Another Numerologist Gets the Idiot Award
by Ed Bugos
The Dollar Vigilante
Recently by Ed Bugos: My Harassment by the TSA/Customs Gestapo
Witness the latest economist to win the Nobel Prize from the Swedes, who I'm certain lead the world in economic nonsense, for allegedly solving the unsolvable knowledge and calculation problems of central planners.
Huh?
Rather than explaining all that is wrong in their problem solving, in the interest of brevity let me just ask: did you mean you didn't know Ludwig von Mises showed that this kind of thing was impossible almost 100 years ago?
He warned them:
"Nothing could by more mistaken than the now fashionable attempt to apply the methods and concepts of the natural sciences to the solution of social problems."
The Nazis didn't listen. Neither did the commies. They were all so excited by the scientific advances in the laws of motion and mechanics that they wanted to apply them to everything everywhere, and in the process they even narrowed the definition of science to the positivist form that we know of today – where anything that cannot be observed under a controlled lab setting, and consequently repeated, is excluded from the definition of "science".
You know what? Mises even had an insight on this:
"Mechanicalism proves to be so satisfactory a principle of conduct that people finally believe it capable of solving all the problems of thought and scientific research. Materialism and panphysicalism proclaim mechanicalism as the essence of all knowledge and the experimental and mathematical methods of the natural sciences as the sole scientific mode of thinking. All changes are to be comprehended as motions subject to the laws of mechanics." (Human Action, Scholars Edition)
Whoa! Heh? But we diverge.
Essentially what these social engineers want is to control prices and influence your preferences.
But don't take my word for it, takes Mises' again:
"It is customary nowadays to speak of 'social engineering.' Like planning, this term is a synonym for dictatorship and totalitarian tyranny. The idea is to treat human beings in the same way in which the engineer treats the stuff out of which he builds his bridges, roads, and machines. The social engineer's will is to be substituted for the will of the various people he plans to use for the construction of his utopia."
Double "whoah, heh?" That's right, go take another hit off your bong and come back.
One could put together a book just with his quotes alone (Mises.org already publishes something like that) – he has written more than 25 books and countless essays. Funny how he is still so well buried by the establishment that most economists aren't even familiar with his main theories. At any rate, generally, modern day economists still don't understand the market; they still want to "play market" instead of letting the market be a market; they underestimate the complexity of society as a living organism, and the market as a discovery mechanism; they have no idea how to make sense of the entrepreneur; and they prefer to look at human society as a mechanic would look at a car engine, all the while not realizing that if the market were free of the state's not so invisible hands, freely fluctuating prices are the very thing meant to match demand and supply and clear imbalances!
Eureka!
I've already spent too much time on this. If you would like to understand why
http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/bugos2.1.1.html
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
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