The contributions of Jevons and Menger were multiple, yet each of them took aim at a central postulate of economics shared by everyone from Adam Smith to the socialist left: the notion that labor is a—if not the—source of value. Though adumbrated in the idiom of prices and exchange, the labor theory of value evinced an almost primitive faith in the metaphysical objectivity of the economic sphere—a faith made all the more surprising by the fact that the objectivity of the rest of the social world (politics, religion and morals) had been subject to increasing scrutiny since the Renaissance. Commodities may have come wrapped in the pretty paper of the market, but inside, many believed, were the brute facts of nature: raw materials from the earth and the physical labor that turned those materials into goods. Because those materials were made useful, hence valuable, only by labor, labor was the source of value. That, and the fact that labor could be measured in some way (usually time), lent the world of work a kind of ontological status—and political authority—that had been increasingly denied to the world of courts and kings, lands and lords, parishes and priests. As the rest of the world melted into air, labor was crystallizing as the one true solid....
[Carl] Menger interrupted his abstract reflections on value to make the point that while it may “appear deplorable to a lover of mankind that possession of capital or a piece of land often provides the owner a higher income…than the income received by a laborer,” the “cause of this is not immoral.” It was “simply that the satisfaction of more important human needs depends upon the services of the given amount of capital or piece of land than upon the services of the laborer.” Any attempt to get around that truth, he warned, “would undoubtedly require a complete transformation of our social order.”
The crux of the difference between right and left — all are created equal, or some (the owners) are better than others. The ideal of the left is democracy; the ideal of the right is feudalism.
The Nation
Nietzsche’s Marginal Children: On Friedrich Hayek
Corey Robin
The Nation
Nietzsche’s Marginal Children: On Friedrich Hayek
Corey Robin
40 comments:
It was “simply that the satisfaction of more important human needs depends upon the services of the given amount of capital or piece of land than upon the services of the laborer.” Carl Menger
In the Bible (Leviticus 25), it is commanded that agricultural land cannot be permanently sold and is to return to the original owner 50 years later at most.
I read that earlier and came away from it feeling quite depressed, the entire belief system that those people are trying to sell is rancid.
Menger: " it may “appear deplorable to a lover of mankind ..."
OK this is REVEALING.
He calls out a cohort described as 'lovers of mankind'... as opposed to WHAT?
The moron METAL-LOVERS that's what (at least for one...)
VERY revealing.
These sub-humans are NOT fond of humans, they are fond of METALS... this is what drives them... they are SICK SOBs....
rsp,
What a big load of crap. My heart is warmed by again seeing that there is still no anti-Austrian in the galaxy who understands the basic Austrian concept of economic calculation or the basic libertarian concept of the non-aggression principle.
As I've been warning you, you guys are going to lose the philosophical debate by pushing this kind of bilge. Actually, you've already lost. You push this kind of bilge because the Austrian/libertarian ideas are irrefutable.
Bob, did you read the article? It's not about "economic calculation." It's about fundamental criteria over which left and right stand opposed. The notion that markets, in which is is presumed that value is determined subjectively by price, provide criteria for making fundamental choices is at issue.
Bob,
I consider myself not anti-Austrian but rather pro-human... if you can see the difference...
rsp,
You push this kind of bilge because the Austrian/libertarian ideas are irrefutable. Bob Roddis
1) Austrians are silly because they think gold is an adequate money form.
2) Austrians are hypocrites because they are in favor of government privilege for precious metals.
3) Austrians are unjust because they ignore that the banking cartel cheats borrowers too.
4) Austrians are cruel because they love deflation - "to purge" the so-called "malinvestments."
5) Austrians don't understand the present money system since their hyper-inflation predictions have failed for the past four years.
The Bible also opposes collecting interest from one's fellow countrymen (Deuteronomy 23:19-20) which is another means of wealth concentration besides land accumulation.
Of course I read the article. By purposefully omitting the essence of both Austrian economics and libertarianism, the clown Mr. Robin has suggested a totally unwarranted sinister motive and result from Hayek’s writings.
Suppose someone owns a vast wetland and does not want to sell it for any price (there being no eminent domain in a world of the non-aggression principle). The nearby town wants to build a freeway and giant mall through and on the wetland. The owner refuses various exorbitant offers to purchase. At some point, the potential buyers are going to have to weigh the cost of paying the wetland owner against the potential profits and benefits. Similarly, the owner can weigh whether taking an exorbitant offer would allow him/her to purchase and preserve perhaps 10 other critical wetlands while being set for life. Further, this is a world in which there is no Keynesian funny money and “infrastructure” machine to constantly fund and subsidize sprawl and that makes investing in inflation hedges like real estate essential in the face of purposeful government dilution of the fiat currency. The value of the freeway, the mall and the wetland are all subjective in the minds of the actors. Due to the non-aggression principle, the supporters of “growth” have no majoritarian trump card over the recalcitrant nature lover.
The implication and conclusion that such a system protects “capital” and the elite against the 99% or assigns a higher value to “commercial” vs. aesthetic values is preposterous. It is just the opposite. Each individual will be safe from aggression by private or government criminals and each individual will be provided with an accurate assessment of the costs associated with either “commercial” and/or other types of activities. Further, the elite depend upon a system of crony capitalism where the government is captured and is employed protect their looting of the 99%. It is the complete opposite of the non-aggression principle.
“Progressives”: Give up. Your distortions and lies are pathetic.
All of F. Beard’s points are misplaced.
1. You can use any form of money that you want. Free to choose and all that.
2. I favor no privilege for any metals or any form of money. See #1.
3. I propose the immediate abolition of the banking cartel. I do not ignore the fact that banks lend out funny money while the borrowers have to go out and actually earn the money and interest to pay back the funny money loan.
4. There would be no seriously deflation to worry about if there wasn’t a funny money boom with artificial price inflation first. If there is nothing to correct, there can be no painful correction.
5. I never predicted CPI inflation over 5-7% per year in 2009 for the period after 2009 because I presumed that most of the new funny money would go into jacking up and holding up the price of assets whose price should have been allowed to collapse to unadulterated levels. Further, under historical measures of CPI inflation, I believe I have been proven correct.
BTW, the now 50 year old Rothbardian explanation of the Great Depression is that the funny money loans did not flow into the CPI but into stock speculation. Thus, Austrian theory is not necessarily based upon predictions of CPI inflation. Further, in 2009, some Austrians failed to foresee that the elite would be able to have the government save its ass while the 99% would sit quietly as the giant banks were paid interest by the Fed not to make loans.
David Stockman writes in his new book that if Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had been allowed to go bankrupt:
Their bankruptcy would have resulted in no measurable harm to the Main Street economy, and possibly some gain. It would have brought the curtains down on a generation of Wall Street speculators and sent them packing in disgrace and amid massive personal losses---the only possible way to end the current repugnant regime of crony capitalist domination of the nation's central bank.[...] The preponderance of their fabled profitability[...]was generated by massive trading operations which scalped spreads from elephantine balance sheets that were preposterously leveraged (30 to 1) but also dangerously dependent upon volatile short-term funding to carry their assets. Indeed, perched on a foundation of several hundreds of billions in debt and equity capital, those firms had become voracious consumers of "wholesale" money market funds, mainly short-term "repo" loans and unsecured commercial paper. From these sources, they had erected trillion-dollar financial towers of hot-money speculation.
Bob, you are revealing your naivete about fundmental ideological perpectives. This is a moral debate, not an economic one. Are there established values or is the market the ultimate arbiter. What has happened in this debate is that the power of force characteristic of feudalism is replace by market power as the arbiter of history, and the conqueror as the world historical figure is replaced by the entrepreneur and rentier. It's the replacement of the feudalism of the feudal lord with the neo-feudalism of the haute bourgeoisie. No only is might the arbiter of right, but the market, which is amoral, and freedom is the freedom to compete, with the only stricture according to the neoliberal-Austrian POV being "non-coercion," defined as any use of violence other than in self-defense and protection of private property.
1. You can use any form of money that you want. Free to choose and all that. Bod Roddis
Then concede that inexpensive fiat, issued ONLY by government, is the ONLY ethical money form for government debts.
Otherwise, what should only be a purely private money form (such as PMs) is being privileged by government.
Fiat is "funny money", not because it is paper at most, but because:
1) We allow the central bank to create it for the sake of the banks and other special interests.
2) The monetary sovereign does not limit itself to spending and taxing fiat but also needlessly borrows it at interest.
David Stockman writes in his new book that if Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had been allowed to go bankrupt:
And counterfactuals are impossible to prove.
It is more likely that the Western-based financial system would have collapsed, as it was poised to do when Lehman was allowed to fail. Even the hard-bitten elite that nothing bothers were pooping in their pants.
4. There would be no seriously deflation to worry about if there wasn’t a funny money boom with artificial price inflation first. Bob Roddis
Even honest usury (not the lending of money, "credit", into existence) is unstable because the real interest required will typically compound faster than real economic growth. That's why even the ancients had debt jubilees.
If there is nothing to correct, there can be no painful correction.
Bob Roddis
The thing to correct is usury - not just temporary money creation for usury. And the correction need not be painful since a universal bailout with new fiat would fix everyone, including non-debtors, from the bottom up.
While Stockman's book is not exactly pure libertarian, his analysis is Austrian. The purpose of the quote was to show what Austrians thought of bailing out the elite from their speculation binge. A main theme of the Robin article was that Hayek's theories are used to justify and protect "capital" (which I assume is his silly Marxoid-speak for "the elite"). It is a totally baseless and garbage accusation.
"Suppose someone owns a vast wetland"
Interesting that the hero in Bob's little morality tale is a very wealthy landowner.
No[t] only is might the arbiter of right, but the market, which is amoral, and freedom is the freedom to compete, with the only stricture according to the neoliberal-Austrian POV being "non-coercion," defined as any use of violence other than in self-defense and protection of private property.
The main problem that has always faced mankind is assaultive behavior: murder, theft, rape, pillage, slavery etc…, not a "lack of aggregate demand". Thus, a strict prohibition upon such assaultive activity is highly moral. You "progressives" are the enemy of such basic morality with your constant attacks on, dismissals of and obfuscations about the protections afforded by private property and contracts, especially for the most powerless in the world (think Africa).
We already have a functioning system of the English Common Law protections of private property and contract protecting physical property and bodies from harm and which everyone understands at the household level. You "progressives" are the ones who insist that there is some mysterious ailment caused by this system and you are insistent upon ignoring and distorting our meticulous and vast analysis which proves that it is violations (not enforcement) of these rights that is the cause of the problems about which you complain.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/8525140770/in/photostream
Interesting that the hero in Bob's little morality tale is a very wealthy landowner.
Suppose it was owned by a not very wealthy family who was not very wealthy precisely because they wouldn't sell the land since they valued nature over money.
In the Bible, the land of Canaan was distributed by lot (chance) after its conquest and after that could not be permanently sold.
So under Biblical rules, NO ONE would own vast amounts of land.
Wait, I've figured it out...
In Bob's universe deflation is good and inflation is bad...
...as compared to our universe where deflation is bad and inflation is OK as long as it isn't in excess.
For me personally, inflation was good because it reduced the burden of my debt (mostly mortgage-related) and did nothing re my buying power, at least not so I could notice it.
Also, the poor were allowed to "glean" the private fields after harvest and the land owners were commanded:
Leviticus 19:9
‘Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.
Leviticus 19:10
Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 23:22
‘When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien. I am the Lord your God.’”
For me personally, inflation was good because it reduced the burden of my debt
Obviously, all debtors are poor and all creditors are rich. Like the relationship between beneficiaries and life insurance companies.
Notice that the above idea is based upon a complete obliteration of morality by suggesting that the government should just willy-nilly gut the essence of a contractual promise.
But that's the essence of the Keynesian amoral/immoral mind.
"Suppose it was owned by a not very wealthy family".
Wealth:
"Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions"
(Wikipedia)
"All property that has a money value or exchangeable value"
(Merriam Webster"
"A measure of the value of all of the assets of worth owned by a person, community, company or country".
(Investopedia)
You are completely clueless.
"Notice that the above idea is based upon a complete obliteration of morality"
Only inside your strange delusional brain.
You "progressives" are the enemy of such basic morality with your constant attacks on, dismissals of and obfuscations about the protections afforded by private property and contracts, especially for the most powerless in the world (think Africa).
Colonialism never happened and neo-colonialism isn't happening now?
We already have a functioning system of the English Common Law protections of private property and contract protecting physical property and bodies from harm and which everyone understands at the household level.
This is the United States and we are governed by US law here.
"Notice that the above idea is based upon a complete obliteration of morality" Bob Roddis
Have you forgotten that the government-backed credit cartel drives people into debt?
The counterfeiting cartel is owed nothing beyond what is written in the contact. If there is no price inflation clause in the contract then too bad for the banks. And since the banks are the prime drivers behind price inflation, especially in housing, then it is poetic justice if they "suffer" from it. But note the suffering is only in real terms since an increase in the money supply enables the banks to pay their debts too.
But what about savers, you may ask? Savers should get behind at least a temporary ban on further credit creation and get behind a universal bailout with new fiat too.
"So under Biblical rules, NO ONE would own vast amounts of land."
F,
That is NOT under "Biblical" rules, that is under the Law God gave to Moses for Israel...
For instance I am not an Israelite, why should I be interested in implementing a legal system that already was a proven failure already 2,000 years ago?
I see no value in those laws save for providing an example of the type of utter failure we can expect in a human/earthly economic system characterized by faithless leadership...
rsp,
Matthew 5:19
Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
F,
That is Israel's salvation ie "The Kingdom of Heaven"...
For me anyway (non-Israelite), a citizen of the nations, the salvation is of 'The Kingdom of God':
"Let it be known to you, then, that to the nations was dispatched this salvation of God, and they will hear."
Now he remains two whole years in his own hired house, and he welcomed all those going in to him, heralding the kingdom of God, and teaching that which concerns the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, unforbidden." Acts 28:28
I could almost care less about the 'Kingdom of Heaven', it is NOT mine to be part of, Israel will deal with that when it becomes their time...
rsp,
F. Beard,
Thought of you when I read this:
http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2013/05/selling-our-children-into-slavery.html
Thanks Paul, for the thought.
Yep, apprenticeships seem the way to go for many.
That is NOT under "Biblical" rules, that is under the Law God gave to Moses for Israel... Matt Franko
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
BTW, thanks for pointing out the distinction between "the kingdom of Heaven" and the "kingdom of God." I agree there is a distinction but not your conclusion.
F,
Respectfully, perhaps seek a greater measure of revelation/faith on which Kingdom represents your salvation...
The scriptures (to me anyway) depict different forms of God's salvation (ie "keeping") but I would additionally point out salvation of some-sort applies for ALL we of mankind... we are ALL "kept" or "saved"...
"Verily, I am saying to you that all shall be pardoned the sons of mankind" Mark 3:28
FD: I'm pretty sure (as sure as I'm given to be..) I've been allotted to the Kingdom of God side of it (I'm under the Apostle Paul's teachings) ... but again this looks like it varies from my pov...
rsp,
2nd Timothy was written by Paul.
I'm not saying Gentile believers are under the Law but neither should we reject the Law simply because we're not Jews - especially when setting aside the Law does not err on the side of mercy and love.
F.,
I could not stone a sodomite...
Where do you cut it off? and why?
rsp,
Fornication is a sin against oneself and is thus self-punishing. Collecting interest from one's fellow countrymen is a sin against others. And allowing lenders to essentially create the money they lend is even worse since it steals by dilution.
F,
The Law didnt say: "Thou shalt not fornicate."
The Law said if there were witnessed two males engaged in sodomy, they both were to be killed.
So to comply you had to stone sodomites, NOT avoid fornication...
It's ALL GARBAGE today F. (to me anyway).
"I forfeited all, and am deeming it to be refuse..." Phil 3:8
It's garbage. We can get it done another way, via other specific methods/policies for which there will be similar results...
rsp,
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