What Does Say’s Law Really Say?
Bob goes solo to give the historical context and true meaning behind “Say’s Law,” as well as the caricature presented by Keynesian critics.
- J.B. Say’s A Treatise on Political Economy: Mises.org/HAP460a
- James Mill, “On the Overproduction and Underconsumption Fallacies”: Mises.org/HAP460b
The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Murray Rothbard’s, What Has Government Done to Our Money? Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/
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Czech police probe self-proclaimed ‘paedophile hunters’
Czech police are investigating groups of mostly young people hunting for paedophiles on the internet to blackmail them or beat them up, a spokesman said Friday.
Pretending they are children, the self-proclaimed “paedophile hunters” contact sexual predators online, often exchanging pornographic material with them, and ask to meet, police said.
“At the meeting, the group confronts or menaces the sexual predators, or they attack or blackmail them,” police spokesman Jakub Vincalek said in a statement.
“The hunters shoot videos of the encounter and then publish them on social networks,” he added.
Czech police were working in cooperation with Europe’s police agency Europol, the spokesman said.
Similar groups are active across Europe and the Czech “hunters” drew inspiration from the foreign social networks.
“The paedophile hunting groups are trying to act as self-proclaimed protectors of society taking justice into their hands,” Vincalek said.
He added that police were investigating several crimes linked to the groups including robbery and causing serious injury.
“An alarming fact is that the largest group the detectives are investigating… comprises above all youths,” Vincalek said.
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Turkey Instagram ban ‘violates’ free speech: Human Rights Watch
Turkey on Friday marked a week since the authorities blocked access to Instagram, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) saying the suspension violated free speech.
The authorities have also frozen popular online video game Roblox.
The rights watchdog urged the government to restore access to US-owned Instagram, which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused of “fascism” and ministers have blamed for failing to remove posts the authorities deem offensive.
“Blocking everyone’s access to an entire social media platform is a grossly disproportionate measure that violates the right to free expression and information of millions of users,” HRW’s Deborah Brown said.
“(It) should be reversed immediately.”
Last week, Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun accused Instagram of censorship.
He complained the platform had prevented people posting messages of condolence over the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh.
Haniyeh, the political leader of Palestinian group Hamas, was killed in Tehran in an attack blamed on Israel.
Erdogan, an ally of Haniyeh’s, said on Monday social media networks “cannot even tolerate photos of Palestinian martyrs without immediately banning them”.
Instagram has an estimated 50-60 million subscribers in Turkey and is used by numerous businesses to trade and find customers.
The Turkish e-commerce operators’ association has calculated the ban is costing around 1.9 billion Turkish lira, or nearly $57 million, per day in lost business.
Yaman Akdeniz, a co-founder of the Freedom of Expression Association (IFOD), said the freeze on Instagram was “disproportionate and arbitrary”, stressing that it had been introduced “without a (prior) court order”.
Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uralolu met Instagram representatives on Monday but their differences have yet to be resolved.
Uraloglu said last week the platform, which is owned by US tech giant Meta, had been suspended for ignoring demands to remove “criminal content”.
An anonymous source at Turkey’s BTK communications authority said these included “insults to Ataturk”, the founding father of modern Turkey, “drugs (and) paedophilia”.
Meta said it had taken down more than 2,500 posts flagged by the government in the first six months of the year.
On Wednesday, the authorities also banned Roblox, a platform that allows players to create their own games and has been downloaded more than 41 million times in Turkey.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc alleged “it contains content that will cause abuse of children”.
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Post-Tropical Cyclone Debby Public Advisory
000 WTNT34 KWNH 091439 TCPAT4 BULLETIN Post-Tropical Cyclone Debby Advisory Number 29 NWS Weather Prediction Center College Park MD AL042024 1100 AM EDT Fri Aug 09 2024 ...HEAVY RAINFALL AND A SIGNIFICANT FLOOD THREAT EXISTS TODAY ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE MID-ATLANTIC INTO UPSTATE NEW YORK... SUMMARY OF 1100 AM EDT...1500 UTC...INFORMATION ----------------------------------------------- LOCATION...41.7N 77.7W ABOUT 160 MI...255 KM NE OF PITTSBURGH PENNSYLVANIA ABOUT 215 MI...345 KM WSW OF ALBANY NEW YORK MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...35 MPH...55 KM/H PRESENT MOVEMENT...NE OR 35 DEGREES AT 37 MPH...59 KM/H MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1003 MB...29.62 INCHES WATCHES AND WARNINGS -------------------- SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT: Flood Watches and Warnings are in effect for portions of.... * South Carolina * North Carolina * Virginia * Maryland * Eastern West Virginia * Pennsylvania * New York A Flood Watch is in effect for portions of... * New Jersey * Delaware * Northern Vermont * Northern New Hampshire A Tornado Watch is in effect for portions of... * Maryland * Eastern Pennsylvania * Delaware * New Jersey * Southern New York Coastal Flood Advisories and Warnings are in effect for portions of... * Coastal Mid-Atlantic A Gale Warning is in effect for the coastal waters of... * Mid-Atlantic * Southern New England Wind Advisories are in effect for portions of... * Eastern Maryland * Delaware * Eastern Pennsylvania * New Jersey * Southern New York * Southern Connecticut * Northeast New York * Vermont DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK ---------------------- At 1100 AM EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Post-Tropical Cyclone Debby was located near latitude 41.7 North, longitude 77.7 West. The post-tropical cyclone is moving toward the northeast near 37 mph (59 km/h) and this motion is expected to continue, with a turn to the east-northeast later today and tonight. Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 km/h) with higher gusts. Little change in strength is forecast during the next 48 hours. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1003 mb (29.62 inches). HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND ---------------------- Key messages for Debby can be found in the Tropical Cyclone Discussion under AWIPS header MIATCDAT4 and WMO header WTNT44 KNHC. RAINFALL: Debby is expected to produce an additional 1 to 3 inches of rainfall with locally higher amounts, across portions of the coastal Carolinas today, with locally considerable flooding expected. From portions of northern Virginia through Upstate New York, 2 to 4 inches of rainfall, with local amounts to 6 inches, are expected through late tonight. This will likely result in areas of considerable flash and urban flooding, as well as river flooding. For portions of Northern New England, 1 to 3 inches of rain with locally higher amounts are expected through Friday night. This will result in isolated to scattered instances of flash flooding. For a complete depiction of forecast rainfall and flash flooding associated with Debby, please see the National Weather Service Storm Total Rainfall Graphic, available at hurricanes.gov/graphics_at4.shtml?rainqpf and the Flash Flood Risk graphic at hurricanes.gov/graphics_at4.shtml?ero. For a list of rainfall observations (and wind reports) associated this storm, see the companion storm summary at WBCSCCNS4 with the WMO header ACUS44 KWBC or at the following link: www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/nfdscc4.html. TORNADOES: The threat for tornadoes will shift into eastern Maryland, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and eastern New York today. WIND: Wind gusts of 30-50 MPH will be possible into tonight across portions of eastern Maryland, Delaware, southeast Pennsylvania, New Jersey, far southeast New York into Long Island, coastal Connecticut, and far northeast New York into Vermont. Given saturated ground conditions these winds may bring down trees and result in isolated to scattered power outages. SURF: Large swells will continue to affect the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Southern New England coast. These conditions are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions. Please consult products from your local weather office. NEXT ADVISORY ------------- Next complete advisory at 500 PM EDT. $$ Forecaster Taylor
Originally Posted at:
NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER and CENTRAL PACIFIC HURRICANE CENTER
At The NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
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The myth of fair trade
Fair trade is an increasingly politically popular idea, and opponents of the free market see it as a moral way to fix market abuse. Proponents of fair trade argue that free trade favors developed countries or bigger corporations and that steps should be taken to correct the balance of power to ensure equitable outcomes. However, fair trade fails to work because of misplaced grievances toward the free market.
The idea of fair trade rejects the free market as a viable mechanism for the facilitation of goods and services. Fair-trade supporters argue that the free market does not lead to equitable outcomes and therefore is not suitable for modern society. In effect, they essentially argue that the free market does not lead to outcomes that they would prefer. Barring coercion, the free market presents the best opportunity for producers and consumers to seek deals that they both find to their individual benefit. An exchange requires two willing parties, ensuring that neither party is involved in trading unless they wish to. While there may be circumstances in which one party has greater bargaining power than the other party, this does not cause an exchange to become immoral as long as it was completely voluntary. Fair-trade organizations often fail because they seek higher prices for the producers they support. This prices them out of the market since consumers seek better deals on similar products.
Supporters of fair trade also argue for “fair prices.” They consider the purchase of products from developing nations at low prices to be exploitative and argue for these products to be paid for at higher prices. These supporters argue that consumers from developed countries ought to pay more and that producers from developing countries should be paid more than they are already because of inequality. Once again, the fair-trade movement labels outcomes it does not personally like as exploitative. It states that free market prices are too low and prolong the suffering of those from developed nations, but free market prices are always necessarily fair.
A product being placed for sale at a particular price implies that the producer values the amount of money he receives in the exchange greater than he values the product. Similarly, the purchase of a product at a particular price implies that the consumer values the product greater than the money that he pays to buy it. Therefore, a free market exchange leads to a trade that benefits both parties as they trade something they value less than what they receive. This can hardly be considered “exploitative.”
Fair-trade programs are also notorious for pricing out the producers they support as the programs’ certification and compliance protocols add costs toward the producer’s operations. This can be particularly disastrous as companies from developing countries are competitive in global markets often because of their low price points. Therefore, taking away from or minimizing their biggest advantage does not and has not boded well for free-trade initiatives.
This isn’t to say that fair trade certification is completely useless, as it can be of value in a free market scenario. Consumers who are happy and willing to pay more for products certified by a fair-trade organization ought to be able to do so. However, the general ineffectiveness of these programs without government help can be attributed to their misplaced hatred of the free market and the subsequent errors they commit as a result. They aren’t ineffective because their competitors are more ruthless or exploitative but rather because they ignore economic reality in favor of pushing outcomes they find preferable.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/
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NewsWare’s Trade Talk: Friday, August 9 | NewsWare‘s Trade Talk
S&P Futures are moving higher this morning as yesterday positive momentum continues. Positive action this morning after earnings releases from GILD, TTD, SG, AKAM & EXPE. China’s consumer inflation rose more than expected last month, highlighting some improving trends in the country. Middle East tensions are elevated as Israel is expecting hostile actions from Iran or one of its proxies over the weekend. In Europe, stocks are gaining but have come down from their highs, and oil prices are moving ticking higher.
Home for this information is at NewsWare‘s Trade Talk homepage at this link
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POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE DEBBY
POST-TROPICAL CYCLONE DEBBY
Coastal Watches/Warnings and Forecast Cone for Storm Center
* If the storm is forecast to dissipate within 3 days, the “Full Forecast” and “3 day” graphic will be identical
Click Here for a 5-day Cone Printer Friendly Graphic
How to use the cone graphic (video):
About this product:
This graphic shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink),
tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the
center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center
at the times indicated. The dot indicating the forecast center location will be black if the cyclone is forecast to be
tropical and will be white with a black outline if the cyclone is forecast to be extratropical. If only an L is displayed,
then the system is forecast to be a remnant low. The letter inside the dot indicates the NHC’s forecast intensity for that time:
D: Tropical Depression – wind speed less than 39 MPH
S: Tropical Storm – wind speed between 39 MPH and 73 MPH
H: Hurricane – wind speed between 74 MPH and 110 MPH
M: Major Hurricane – wind speed greater than 110 MPH
NHC tropical cyclone forecast tracks can be in error. This forecast
uncertainty is conveyed by the track forecast “cone”, the solid white
and stippled white areas in the graphic. The solid white area depicts
the track forecast uncertainty for days 1-3 of the forecast, while the
stippled area depicts the uncertainty on days 4-5. Historical data
indicate that the entire 5-day path of the center of the tropical
cyclone will remain within the cone about 60-70% of the time. To
form the cone, a set of imaginary circles are placed along the
forecast track at the 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 120 h positions,
where the size of each circle is set so that it encloses 67% of the
previous five years official forecast errors. The cone is then formed
by smoothly connecting the area swept out by the set of circles.
It is also important to realize that a tropical cyclone is not a point. Their
effects can span many hundreds of miles from the center. The area
experiencing hurricane force (one-minute average wind speeds of at least
74 mph) and tropical storm force (one-minute average wind speeds of
39-73 mph) winds can extend well beyond the white areas shown enclosing
the most likely track area of the center. The distribution of hurricane
and tropical storm force winds in this tropical cyclone can be seen in
the Wind History graphic linked above.
Considering the combined forecast uncertainties in track, intensity, and size, the
chances that any particular location will experience winds of 34 kt (tropical storm force),
50 kt, or 64 kt (hurricane force) from this tropical cyclone are presented in
tabular form for selected locations and forecast positions. This information is also presented in
graphical form for the 34 kt, 50 kt,
and 64 kt thresholds.
Note: A detailed definition of the NHC track forecast cone is also available.
Originally Posted at:
NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER and CENTRAL PACIFIC HURRICANE CENTER
At The NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
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California Power Bills Are Soaring
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
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California residents face the second-highest average electricity bills in the U.S., driven by investments in wildfire mitigation, grid upgrades, and renewable energy integration.
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The surge in electricity costs has left nearly 1 in 5 California households behind on their energy bills.
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California is transitioning to a new net billing tariff for residential solar and a flat monthly fee structure for electricity in an effort to make electrification more affordable.
Consumers in California have seen their electricity bills surge in recent years and double over the past decade as utilities are investing more in wildfire prevention and transmission lines to accommodate growing renewable energy output.
As these utilities invest billions of U.S. dollars to make the grid more resilient, they pass the higher spending on to consumers.
So California now has the second-highest average electricity bill in the United States, second only to Hawaii.
“Untenable” Surge
California is looking to rapidly shift away from fossil fuels and make its grid more resilient, but these efforts show the other side of the greening of the grid – power generation costs may be plunging, but transmission and distribution costs are rising, leading to higher spending from utilities.
These increased expenditures are passed on to consumers by the investor-owned utilities Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric. As a result, electricity bills in California have risen so much in recent years that in some places, the power bill exceeds the cost of rent, The Wall Street Journal reports in a featured article.
The surge in bills has been “untenable,” according to the consumer advocate’s office at California’s utilities regulator.
In its latest 2024 Q2 Electric Rates Report last month, the Public Advocates Office tracked residential electric rate changes across Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), and Southern California Edison (SCE) service territories through July 1, 2024.
The report found that over the last few years, California’s electric bills are generally rising due to higher electricity use from things such as air conditioning, and higher overall electricity prices.
Since January 2014, residential average rates for the PG&E service area have jumped by 110%, those of SCE have surged by 90%, and SDG&E rates have soared by 82%.
The primary statewide drivers of soaring rates have been investments in wildfire mitigation, transmission and distribution investments, and rooftop solar incentives or the so-called net energy metering, the Public Advocates Office said.
Overall, residential electricity rates have increased substantially since 2014, surpassing inflation, it noted.
It couldn’t be surprising then that nearly 1 in 5 households are behind on their energy bills, according to the office. A total of 18.4% of the customers of the three investor-owned utilities are in arrears in their energy bills.
Changes in Charging for Electricity
This year, California has changed the way utilities charge for electricity and is transitioning from net energy metering to net billing tariff for residential solar projects. These regulatory changes have hit residential solar installations and are set to change the way power bills are formed starting next year.
The move to the net billing tariff in California dragged down the total U.S. residential solar market, which saw in the second quarter of 2024 its lowest quarter since Q1 2022 at 1.3 GWdc, reflecting a 25% decline year-over-year and 18% quarter-over-quarter.
“While slowdowns are occurring nationwide, these declines were heavily influenced by California, where quarterly installations have shrunk for the last two quarters as NEM 2.0 projects are built out and the state transitions to the net billing tariff,” the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) said in its latest quarterly report.
In another significant change, California’s utilities will charge from next year or 2026 a flat monthly fee of up to $24.15 on all customers while reducing the charges imposed per kilowatt of electricity used.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) says that the new billing structure “lowers overall electricity bills on average for lower-income households and those living in regions most impacted by extreme weather events, while accelerating California’s clean energy transition by making electrification more affordable for all.”
The usage rate for electricity will be reduced by 5 to 7 cents per kilowatt-hour for all residential customers, which makes it more affordable for everyone to electrify homes and vehicles, regardless of income or location, because the price of charging an electric vehicle or running a heat pump is lower.
However, critics of the new billing structure have said it will hurt customers who live in small homes and have relatively small electricity use as the lower per-kWh rate would not offset the new flat fee.
It remains to be seen how the new billing structure will affect California customers and whether it will lead to the expected mass electrification of homes.
A total of 78% of Americans are concerned about their rising energy bills, an exclusive CNET Money survey has shown. Around 80% of U.S. adults in all regions, including the Northwest, Midwest, South, and West, said that their finances have been impacted by growing home energy costs, according to the survey.
California leads in U.S. solar and battery installations, but the cost of bringing that power generation to consumers has soared with the need to expand, upgrade, and protect the power grid.
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Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//
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We Charted the Plunge and Rebound in the Nikkei Versus Nomura and Citigroup; the Correlation Is Frightening
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:
Remember the Repo Crisis in the fall of 2019 when the Federal Reserve had to jump in with both feet and make billions of dollars in revolving emergency loans each weekday to the megabanks on Wall Street? And remember when Wall Street On Parade was the only media outlet that named the banks that got the money and graphed the largest borrowers when the Fed released the granular loan data two years later?
Well, guess what. Two of the financial firms that played a starring role in the repo crisis of 2019 appear to be part of the cast in the current trading debacle in Japan that’s spilling into global markets – if their share price performance is any indicator.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The graph above shows that the Japanese financial firm, Nomura, and the giant U.S. megabank, Citigroup, are trading in eerie correlation to the trading debacle in Japan. The graph below shows that Nomura was the largest borrower from the Fed in the 2019 repo crisis, borrowing a stunning $3.7 trillion in term-adjusted revolving loans, while Citigroup ranked fifth. (Citigroup ranked as the number one largest borrower of emergency loans from the Fed during the 2008 financial crisis, taking $2.5 trillion in revolving loans from December 2007 through July 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office.)
Much of the blame for the recent stock selloff has been characterized by the media as the unwinding of the “yen carry trade.” (Clearly, geo-political factors are also playing a role.) Providing false comfort to investors, Bloomberg News had a top headline early this morning that declared that “JPMorgan Says Three Quarters of Global Carry Trades Now Unwound.”
Unless JPMorgan Chase has an omnipotent crystal ball, it has zero chance of knowing what every global hedge fund is doing, what its megabank competitors are doing, what international asset managers, life insurers, and sovereign wealth funds are doing. Recall the spring of 2021 when the supposedly smartest trading houses on Wall Street didn’t know they were being conned by family office hedge fund Archegos until it blew up in their face, leaving some of the megabanks with billions in losses? (See Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.) Or how about the $6.2 billion in losses JPMorgan suffered in the London Whale scandal because it couldn’t keep tabs on what its derivative traders in London were doing? Or what Bernie Madoff was doing in his business account at JPMorgan Chase? Or what Jeffrey Epstein was doing in his multitude of related accounts at JPMorgan Chase as they facilitated an international sex-trafficking operation.
The problem with attempting to analyze the unwinding of the yen carry trade and who is getting caught up in a destructive cycle of selling securities to meet margin calls is that there are a vast number of ways that large traders could be losing money and an equally vast arena of related exposures. There could be related currency losses; related derivative losses; related stock portfolio losses and related shaky counterparties.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that traders had made wrong-way leveraged bets on the Japanese yen or U.S. Dollar or U.S. tech stocks – or all three. Attempting to unwind that tangled mess is unlikely to be resolved in a week’s time.
Read More @ WallStOnParade.com
Originally Posted at https://www.sgtreport.com
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The “unuseful” tautology
A tautology is a law of logic, part of a law of logic, or a definition. Some people do not think that tautologies tell us anything useful, pointing out that if someone inquires about the weather, to be told, “Either it’s raining or it’s not raining,” is not very helpful.
Ludwig von Mises disagrees with this view. He would readily acknowledge that there are useless tautologies, but he suggests in Human Action that there are also useful tautologies. (Whether he changed his mind on the status of the propositions of praxeology in works written after Human Action isn’t a topic that will be addressed in this article).
Mises says:
“Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments. All its implications are logically derived from the premises and were already contained in them. Hence, according to a popular objection, it cannot add anything to our knowledge.
All geometrical theorems are already implied in the axioms. The concept of a rectangular triangle already implies the theorem of Pythagoras. This theorem is a tautology, its deduction results in an analytic judgment. Nonetheless nobody would contend that geometry in general and the theorem of Pythagoras in particular do not enlarge our knowledge. Cognition from purely deductive reasoning is also creative and opens for our mind access to previously barred spheres. The significant task of aprioristic reasoning is on the one hand to bring into relief all that is implied in the categories, concepts, and premises and, on the other hand, to show what they do not imply. It is its vocation to render manifest and obvious what was hidden and unknown before.”
Mises proceeds to give an example of useful tautologies in praxeology. He says:
“In the concept of money all the theorems of monetary theory are already implied. The quantity theory does not add to our knowledge anything which is not virtually contained in the concept of money. It transforms, develops, and unfolds; it only analyzes and is therefore tautological like the theorem of Pythagoras in relation to the concept of the rectangular triangle. However, nobody would deny the cognitive value of the quantity theory. To a mind not enlightened by economic reasoning it remains unknown. A long line of abortive attempts to solve the problems concerned shows that it was certainly not easy to attain the present state of knowledge.
It is not a deficiency of the system of aprioristic science that it does not convey to us the full cognition of reality. Its concepts and theorems are mental tools opening the approach to a complete grasp of reality; they are, to be sure, not in themselves already the totality of factual knowledge about all things. Theory and the comprehension of living and changing reality are not in opposition to one another.”
What is the explanation for the fact that the tautologies of praxeology are useful and not useless? In a fascinating passage, which would have to be unpacked to understand its full meaning, Mises finds the answer in an affinity between action and thinking:
“The real thing which is the subject matter of praxeology, human action, stems from the same source as human reasoning. Action and reason are congeneric and homogeneous; they may even be called two different aspects of the same thing. That reason has the power to make clear through pure ratiocination the essential features of action is a consequence of the fact that action is an offshoot of reason. The theorems attained by correct praxeological reasoning are not only perfectly certain and incontestable, like the correct mathematical theorems. They refer, moreover with the full rigidity of their apodictic certainty and incontestability to the reality of action as it appears in life and history. Praxeology conveys exact and precise knowledge of real things.
The starting point of praxeology is not a choice of axioms and a decision about methods of procedure, but reflection about the essence of action. There is no action in which the praxeological categories do not appear fully and perfectly. There is no mode of action thinkable in which means and ends or costs and proceeds cannot be clearly distinguished and precisely separated. There is nothing which only approximately or incompletely fits the economic category of an exchange. There are only exchange and nonexchange; and with regard to any exchange all the general theorems concerning exchanges are valid in their full rigidity and with all their implications. There are no transitions from exchange to nonexchange or from direct exchange to indirect exchange. So experience can ever be had which would contradict these statements.”
In the space remaining, I’d like to elucidate the very interesting ideas Mises suggests about why the tautologies of praxeology are useful. I take him to be arguing in this way: if a proposition is really a tautology, then its truth can’t be questioned, though its usefulness might be. But maybe some of the propositions of praxeology aren’t really tautologies, contrary to appearance. Maybe they contain vague or fuzzy terms; if so, we can’t be sure that future testing of them won’t falsify them. But, Mises suggests, the terms in praxeology aren’t vague or fuzzy. Either they apply or they don’t, and this is immediately evident.
If you study Human Action, you will always find new insights that you missed. I have certainly found this to be true in my sixty years of reading the book.
Originally Posted at https://mises.org/
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