Economics is a value free science, according to Mises economists don't make value judgments like "a lower time preference is better", but they only make confirmable statements like "people with a lower time preference charge a lower interest rate".
Discussion
yes, well they certainly stop one short of what I belive, but I suspect were the point posed to them, they mightn't disagree.
I have little doubt that time preference to the long term is a moral good. And to that degree, ethics and economics can be overlapping and non-contradictory.
Well, Hoppe introduces the argumentation axiom and deduces a praxeological ethic, from which you could make such claims.
But even Hoppe would differentiate this from economics proper.
https://mises.org/library/book/economic-science-and-austrian-method
interesting. I think they just felt at some point to go as far as i am trying would be to depart from their core discipline.
...otherwise, and if you are to abdicate morality from economic decisions, even if you're able to prove that decisions along different time preferences have consistent outcomes - the question becomes why is a long life better than a short one.
Our laws (old law) seems to preserve the same thing as the correct allocation of capital.
And as euclid taught us in his first axiom, things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. And so if economics and ethics are both equal to long time preference - then they are equal to and complimentary each other.
There is an assumption that holding a long time horizon results in a better future for the actor. That by factoring in their future state rather than always preferencing their current state, leads to a better now for them in the future.
Many of these high time preference options are facilitated by the fiat system which is essentially stealing from it's participants. By choosing a low time preference option, you are often choosing not to steal from other participants.
The link between time preference & ethics has a lot to do with choosing not to participate in a corrupt system. There is nothing ethical or unethical about choosing to make a fishing rod over catching a fish with your bare hands. It's more ethical to buy a car with money you have saved than to borrow from a lender who creates the currency with an entry in their system.
The assumption about time preference is that it must always be positive. In other words, we assume that people prefer things sooner rather than later, this is why the natural rate of interest cannot be negative.
(sorry about being pedantic about terminology, but that's what Praxeology is all about)