We don't always find it in humans. Many of them will be your future patients.
What does a "subpar" mental state have to do with a lack of economic behavior. Maybe not efficient or relatively consistently guided behavior, but still economic.
I simply meant that the Austrian system argues that human beings are economic individuals prior to the engagement in market behavior. It's their argument that this is natural human behavior.
***The three broad categories of economic action/behavior are production, consumption, and exchange. At a bare minimum, we must consume food and water to live. This is a facet of economic behavior.***
Well, I don't think there's any such thing as a free market. For the purposes of the argument in Austrian economics, free markets are desirable because they conform to natural human action. Viewed another way, we might say that modern economic theories, such as those of the Austrian school, create this "natural human action" for their own purposes. Or, more interesting, the system itself provides a space for this perspective to emerge...
In an absolute sense, we can agree there is no freedom, such as a free market. But that's not what a free market is:
A free market is a market structure in which the distribution and costs of goods and services, along with the structure and hierarchy between capital and consumer goods, are coordinated by supply and demand unhindered by external regulation or control by government or monopolies.
Of course, we do not currently have one of these either. But the point is not some return to a past nirvana, like so many Noble Austrian Savages. It's progressive, not regressive. Forging ahead without systemic paternalism and coercive conservatism.
Whoa, now you're presuming to have discovered the theoretical correlate to the essential, basic way that human beings behave and act? Assumption heaped on assumption!
Refer to the starred response.
Assuming the ideology that a system perpetuates (i.e. liberal humanism) is not for the purpose of actively pursuing an entirely different agenda... oh wait, that is what it's doing! There's absolutely no reason to assume that simply because the liberal humanist ideology is still prevalent in the West (mainly America), it must in turn mean that the system as a whole operates according to such an ideology. The system as a whole isn't even human. Who's to say what it will turn into?
This seems like a nonsequitur. I'm not arguing over predictions of future zeitgeists.
This is also mistaken, and I'll explain why:
Recall that I specifically mentioned private property. People are free to not work at any time; you're absolutely correct. But as resources are privatized, people are less free to operate outside the market system. They don't have the option, like Thoreau did (and even Thoreau couldn't operate entirely outside the market), of isolating themselves and living off their own work. As more and more resources become privatized, people are actually forced to engage in market transaction, and this in turn forces them to work more than they perhaps would like to or even need to should they have the opportunity of surviving outside the market.
All resources are currently privatized anyway. As governments are incorporations, we should be able to readily see this. The question is about acquisition methods and the concomitant powers. People are free to not work at any time, regardless of all other factors. This always means death though, outside of being made comatose and forcefed. We have to work more than otherwise now precisely because of the state. The closest we could come to a Thoreau-in existence is to save and purchase land in a place with no property tax, land capable of sustaining life. But the level of work required to sustain the life most people want would be completely out of reach for the now atomized individual. The market is an enabler, an exponential magnifier of human productivity through the "magic" of the division of labor and dissimilar values. Notice Thoreau preferred a dearth of material comforts
for that limited time, and still found need to approach society from time to time.
Isolationism should be available, but its certainly not going to provide the freedom people imagine. They are not "forced" to engage in market activity (exchange) beyond their desires for "better".
The usual argument goes that the drawback to a free market it does not have a systemic defense against the encroachment of a state: "nature abhors a vacuum".
You're right that people need to work in order to survive. That's an obvious point. But people do not necessarily need to work as much as a market society, rife with privatized resources, forces them to if they were free to reside in a state of exile with access to resources. Unfortunately, in a system that relies on privatization, this becomes less likely.
Why cant they self exile to their own property?
You like to make distinctions between the elite and the people (aka "pawns") as though those who run the institutions are somehow different and in possession of a power beyond reckoning. You consider them to be absolutely and entirely opposed to the masses, systematically and psychologically, and you have this incredible conviction that they want power and that they want to subdue and oppress the masses, as though they don't realize that the masses are what give them their power. This is a simplistic and ridiculous notion.
The truth is that those in power are just as enslaved and oppressed as the masses, and the reason is that the system is using us. That is why it can churn out liberal humanists while becoming something entirely different; because it isn't human, and because it doesn't care about us.
I could agree that those in power are in a form of slavery, but in relative terms a "first class" sort. But there are extraordinary power seekers, and power holders (not in the sense that they have a power that goes outside of the system, of course it is still contained within it) that differ psychologically from the general populace. This is not a sensationalistic, fringe perspective, but scientific in so far as psychology can be scientific.
It's of little value to tell the Judge he is acting as a slave of the system, and that he is as powerless as you, after he issues the warrant that allows the SWAT team to riddle you and your beloved with bulletholes for crimes against the state. It's a perspective trapped in the ether.
And that's what I'm giving you!
I do not see how the possibility that the current technological state of the market "using us" (which is far too intentional, since the market itself and the technologies and cybernetic systems that surround us likely aren't even aware of us in the sense we would think) is in any way in contrast with anything that I've just said above in this post.
Free market ideas and Austrian economics simply miss the error of their own argument, which is that they project the modern construction of the economic human being into the past as though it's the way human beings are and have always been. The entire history of the idea of free markets begins early in Western history and then suddenly explodes in modernity; this isn't because we're somehow getting closer to the secret of human action, or that we more appropriately understand ourselves. It's because the system has been gradually changing and adapting all this time and actively produces the conceptions we have about ourselves, which we then project into the past to explain how the system came about. Our consciousness might have some influence on the societies we create, but those societies have an equal if not more powerful effect on our consciousness.
Again, reference the starred portion. Not labeling my eating is "consumption" and therefore "economic", doesn't make it not so,
by definition.
Economic theory, the sort based on human action, is necessarily introspective. "What am I doing?". "What are the effects?". "What can I do different(if a different outcome is desired)?". Etc.
This smacks of the argument against "Homoeconomicus" by trotting out the "gift economy", which has imo been easily rebutted.
http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Gift_economy
I'm not necessarily opposed to private property or free markets or anything of the sort. If you look back over my posts, I've never said private property was bad or that free markets are bad. I'm only arguing that these theories are not philosophical. The reason I'm inclined to say that Austrian economics isn't philosophy is because they perceive themselves as in on some secret or grand philosophical notion of human action, when in fact more penetrating philosophical thought simply reveals that they're doing nothing but slaves to the system they think they created.
Basically: Austrian economics is surface level theorizing. It does not dig deeper or reflect upon itself.
Given the constant revision of economic theory within specific traditions, I disagree. Core concepts of course are not questioned anymore, but that is across the continuum of theories/philosophies. In the case of Austrian Economics, things like individual subjective valuations and marginal utility have passed the bar if you will, and are not under constant rigorous review.
