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