Quote from: niemivh on June 10, 2011, 07:39:40 PM

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Quote from: niemivh on June 09, 2011, 08:43:30 AM

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Economics in One Lesson: http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf

It's a great read. It's brief. It doesn't go into a lot of technical detail but it does illustrate a central fallacy that many people, even some economists, make when thinking about economics. If you haven't read this book, I'm going to assume you're ignorant about economics until proven otherwise.

That is like saying that if you haven't read the Koran you're ignorant about god and spirituality. This is a political document first and a treatise on economics second. Let's not forget that. There are other schools of economics. Everything beyond the basics in economics is a fundamentally political statement.

Well, really, this book IS just the basics, but even so I disagree with your statement. I'm reading Mises' Human Action right now, and he delineates between political ideas and economics. True economics, after all, are amoral and apolitical.

"True economics, after all, are amoral and apolitical."

Could you please define what you consider to be "True Economics"? I would interpret that to mean just basic supply and demand curve stuff but since you also say that "This book IS just the basics" leads me to believe that you consider the below quotes from the book to be completely non-political statements:

"We have already seen some of the harmful results of arbitrary governmental efforts to raise the price of favored commodities. The same sort of harmful results follows efforts to raise wages through minimum wage laws."

Chapters titled: "WHO'S "PROTECTED" BY TARIFFS?" & "TAXES DISCOURAGE PRODUCTION" and others.

These are blatantly political topics. I'm amazed that anyone can claim that there is some sort of disinterested 'correct' answer regarding this positions that wouldn't seek to favor one segment of the population over the other. This is the nature of political economy.

"It is true that economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgement of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at. It is a science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen, not, to be sure, a science of the choosing of ends. Ultimate decisions, the valuations and the choosing of ends are beyond the scope of any science. Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends." --Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, pg 10

In the tradition of the Austrian school I consider economics to be a sub-category of the more general theory of praxeology, the general science of human action. As such, it is intrinsically a valueless science. To be sure, the different men who study it have their own biases and judgements of values, which cannot entirely be discarded. Both Mises and Hazlitt held classical liberal (what now would probably be called "libertarian") views and did not seek to hide it. However, their study of economics was an attempt to reveal the truths behind economic law and how one must act in order to achieve specific goals.

Quote from: niemivh on June 10, 2011, 07:39:40 PM

I'm amazed that anyone can claim that there is some sort of disinterested 'correct' answer regarding this positions that wouldn't seek to favor one segment of the population over the other. This is the nature of political economy.

The lesson that Hazlitt tries to teach in this book is:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." (pg 5)

You are right that there isn't a "correct" answer regarding positions of value judgements. However, often, policy makers enact policies that contradict their stated aims. The goal of that book is to show how certain seemingly innocuous policies and acts are actually harmful to large portions of the population or, at least, contradict the goals they were supposed to achieve. I feel that Hazlitt dealt with it in a very thorough, logical and even-handed manner. You should consider reading the work in its entirety. It is short and a fairly easy read.

Quote from: niemivh on June 10, 2011, 07:39:40 PM

There are 2 fundamental dynamics you should keep in mind when it comes to schools of thought on economics: does this person's position represent the monied intrests or those without? Or where between these two do they strike a balance? If you can't accept that, then how do you rationalize that the person writing the book and presenting their arguments are completely removed from the system that they intend to influence with their arguments and positions? Is it your position (and I honestly do not intend to misrepresent it) that they all are completely 100% objective, somehow above the political and social landscape yet are involved enough with it's working to comment on all facets of it to which they intend to see a desired effect? Not to say that they don't have a point and that their interests need a degree of representation but there exists extremes on both sides of this argument and those very extremes seem to offer the least in terms of practical worth in our modern era.

Man is a product of his social and political environment--I will not deny it. I would like to point out however, that Mises, for example, was writing at a time when socialism was the most popular socio-political movement of the age and when his free-market laissez faire views were in the extreme minority. Mises had first-hand experience with the authoritarian statist policies of the day, fleeing his homeland of Austria because of the Nazis. He wasn't writing for the money-interests of crony capitalism, the rampant corporatism we see today. Also, I will not deny that no man is 100% objective and that no science is perfect, but as Mises says

"[it] is customary for people to blame economics for being backward. Now it is quite obvious that our economic theory is not perfect. There is no such thing as perfection in human knowledge, nor for that matter in any other human achievement. Omniscience is denied to man. The most elaborate theory that seems to satisfy completely our thirst for knowledge may one day be amended or supplanted by a new theory. Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought. A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge. It is necessarily affected by the insufficiency inherent in every human effort. But to acknowledge these facts does not mean that present-day economics is backward. It merely means that economics is a living thing--and to live implies both imperfection and change."

And that is what Mises and the other Austrians attempt to do. That is, within the limits of their own imperfection as humans, to discover the immutable laws of economics as derived logically through a priori reasoning. You can know things apodictically: if two parties engage in uncoerced exchange, then they do so because they are both expecting to receive something of greater value than what they are giving up. Axiomatic propositions such as these do not need to be verified through empirical studies, but can be known logically to be true. This is the Austrian science of economics.