Austrian Economics
October 28, 2020
Letter 1
From: S
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2020 6:28 PM
To: Walter Block <[email protected]>
Subject: Action axiom
Dr Block,
When you start from the action axiom and then start deducing propositions, where do you think the point is where the original axiom ends and the first deduction begins? Because I’ve heard the process described in slightly different ways by different Austrians. Does it depend on how you define “purposeful”? Because if we define action as purposeful behavior, and the action axiom is “humans act” (“humans behave purposefully”), if we take “purposeful” to mean “intentional”, then the fact that people have ends has to be deduced from the axiom, right? But if we take “purposeful” to mean “done with a purpose in mind”, then the fact that people have ends is actually a part of the axiom, right?
In other words, what would you say is the full extent of the presuppositions that are a a part of the action axiom, before any propositions are deduced from it?
S
Letter 2
On Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 9:27 PM Walter Block <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear S:
I’m not sure I’m following you. Maybe, you could give me at least two examples of this: Because I’ve heard the process described in slightly different ways by different Austrians.
Best regards,
Walter
Letter 3
From: S
Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2020 5:40 PM
To: Walter Block <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Action axiom
It’s hard to explain. How do you define the action axiom, and what do you think are its immediate derivations?
Letter 4
Dear S:
The axiom is that human beings act. All else in Austrianism, I think, is a derivation.
The first ones start right after that. For example, people prefer present to future satisfaction, other things equal, or they would never act. Or, in acting, people attempt to render the future course of events more to their satisfaction that what would otherwise occur had they not acted. Or, action is purposeful. Or, economics is a branch of logic, not, essentially, an empirical science.
Here are a few more, as supplied by Hans Hoppe, my brilliant friend:
Whenever two people A and B engage in a voluntary exchange, they must both expect to profit from it. And they must have reverse preference orders for the goods and services exchanged so that A values what he receives from B more highly than what he gives to him, and B must evaluate the same things the other way around.
“Or consider this: Whenever an exchange is not voluntary but coerced, one party profits at the expense of the other.
“Or the law of marginal utility: Whenever the supply of a good increases by one additional unit, provided each unit is regarded as of equal serviceability by a person, the value attached to this unit must decrease. For this additional unit can only be employed as a means for the attainment of a goal that is considered less valuable than the least valued goal satisfied by a unit of such good if the supply were one unit shorter.
“Or take the Ricardian law of association: Of two producers, if A is more productive in the production of two types of goods than is B, they can still engage in a mutually beneficial division of labor. This is because overall physical productivity is higher if A specializes in producing one good which he can produce most efficiently, rather than both A and B producing both goods separately and autonomously.
“Or as another example: Whenever minimum wage laws are enforced that require wages to be higher than existing market wages, involuntary unemployment will result.
“Or as a final example: Whenever the quantity of money is increased while the demand for money to be held as cash reserve on hand is unchanged, the purchasing power of money will fall.
As to which of these takes preference, I don’t know how to answer that.
Best regards,
Walter
Reparations