Trade Unions: The Private Use of Coercive Power
W.H. Hutt†
In this article, I shall consider the nature and consequences of labor-union activities. There are various useful services that unions perform, but my interest will be solely with the social effects of privately exercised coercive power as a means to secure some of their main objectives (e.g., an increase in the remuneration of a particular group of workers).
Mises on the Evenly Rotating Economy
J. Patrick Gunning
The term evenly rotating economy (ERE) was introduced by Ludwig von Mises in order to distinguish the concept of static equilibrium used by economists from equilibrium models used by students of physical systems. In Mises’ view, the mathematical model of physical science had been unwisely extended to economics by writers who had failed to recognize the essential difference between the subject matter of human and nonhuman science.
Subjective Cost Revisited
William Barnett II
In volume 1 of The Review of Austrian Economics, Professor Leland Yeager exhibits a lack of understanding of the concept of (subjective) cost as explicated by Professor Buchanan.1 Yeager presents the following example:
Reply to Comment by William Barnett II
Leland B. Yeager
My lampshade example adequately described the supposed situation. Whether the choice “actually” (to quote Professor Barnett) lay between alternative lampshades or alternative restaurants is a purely verbal question to which either answer would be as empty and uninteresting as the question itself. In pressing that question, Professor Barnett shows he did not grasp the purpose of my example, which was to heap deserved ridicule on certain sorts of brooding over the concept of cost.
Comment on Tullock’s “Why Austrians Are Wrong About Depressions”
Joseph T. Salerno
Let me preface my comment with the following caveat: I am skeptical of the value of a scholarly journal article that attempts to critically evaluate the “canonical version” of an economic theory, particularly when the theory in question deals with a phenomenon as complex as the business cycle. Added to this is my uneasiness over the fact that the version that is chosen for criticism (Rothbard [1969]) was intended as a popular exposition of the theory.
Reply to Comment by Joseph T. Salerno
Gordon Tullock
The outstanding characteristic of the comment on which I comment is that we agree on the basic issue. My point was that the mechanism described by the Austrians would lead, not to unemployment, but to a shortage of labor and higher wages than would be justified without all of this additional capital in the market.
Comment on Professor Timberlake’s Squared Rule for the Equilibrium Value for the Marginal Utility of Money
William Barnett II
In both volume 11 and in volume 2
Marginal Utility Equilibrium between Money and Goods: A Reply to Professor Barnett’s Criticism
Richard H.
Professor Caldwell on Ludwig von Mises’ Methodology
J. Patrick Gunning
He who addresses fellow men, who wants to inform and convince them, who asks questions, can proceed in this way only because he can appeal to something common to all men—namely, the logical structure of human reason.
—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 35
Bruce Caldwell’s recent writings on the Austrian school of economics (1982, chapter 6; 1984) are undoubtedly a positive contribution to economic thought. Caldwell argues correctly that
In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald McCloskey’s The Rhetoric of Economics
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
The Relativism of Hermeneutics and Rhetoric and the Claims of Rationalism
For some time, the philosophy establishment has been under attack by the likes of Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, Hans G. Gadamer, and Jacques Derrida. A movement of sorts that has already won over numerous members of the philosophy profession is steadily gaining ground, not only in such soft fields as literary criticism and sociology, but even in the hard natural sciences.
