Fred Foldvary writes:


"Any goal or end, such as joining in herd behavior or
indulging in fashion, is subjective and non-rational.
For Mises and Austrian-school theory, rationality
concerns the means towards ends, not the ends.  
However silly or dangerous or foolish some end may
appear to us, for economics, such goals cannot be
judged as "irrational," as they are merely the
subjective preferences and tastes of some persons." 

I believed and taught that for some years, but now am having doubts. Means
and ends are not so easily separated; so often the means becomes the end.
"Goal displacement" is a phrase for it. One aspect of it, Virgil called
"auri sacra fames", the accursed lust for gold. Ulysses ordered his sailors
to chain him to the mast, and disobey his later orders to release him, to
protect himself from himself when sailing by the seductive sirens. Hollywood
idols commit themselves to fat farms or dryout tanks to overcome their
weaknesses. A computer billionaire, Larry Ellison, orders a yacht 600' long,
half as long as an oil tanker or the QE II, to outshine a Prince of Brunei
with another long yacht. There comes a point where one's belief in the
beauty of the objectivity of consumer sovereignty gives way to some other
set of values.

Mason Gaffney