All the positivist procedures are based on the physical sciences. It is physics that knows or can know its “facts” and can test its conclusions against these facts, while being completely ignorant of its ultimate assumptions. In the sciences of human action, on the other hand, it is impossible to test conclusions. There is no laboratory where facts can be isolated and controlled; the “facts” of human history are complex ones, resultants of many causes.
Jeff Tucker Microsoft Word - statistics.rtf Acrobat Distiller 6.0 (Windows)
[This essay first appeared in the American Economist 17 (Spring 1973): 35–39. See also in The Logic of Action One.]
[From Economic Controversies, also known as The Logic of Action One.]
I am delighted that Dr. Rizzo, in chapter 4 [of Time Uncertainty, and Disequilibrium], is calling the highly touted concept of “efficiency” into grave question. I would like to carry his critique still further.
Modern variants of positive legal theory state that the law should be what the legislators say it is. But what principles are to guide the legislators? And if we say that the legislators should be the spokesmen for their constituents, then we simply push the problem one step back, and ask: What principles are supposed to guide the voters?
Individual valuation is the keystone of economic theory. For, fundamentally, economics does not deal with things or material objects. Economics analyzes the logical attributes and consequences of the existence of individual valuations. “Things” enter into the picture, of course, since there can be no valuation without things to be valued. But the essence and the driving force of human action, and therefore of the human market economy, are the valuations of individuals.
Since World War II, mainstream neoclassical economics has followed the general equilibrium paradigm of Swiss economist Leon Walras (1834-1910).1 Economic analysis now consists of the exegesis and elaboration of the Walrasian concept of general equilibrium, in which the economy pursues an endless and unchanging round of activity—wha
At the root of the dazzling revolutionary implosion and collapse of socialism and central planning in the “socialist bloc” is what everyone concedes to be a disastrous economic failure. The peoples and the intellectuals of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are crying out not only for free speech, democratic assembly, and glasnost, but also for private property and free markets.
Israel M. Kirzner The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons for Austrians Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Paper Capture Plug-in
Israel M. Kirzner The Economic Calculation Debate: Lessons for Austrians Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Paper Capture Plug-in
