Re: POLITICS: Economics again: was Kefilli mystery

[Guest guest]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 09:21:42 -0800

Heidi Schuppenhauer <heidis@...> wrote:

>Well, first of all the people who call themselves " libertarians "

>and " anarchists " can't agree themselves as to what

>those terms mean, as per a previous post.

Hmmm..don't recall the previous post but there is, by and large, certainly

agreement as to what constitutes libertarianism, there is however

disagreement in terms of application. Thats okay, such is only to be

expected. We have the same problem on this board regarding nutrition

even though we largely agree on the basics:

" The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that

no man or group of men may aggress against the person

or property of anyone else. This may be called the nonaggression

axiom. Aggression is defined as the initiation

of the use or threat of physical violence against

the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is

therefore synonymous with invasion.

If no man may aggress against another, if, in short,

everyone has the absolute right to be free from aggression,

then this at once implies that the libertarian

stands foursquare for what are generally known as

civil liberties: the freedom to speak, publish, assemble,

and to engage in . . . victimless crimes. "

>Economics applies to transactions in the same way that

>chemistry applies to the transactions within the body. Sure,

>salts act like salts in the body, and acid/base reactions

>do happen. But saying that you can describe the body

>in terms of chemistry misses a lot of what a human body

>is ABOUT. Chemistry doesn't explain why, for instance,

>a person gets depressed when their football team loses.

>

>The way you describe economics is purely in terms

>of gain/loss, which doesn't describe SOCIETY. (hence

>the latin names analogy, which wasn't really meant

>to be a cheap shot). People who talk about business

>do talk about gain loss ... but business is also a lot

>about family connections, who you went to school with,

>who you golf with. There are cartels, shunnings, desire

>for power, desire for revenge, exchanges of favors,

>tribal allegences, and all that messy human sociology stuff.

I think you should acquaint yourself with the Austrian School of

Economics, especially the seminal work by Ludwig Von Mises called Human

Action. The Scholars Edition is free online at:

http://www.mises.org/humanaction.asp

Actually Murray Rothbard would be even better (and MUCH more

approachable) but his seminal work on economics is not available online.

I can understand what you say above given some of the modern approaches

to economics. But economics is the study of human behavior. It is not

just about gains and losses. As a discipline it was originally called

" Moral Philosophy. "

Superhero Bush Rescues Marriage

http://tinyurl.com/yvrn6