Subnostr

The problem I have with economists talking in terms of "distortions" as a criticism of government-intervention in the economy, is it presupposes the existence of an ideal state of nature. Usually, there's no attempt to describe the basis for this ideal state of nature, other than it's just assumed to be there, emanating from metaphysical claims about natural laws.

The argument then becomes that *all* government interventions are ipso facto a negative distortion that takes you further away from the ideal equilibrium that would emerge if not for the interference of the government.

The problem is, there's absolutely no empirical reason to believe this moral maxima is just floating out there, being distorted away by the existence of states, taxes or even forms of money. My favorite whipping boy, Rothbard, actually kind of realized this, and it's why he detested empiricism so much and disliked both Popper and Hume. Because their philosophical arguments undermined this metaphysical claim, which he believed could be proven to exist through pure reason.

While Rothbard and his contemporary, Hoppe both acknowledge Hume's is-ought dilemma, which is actually quite apropos here -- their routing around it with praxeology and wits Hoppe's "argumentation ethics" is wholly unconvincing and I would argue is borderline intellectual woo woo.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Mike Brock 3y ago

FWIW: I think you need to first stake out a normative claim, before you can answer the question of whether or not government-intervention is helpful for unhelpful to achieving that goal. I reject the idea that human progress is naturally more fruitful in the absence of the state. There's literally no empirical evidence to believe this is true. It *could* be true. But there's no historical or contemporary examples that would support it, that exist outside pure rational inductions inside of people's minds.

Louferlou 3y ago

There is literally tons of examples showing that less state = more wealth for citizens, and more state = less wealth, and the reasons are obvious IMO even without reading Austrian economyat all. Everybody can basically tell that there is an obvious correlation between the enforcement of private property and wealth on this planet.

But empirical reasoning is dirty garbage Keynesian tool to create absurd predictive models suiting to those who create them anyway.

Indeed it’s not about results or doing good or evil, as all of this is subjective stuff. It’s about being moral or immoral. You don’t seem to agree that violence should be banned to build a peaceful society (unless you first act violently). It’s not a trap from libertarians living in a utopia, like you seem to believe. It’s basically the obvious ground and root upon which a prosperous civilization must be built… The State (which is basically the gathering of the means of legitimate defense) should only be there to prevent violence of occurring. You step out of that you get 1984 eventually.

Mike Brock 3y ago

You'll note that I'm not arguing "the more state, the better". So you're essentially making a straw man argument, here.

Louferlou 3y ago

What I wanted to say is that as you mentioned (and I don’t think any liberal thinker argues that by the way) neither is there an ideal state of nature or equilibrium which will prevent the State from growing indefinitely as it already happened multiple times and everywhere in human history.

I think that once you’ve made the State able to steal from ones to give to others, basically ripping out the obvious non agression principle, it’s over you’ve lost and there is no turning back. You’ve create a honey pot for private interests and lobbies and it’s a never ending fight for who will steal from who.

Basically it means that State intervention out of enforcing the non aggression principle is doomed and lead to a dystopian future because of human nature.

There is no moral gouvernement intervention as good or bad are different to every people. If the market forces can’t auto organize to provide a service, it has no reason to exist. The market is true democracy in a world where violence is not tolerated.