" And the reason why I made that conversion is important. Libertarian insights in a lot of ways are basic, Econ 101 insights about the efficiency of free contracting writ large and converted into norms or political values. In other words, I think one of the most essential libertarian fallacies is building a politico-ethical system around positive social science findings (and, I want to stress, basic and introductory social science findings at that). It's kind of an odd way of going about formulating a politico-ethical system. We don't adopt Nietzschean super-man ethics because of evolutionary biology, and we shouldn't simply adopt libertarianism because of these insights. I want to be clear - my point is not that you have to mix up normative and positive findings to come to libertarianism. My point is only that it's possible to get everything there is to get out of libertarianism simply by improving people's knowledge of social science. This is only to say that it's not entirely clear to me what should be important here: teaching people more social science, or sharing libertarianism. But even that isn't entirely satisfying - after all, the reason why I abandoned libertarianism was because I kept learning social science. Yes, the market is efficient and the price mechanism leverages decentralized knowledge. But if institutions don't or can't internalize costs and benefits social scientific insights start to militate against the efficiency of markets. Uncertainty and imperfections ensure that market forces, as fantastic as they are, are going to remain sub-optimal. I haven't abandoned any of the introductory insights in adopting these views - the complement the introductory insights that I still use. I still have a relatively contractarian view of human relations. I still take a fairly atomized, individualist view of things. I still come down on Hayek and Mises's side of the socialist calculation debate. But I can't call myself a libertarian. So, if what we really want is to get people to take the implications of social science more seriously, then its not clear that that would move people towards libertarianism either." -Daniel Kuehn
I think this is an interesting insight, though I find issue with it for this reason: Did Rothbard not "keep learning social science"? What about Walter Block, or other career Austro/Libertarians? Is there an implication that in order to maintain Libertarianism, we must stop at elementary observations? I'm sure DK can clarify if he wishes, and I hope he does. Anyway, thoughts?
Daniel Kuehn:No, liberty student. It's not an irrelevant appeal to populism.
Then prove otherwise.
Daniel Kuehn:It is a critique of libertarianism as it is widely understood and presented.
By whom? Against which definition of libertarianism? How does that definition have any authority?
Daniel Kuehn:My point is to identify a tendency I think is problematic.
Your values are subjective. Feel free to tilt at windmills.
liberty student, I was warned about you specifically when I first started commenting on these threads a couple days ago. I'm beginning to see what they were refering to.
lol, you were warned. My legend grows.
Daniel, did you run out of substantive replies?
Daniel Kuehn: re: "Isn't your position that we can calculate efficiency objectively?" Of course not.
re: "Isn't your position that we can calculate efficiency objectively?"
Of course not.
Then what is it? It seems that your position is that we can calculate efficiency on a global scale. Let me quote from you:
Daniel Kuehn:As you say, Jonathan - we've been over this before. Agreeing with Hayek on econmic calculation says nothing at all about any kind of global efficiency. And nothing in Hayek denies inklings about optimality. When you look at rent control you have an "inkling" about the direction of optimality, right? You can have that without knowing exactly what an optimal quantity and price for rental housing is. I'm not the one here that is misunderstanding Hayek.
Agreeing with Hayek on econmic calculation says nothing at all about any kind of global efficiency. And nothing in Hayek denies inklings about optimality.
When you look at rent control you have an "inkling" about the direction of optimality, right? You can have that without knowing exactly what an optimal quantity and price for rental housing is. I'm not the one here that is misunderstanding Hayek.
If local efficiency cannot exist objectively, because of what Hayek says about economic calculation, then how can global efficiency exist objectively? Furthermore, how can "inklings" about optimality be objective themselves if there's no such thing as objective optimality?
If I've misunderstood your post, please feel free to point out my misunderstanding(s). :)
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
I'm confused why you think I'm saying anything about objective optimality here. Could you clarify why you think I'm saying that?
Costs, benefits, and preferences are subjective phenomenon. Optimality and efficiency refer to subjective understandings of welfare. I think you guys like to impute differences over subjectivity where there are none.
As a modeling strategy I'm willing to adopt inter-subjective comparisons where perhaps you are not. But there's no divide over subjectivism.
This is all beside the point. Anyone who can provide a coherent argument for what rent control does can address the question that Jonathan Catalan raises and has raised in the past with me. Anyone with the capacity to explain the problem with rent control has the capacity to explain the concept externalities, global inefficiency, etc.
Objective v. subjective and the question of intersubjective comparisons are a sideshow.
At this level, the fact that most people prefer not to be homeless is an objective one, even though all those people's preferences are subjective - which is the same point as is raised in Why Capitalism? about material wellbeing - so I believe Daniel is correct there.
The issue is whether this leads to the conclusion that state intervention can ever raise material wellbeing for the general population in a given area, which I don't think it does. But that could at least be a productive debate.
Why anarchy fails
Daniel Kuehn:I'm confused why you think I'm saying anything about objective optimality here. Could you clarify why you think I'm saying that?
Certainly. It seems to me that the word "optimality" typically implies objectivity.
Daniel Kuehn:Costs, benefits, and preferences are subjective phenomenon. Optimality and efficiency refer to subjective understandings of welfare. I think you guys like to impute differences over subjectivity where there are none. As a modeling strategy I'm willing to adopt inter-subjective comparisons where perhaps you are not. But there's no divide over subjectivism. This is all beside the point. Anyone who can provide a coherent argument for what rent control does can address the question that Jonathan Catalan raises and has raised in the past with me. Anyone with the capacity to explain the problem with rent control has the capacity to explain the concept externalities, global inefficiency, etc. Objective v. subjective and the question of intersubjective comparisons are a sideshow.
First off, when you use the words "optimality" and "efficiency", are you implying any constraints on them? That is, are you referring to the (subjectively) best or most/more efficient among a given set of choices/options?
Second, why are you willing to adopt inter-subjective comparisons?
Third, I really don't see how those things are a sideshow. Can you please clarify?
Sorry to be dense - I don't understand why.
Do you think individual-level subjectivity somehow conflicts with the idea that individuals pursue (if not succeed in obtaining) some sort of point of optimality? What in optimality implies objectivity?
Again, I think there's a tendency in the Austrian community to take things like mainstream quantifcation for modeling and mainstream intersubjective comparisons and consider all that stuff suspicious. I understand we probably disagree on that. But those are completely separate issues from the question of subjectivism itself.
re: "First off, when you use the words "optimality" and "efficiency", are you implying any constraints on them? That is, are you referring to the (subjectively) best or most/more efficient among a given set of choices/options?"
Of course - I would have thought "constrained optimization" is implied by "optimization". I don't know of any economists that talk about unconstrained optimization - do you?
re: "Second, why are you willing to adopt inter-subjective comparisons?"
Reasonableness and tractability. If we ever got to the point of measuring utility, this proposition would obviously be much dicier. Utils would have to be measured in units of dopamine I imagine. But as long as we're predicting and testing the behavior of people who maximize their own utility by setting a marginal change in their utility equal to price, whether that utility has to be scaled for actual inter-personal comparisons is largely irrelevant. To put it simply - inter-subjective comparisons are appropriate because we never attempt actual intersubjective comparisons. We never say "Person X gets 10 more utils than person Y". We don't care about those questions. So the use of marginal utiliy using a common measure of utility is completely inconsequential. If we did make those direct comparisons I'd tend to agree with you - but we don't. Why are you unwilling to use it?
re: "Third, I really don't see how those things are a sideshow. Can you please clarify?"
Because whether you accept quantification or inter-subjective comparison or not, no one is abandoning subjective value theory.
Could you clarify what you think any of this has to do with objective values?
Daniel Kuehn:Optimality and efficiency refer to subjective understandings of welfare.
Whose subjective understanding? That is the question. Value scales are heterogenous. How are you standardizing subjective valuations?
Daniel Kuehn:This is all beside the point.
I think it is precisely the point.
Daniel Kuehn:Objective v. subjective and the question of intersubjective comparisons are a sideshow.
How? This goes back to epistemic issues. How can you assume a premise, extend that to conclusions, when that premise is something that you cannot possibly know?
AJ:At this level, the fact that most people prefer not to be homeless is an objective one, even though all those people's preferences are subjective
The question isn't whether people prefer homes, it is in a world of scarcity, how much home, and how much they prefer it determines how the structure of production should be organized.