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Date: | Wed Feb 7 08:14:23 2007 |
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Michael, I choose to respond to your post because it is the most
succinct. First, I agree with everything you say and I was aware of the
facts you cite. But I don't see how they are relevant. It is not
necessary for you or me to consult psychology, the cognitive sciences,
physiology, etc. to know that we have the capacity to choose, to
envision the future, and to attribute these qualities to our associates,
trading partners and rivals. It doesn't matter whether some higher
animals also have this capacity. If they do, the economics we build on
the basis of the action axiom will be relevant to them also.
The Veblen and psychological criticisms apply to some economists but
they do not apply to the system that Mises sought to build and for the
purpose that Mises built it. How are the facts you cite relevant to the
pragmatic goal of evaluating arguments for and against intervention in
market interaction? Whatever else we want to attribute to the human
character, if we aim to achieve this pragmatic goal, why not assume most
fundamentally that human beings have the capacity to choose and that
they are imaginative, creative and inventive?
"It is necessarily the aim of [an evolutionary science] to trace the
cumulative working out of the economic interest in the cultural
sequence." (Veblen 1898, 394) Veblen correctly pointed out that the
economics of his day was ill-prepared to be an evolutionary science. He
was right. And he would be right today. Economics, as usually conceived,
has never had the goal of which Veblen speaks. Nor was it the goal of Mises.
Veblen, Thorstein. (1898) "Why Economics is Not an Evolutionary
Science." The Quarterly Journal of Economics. July.
Pat Gunning
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