What would you change about Capitalism?

[Dragline]

does Dragline "believe" in praxeology? why/why not?

No, for the same reason I would not believe in Lamarckian evolution or that light moves through a substance called "ether" -- we should know better by now. Because praxeology starts from the idea that we can't know how humans think and that such data is irrelevant ("that black box issue") and generally rejects the use of empirical data, it just ends up being a kind of stagnant logical exercise. I compare it to Euclidean geometry -- nice to look at and sometimes helpful, but not really descriptive of the real world, which is better modeled by fractal geometries.

Historically, praxeology is not something terribly original, but simply a diametrical reaction to the positivistic movement began by Auguste Comte in the 19th century and reached its hey-day in the 1920s and 30s, but has been mostly discarded -- except by Austrians who label everything they don't like as "positivism". See https://mises.org/library/positivism-and-behaviorism

So you have positivism trying to treat human behavior as if it could be described and predicted with the precision of Newton's laws (a form of scientism) and praxeologists saying that it can never be known why anyone does anything, so we should not even try, just accept it as "rational" and only make logical deductions from there. That von Mises also says that its teleological means essentially that it is also utopian, which is doubly bad in my view. (When you combine a utopian philosophy with a psychopathic leader -- which will come along sooner or later -- you usually end up with purges of the undesirables who are made scapegoats for any problems in getting to utopia.)

Problem is, they are both wrong -- neither positivism nor praxeology has survived the test of time and both should be left in the dustbin of history with ether and Lamarkian evolution.

While particular human action is unpredictable, human tendencies and decision-making processes are quite knowable through experiments and otherwise. Thus, reality and human action has a probablistic quality to it that it beyond the simplistic ideas of either the positivists or the praxeologists. There is a whole industry devoted to this (advertising/marketing) and academics have devoted their careers to it and won Nobel Prizes for it. (Kahneman in particular.) Neurologists are catching up, too, with concepts like "mirror neurons".

[Ego]

...and both should be left in the dustbin of history with ether and Lamarkian evolution.

Consider another look in the dustbin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckis ... Lamarckism

[Dragline]

Seems like they are still arguing about the labels on the margins. But no one is advocating that we reinvigorate a Lysenkoist agriculture program (people don't like starving) or that if we force a generation to be cobblers that their offspring with have shoe fetishes.

Getting back to the main focus of what I was saying, this short article, which I don't entirely agree with, summarizes some of my points and advocates the reintegration of the social sciences: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2 ... ce=twitter

Buchanan, who is a science writer, has also written some great books about the application of complexity theory and Mandelbrotian math to lots of different things, including the way we view history. See this one in particular: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000RH ... TF8&btkr=1

Here's a (strange sounding) YouTube summary of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR9JeEHDg8M

[BRUTE]

it sounds like Dragline hates Mises, but brute is not convinced by any of the reasons. most of them seem out of context or are things that brute has already argued are misunderstandings/non-issues ("rational", "black box"). brute will continue to "believe in" praxeology.

[brianagainn]

Thanks for the interesting ideas shared, and, pointed to, in this conversation, Brute and Dragline. Praxeology is interesting stuff. Now I know (in concrete terms) one of the underlying pillars of, both, libertarian political thinking and laissez faire economics. After some quick research, my understanding is in its pubescence, at best. I am a bit turned off by any school of thought which thinks itself unmolested by reason or study (praxeology). For that reason, I will prematurely state that the idea, and its subsequent conclusions, and the conclusions born of those, dubious. I will refer to Hitchens here and state that an argument is not made stronger by its un-provability but, more so, weaker.

[brianagainn]

Thanks for the interesting ideas shared, and, pointed to, in this conversation, Brute and Dragline. Praxeology is interesting stuff. Now I know (in concrete terms) one of the underlying pillars of, both, libertarian political thinking and laissez faire economics. After some quick research, my understanding is in its pubescence, at best. I am a bit turned off by any school of thought which thinks itself unmolested by reason or study (praxeology). For that reason, I will prematurely state that the idea, and its subsequent conclusions, and the conclusions born of those, dubious. I will refer to Hitchens here and state that an argument is not made stronger by its un-provability but, more so, weaker.

[vexed87]

Here's a great post, again by CHS explaining the difference between simplistic 18th century interpretation of free-trade vs modern day globalization and consequences of neoliberalism.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay16/glo ... n5-16.html

[JamesR]

Constant exponential growth is a bug of the reserve banking system.
The growing wealth inequality has a lot to do with technological and financial leverage.
Economic instability comes from the continued expansion of a credit based system.

To add to that:

Corporations doing bad things is a feature of corporate personhood (limited liability).

A lot of corporate evils are blamed on capitalism, but I don't think it should be. To me, the purest definition of capitalism is "what happens when there's no coercion or exploitation at all", meaning the invisible hand is free to allocate things with some efficiency (it's definitely not 100% though!), so limited liability isn't necessarily a part of it.


Brute,
Mises eh? Check this out: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm

To answer OP,
what would I change about capitalism? Reduce the work week to 4 days/32 hours!

[bryan]

To me, the purest definition of capitalism is "what happens when there's no coercion or exploitation at all",

Why is that? Seems naive, no?

That's why I don't proclaim myself an anarchist, even though they are a cool bunch to hang out with. They seem quite naive, sometimes.

[JamesR]

bryan,

Right, I'm not saying such a world would ever exist or be realistic. Ultimately we're just be dealing with modified capitalism.

[enigmaT120]

I don't like James' definition because it isn't really about capitalism. Capitalism is making money from other people's work.

[JamesR]

Although he is often described as the "father of capitalist thinking," Adam Smith himself never used the term "capitalism". He described his own preferred economic system as "the system of natural liberty." However, Smith defined "capital" as stock, and "profit" as the just expectation to keep the revenue from improvements to that stock. Smith also made capital improvement the central goal of the economic and political system.

I suspect the spirit of 'capitalism' was originally about the "natural liberty" and invisible hand of the market. However, we tend to call the current economic system 'capitalism', which probably resulted in changing the definition. Now "capitalism" is often a scapegoat.

[tonyedgecombe]

Capitalism is making money from other people's work.

To me it's more about the state not getting involved in business.