objective, only the experience of playing with water and plate. Dogs however, can understand our intentions. If we point to something they can understand the idea of acting on a subject. We are capable of doing this it appears, from a very young age. And moreover, if we use language to describe a situation another will ‘understand’ our motivations under those conditions. If someone does not understand, we can likewise explore how he or she might not understand and attempt to assist them in forming associations. So we can ‘sympathize’ with other humans. And we are marginally indifferent from one another (at least within our peer groups).

    Conversely, we can also subjectively test theories of incentives: whether an actor subjected to certain stimuli would either be able to make a decision, and which decisions are rational. So we can ‘test’ the first principles of human actions: incentives. And we can do so without the assistance of instrumentation (at least in cases of demonstrated preference – otherwise people are notorious for error, bias and deception). We cannot make the same claim of the physical universe. We cannot ‘intuit’ the universe’s first principles. Although Hawking seems to think we are within a century of discovering them. And should we be able to, we may be able to explain the universe with the same degree of explanation we can apply to economic (human) interactions.

    Mises attempts to express these phenomenon in axiomatic (logical and informationally complete) rather than scientific (theoretical and informationally incomplete) terms. Which is what got him cast out of the discipline and marginalized – rightfully. Despite his other contributions.

    If we see science as the universally accepted language of truthful speech, consisting of a set of warranties we expect each other to provide, rather than as a methodology for determining truth with which to persuade each other, then it is easier to make the argument that it does not matter how one investigates any particular discipline as long as when one publishes it, he does so in the formal language of truthful speech.

    This is, in practice, how the world actually functions. Although we still wrap all our disciplinary language in justificationisms.

    Curt Doolittle
    The Propertarian Institute
    L’viv, Ukraine

  • A Definition of Economics?

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    [L]ee, Great question. Thanks. I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry. If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions. If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.) Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy. So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears. This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order. So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law. And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason. I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is. Thanks for the great question. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute L’viv, Ukraine.

  • A Definition of Economics?

    QUESTION: CURT: WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF ‘ECONOMICS’?” (good piece)

    —“Hi Curt…I can relate to your comments. Perhaps you mentioned it and I missed it, but what in your definition of “Economics”. Is it sociological? A physical science? Something else?”—Lee Roesner

    [L]ee, Great question. Thanks. I think, that the scope of the term Economics is an interesting question, because we can discuss the etymological, normative, technical, and ‘necessary’ properties of the discipline. And by ‘necessary’, those properties that distinguish the discipline from other fields of inquiry. If we look at the etymology, the term evolved from running the household, then the nation, then an abstract discipline that studies the behavior mankind’s production, distribution and trade, chiefly by studying demonstrated preferences recorded as monetary transactions. If we look at how it is practiced, I think that today it is practiced as a social science, and that accusations of ‘economic imperialism’ in social science are probably justified: that economics has evolved into the dominant social science, and that experimental psychology and cognitive science, together have evolved as the dominant individual science. This appears to be the current state of affairs, where experimental psychology and cognitive science focus on our biases and limits, while economics focuses on the effect of those behaviors in the aggregate. And I think that the people in both disciplines expect to meet in the middle with a theory of mankind. (The problem is, that this merely justifies intervention – how to fool people.) Now, I tend to look at disciplines by necessary properties, and I view economics as the study of institutional (both formal and informal) means by which we facilitate human cooperation in pursuit of prosperity. This is traditionally called political economy. So the problem is that if we study it as how we can manipulate man’s biases, I think that is immoral on objective grounds, because it violates the principle of voluntary exchange (imposition of costs). Whereas if we study it as political economy, then we retain the moral constraint that all exchanges must be voluntary. We don’t try to fool people, we try to create transparency – to reduce friction, not to fool them that risk is lower than it appears. This is why I try to stay on message with the statement “Every forced involuntary transfer is a lost opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.” Because I prefer that economics be constructed and performed as an analysis of moral and voluntary cooperation in the western tradition, rather than an immoral and involuntary analysis in the eastern tradition. And also, because I agree with the Austrian theory of the business cycle: that all attempts to cushion the rate of reorganization of the economy, merely exacerbate the problem by funding the existing (exhausted) order. So, I define economics as the study of morality: the study of the means of human cooperation in pursuit of the production of informal and formal institutions that assist us in cooperating. And as such I see law – the capture of normative constraints on involuntary transfer – as a subset of economics. And in practice I see the purpose of economics as little more than the justification of common, polycentric, organically evolved, law. And I see economics as dependent upon experimental psychology, and cognitive science for the study of man’s actions. This is because these disciplines have proven extremely fruitful in exposing the numerous and extensive limitations to human reason. I think this framing of the disciplines and the scope of the terms, is difficult to argue with – honestly that is. Thanks for the great question. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute L’viv, Ukraine.

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

  • Learning From Debating Moral But Misguided People

    —“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity. No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains. This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. …. What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—Bruce Koerber


    [B]ruce,

    You know, you seem like a moral man, a deeply sentimental moral man, and I really don’t like fighting with moral men. But I have a job to do. And I think it’s an important job. And frankly you aren’t a problem because you are visibly a moral man. Like a wondering christian missionary you are trying to do good albeit doing good with mythology. And really, mythology is enough for simple people. Mythology conveys meaning by analogy. Meaning is all that is available to them since truth is too complicated for them to access and convert into new meaning. Truth devoid of meaning is expensive. Mentally expensive. And time intensive.


    So I am sorry that I stepped on you in the FB forum. In my world I am just doing my job. And I think it is an important one: to rescue moral economics from the lunatic fringe, by restating it scientifically – meaning truthfully. But it’s my moral duty, as a moral man, to do this job. That is how I see it.

    So lets look at your argument here and I’ll expose it for what it is:

    –“What is unscientific is the claim that a subjective being can be represented by a method that does not recognize subjectivity.”—

    AND
    —“No data can contain the information that it ‘supposedly’ contains.”—

    No one supposes data contains anything. That is a false argument. Facts exist within theories. They correspond to theories or they do not correspond to theories. We ether seek to falsify theories (criticism) or we seek to ‘support’ theories (confirmation bias). If we seek to falsify a theory and the result does not falsify it, but continues to confirm it, then the theory survives. Some theories defeat other theories by this means. And we largely defeat theories by narrowing their scope (parsimony). Because few theories outside of the mystical are non-correspondent (that is why we come up with them), but they fail under criticism (they are insufficiently correspondent). So the argument you are making assumes positivism not observation and criticism. Science progresses not through positivism, but through observation (empiricism) and criticism, in which we attempt to launder imaginary relations (content) from our theories, so that what remains is truth candidate.

    —“This is misrepresentation. And no person can interpret the data associated with another person since they are not that person at that time and place. This is not science it is hearsay. “—


    If this is true then no study of deductive human action is possible – you have falsified your how hypothesis. Instead, your statement is only true at the experiential level not at the demonstrated level. We cannot predict an individuals action at any given moment, but we can do two things (a) explain it afterward given the conditions – or at least falsify some large number of the possibilities (b) collect records of preferences demonstrated under similar conditions. So like any empirical observation we cannot predict the state of any very small thing (a molecule of hydrogen in a cloud), however, we can construct general rules of aggregate movements (we can describe cloud formation, and we can describe general rules of human aggregate behavior in an economy: economic laws).


    —“What the hermeneutic does not realize or care to reveal is that there is no alternative to the methodology of subjectivism in the human sciences if science is the pursuit. Science is not the captive of methodology but rather methodology (and it has to be the correct one) is the lens of science.”—

    This is demonstrably false. While we may not claim something is true unless we can explain it as a series of possible (rational, arational and irrational) human actions, (and in Propertarianism, further constrained by fully informed voluntary exchange), meaning that we have subjected it to operational and intuitionistic (subjective) testing, we certainly CAN use empirical observations in an attempt to understand the phenomenon that we cannot deduce.
    (continued…)
    (…continued)
    This does not mean that you cannot attempt to perform deductive analysis and research. It means that you cannot claim empirical analysis is unscientific, nor that economic analysis must be constrained to the deductive.


    This is why economics is no different from any other discipline. Truthful testimony must follow the same constraints no matter what discipline we discover. However, certain disciplines study different properties, and as such some disciplines such as chemistry rarely place contingency upon involuntary transfer (morality) and some such as economics and law always place contingency upon involuntary transfer. As such, in chemistry moral proof is an infrequent necessity, while as in economics it is a permanent necessity.


    As I have stated, (a) science is a moral discipline enumerating warranties that must be given for truthful testimony, (b) economics is bound by those same morals, and (c) operationalism and intuitionism are necessary constraints in all fields, and (d) morality is a necessary constraint in many fields – just less visible).


    Likewise internal consistency is necessary in mathematics, but external correspondence isn’t. Whereas in physics internal consistency and external correspondence and operational definitions are necessary, but morality is rarely a consideration. Whereas in economics, internal consistency, external correspondence, operational construction (proof of existence/falsification against imagination) and morality (falsification of involuntary transfer) are always necessary.


    This approach justifies Austrian economics, as a scientific and moral discipline. Whereas the misesian/rothbardian/hoppeian claims are both pseudoscientific and false both logically and demonstrably.


    So you see, I am trying to save Austrian Economics from the lunatic fringe by restating it as the moral discipline, consistent with all other disciplines, and where all disciplines are equally constrained by moral warranty.


    This is a profound innovation, and reconstruction of western thought and you should ponder it.

    Affections.

    Curt.

  • Philosophy, Morality, Science, and Law Should Be Identical Propositions

    [I]f philosophy, morality, science, and law are not identical propositions then something is very wrong. Because philosophy morality science and law can be constructed as identical propositions. Because truthful, due-diligent, warrantable, speech is consistent regardless of the discipline in which we utter it.
    Propertarianism.