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Austrian Utilitarianism

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roth_Linkd posted on Tue, Apr 24 2012 8:38 PM

Hi everyone,

I was wondering what is the proper perspective regarding utiliarianism that austrians take? Let me clarify a bit- I am writing an essay for a Computer Ethics class and i have to apply the "act utilitarianism" to evaluate the moral ethics of a given scenario.

I had noted that value is marginal not objective. And it is ordinal not cardinal. It is impossible to really sensibly and meaningfully measure value. Thus it is really impossible to make any sort of interpersonal value comparisons.

But i am not sure what the proper application of the Austrian view of utilitarianism is. I think Mises was utilitarian- but not of the notion that one could somehow measure and compare interpersonal units of happiness. And Rothbard was flat out against utilitarianism. But i don't know exactly how should one apply the knowledge of economic thought to utilitarianism- or if one could even make sense of utilitarianism at all.

http://mises.org/daily/5683 After reading this article i can't exactly make sense of what Mises' utilitarian position was and how does one apply such utilitarianism in evaluating scenarios or moral ethics

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you

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Also i would much appreciate any good references for the Revealed Value Theory, Subjective Value theory- why value is subjective not objective, and possibly opportunity costs. I think i might be able to dig up something on the opportunity costs. Thank you

 

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