Regarding Peter Boettke's post, I would suggest that Peter just doesn't   
get it. A large proportion of members of the HES list believe that every   
school of economics is ideological. From their point of view, it is   
impossible to be value neutral. This makes it easy for them to evaluate   
Hayek or Friedman or even Mises. They only have to place them in an   
ideological camp of free market ideologues.  
  
Mises had an answer to this. He wrote that in the evaluation of   
arguments in favor of a particular government policy, one can evaluate   
the policy (a) from the standpoint of whether the argument is relevant   
to the goal that the arguer claims the policy will achieve (relevance of   
the argument) and (b) from the standpoint of whether the deductions of   
the argument are derived via a logical path from its assumptions (the   
logic of the argument). Of course, some policy arguments can be ruled   
out because they are not comprehensible or meaningful. He was not   
discussing the latter type.  
  
Unfortunately, this Misesian answer is not appreciated by many of the   
Austrians, although I cannot speak for Peter [I have a couple of   
published but apparently unconvincing papers on this.] And it certainly   
is not appreciated by those who claim that all economics is ideological.  
  
John Medaille is one of the latter. He does not understand what Mises   
has in mind when Mises posits that the distinctly human mind has a   
logical structure, as per one his earlier posts on this list directed at   
me. If the distinctly human being does not have a mind with a logical   
structure, Mises must be wrong in thinking that an argument for or   
against a government policy can can be evaluated on the basis of its   
logical structure. From this standpoint, it is easy for John to dismiss   
Mises as merely another proponent of a free market ideology. He should   
be appreciated, in my view, as a value-neutral evaluator of arguments   
favoring market intervention, but that is another story.  
  
What do you think, Peter? Does this explain why HESers seem biased   
against the "conservatives" or "libertarians?"  
  
  
Pat Gunning