Bitcoin doesn't prove Austrian Economics correct. Behind these pronouncements are normative arguments being paraded as objective truth.
Also, the axiom of action is not self-evidently true. It's circular reasoning, disguised as a revelatory brute fact.
Austrian economics is correct tho, regardless
No it's not.
Are you against the axioms or methodoloty? Or do you disagree with the predictions?
Yes. I think methodological individualism is a highly problematic framework that does not capture the realities of the human condition. Now, as a classical liberal, my political philosophy is grounded in individualism. But unlike Austrians and libertarians, I do not completely deny the relevance of collective considerations such as negative externalities and collective action problems. I don’t think, like many libertarians and Austrians do, that thinking that the state has a role to play in these arenas, that it’s a slippery slope to totalitarianism or socialism.
So I'm not super well versed in Austrian economics but I've always thought you could capture the aspects like family and friend and community as being the emergent phenomena of individuals choosing to make those groups and associations.
I.e it makes economic sense to make group associations if you consider the cost benefits of them across time even if they don't make sense at every moment in time. Though I can see the argument that using DNA as the basis for the analysis for families makes more sense than using the individual human.
Is this the line of thinking you have?
In terms of a state leading to socialism or totalitarianism: i can agree that above a certajn scale of humans, the incentives seem to tip us to totalitarianism eventually while at smaller scales the natural effects of emotions like shame can keep those in power in check more effectively. I always thought that was the argument for maximizing individual sovereignty to try to keep the scale of interactions as local as possible. If you want a larger state, what do you think the solution is then? I don't know of a historical example where large nations haven't eventually oscillated into some form of overreach.
Humans take action in order to improve some condition - is not self-evidently true? For those who accept that it’s true, it explains why value subjective, and why utility is ordinal rather than cardinal. Seems more revelatory fact than circular reasoning to me.
I don’t agree the axiom of action is self-evidently true, because it presupposes the existence of libertarian free will, which I also don’t think is self-evidently true. It’s certainly incompatible with any naturalist position. But we don’t need to go down a metaphysical rabbit-hole to find problems with the axiom.
While it’s true that the subjective theory of value and marginal utility come out of the Austrian School, it’s worth mentioning these things are accepted in mainstream economics today. A lot of Austrians seem to try and play a sleight-of-hand where they suggest that because these things are accepted, the full corpus of Austrian School thinking must also be true. This is obviously logically fallacious.
Furthermore, the axiom of human action implies what is known in philosophy as psychological realism, which casts aside problems of environmental factors, social contexts, cognitive biases, and any discussion of emergent social behaviors. In fact, to even bring up that last point will often get an Austrian screaming at you that you are introducing “collectivism” by even going down that route, which is apparently self-evidently evil. So you’re already into a realm where we’re not even talking about analytical economics anymore, we’re deep into political ethics before we even get off the ground.
This is why most Austrians are either libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. They believe there is an objective reality, founded in Austrian reasoning, that proves that these political philosophies are necessarily and obviously the most ethical systems. It goes without saying, I think this is absurd.
Wait, why does the axiom require free will? Doesn't it still work if human choices are deterministic?
When it’s used in ethical constructions — which it often is — it really seems to from my perspective. If we want to look at it purely as an analytical tool, then I’d just argue that it’s overly-simplistic. And I do argue that.
The insistence that economics can only be understood through purely deductive reasoning is definitely not a claim I can get behind.
The fact that in complex systems, we cannot possibly account for all the variables does not mean that methodological individualism is the only way to understand the world.
I disagree that most Austrians claim their conclusions about human action or economics as their reasoning for their positions on ethics. I can see how these might get conflated though since Austrian economics shows that the libertarian ethics of the NAP and property rights would also lead to higher standards of living.
I don’t think the action axiom is affected by environmental factors etc. it just says that humans take action in order to improve conditions. The conclusions that are drawn from that would be no different after introducing any of things you mentioned.
It’s a total straw man to say that Austrians suggest that the whole school of thought must be true because a few of its points are accepted. Although as an unimportant side note on this topic, there’s a difference between recognizing marginal utility and recognizing the ordinal nature of utility which I don’t think is so mainstream, although I could be wrong.
What’s an example of a conclusion that Austrians draw from the action axiom which you disagree with? Or is it just a disagreement with the methodology?
