Szkoła Austriacka a matematyka w ekonomii

Jedną z najważniejszych przewag konkurencyjnych Austriackiej Szkoły Ekonomii jest to, że posiada ona solidne podstawy filozoficzne (wywodzące się z klasycznej tradycji dedukcyjnej, będącej esencją dociekań naukowych), a tylko posiadając te podstawy można uniknąć z jednej strony zabobonu scjentyzmu, a z drugiej strony zabobonu intuicjonizmu.

Na bazie tych podstaw ASE podaje solidne argumenty na temat tego, gdzie matematyka znajduje zastosowanie - np. w rachunkowości, historii gospodarczej (statystyce), ubezpieczeniach od zjawisk podlegających deterministycznej czy probabilistycznej regularności, itp. - a gdzie nie znajduje - np. w większości teorii ekonomii (choć i tam może pełnić pomocniczą funkcję ilustracyjną, tak jak np. w niedawnym artykule Hulsmanna o strukturze produkcji).

Teorie zbudowane przez ASE mają też oczywiście swoje empiryczne ilustracje (nie "konfirmacje"), tak jak ma je każda logicznie spójna teoria wychodząca od prawdziwych przesłanek. Guru główonurtowej matematycznej ekwilibrystyki, Samuelsonowi, do późnych lat 80-tych wychodziło z jego modeli, że Związek Sowiecki wyprzedza Amerykę (tak jak wcześniej podobnie wychodziło takim hołubionym w profesji praktykantom matematyki w ekonomii, jak Taylor, Lange czy Lerner), podczas gdy Mises 80 lat wcześniej udowodnił na bazie czysto werbalnej, logicznej dedukcji, że nie może istnieć nic takiego jak racjonalnie alokująca zasoby gospodarka centralnie sterowana, a jego pochodzące z tamtego czasu opisy tysięcy fabryk wytwarzających leżące potem odłogiem półprodukty brzmią niemal profetycznie.

Podobnie setki sowicie opłacanych ekonometryków z ich setkami pieczołowicie konstruowanych modeli podsuwały w 2005 roku Bernankemu raporty, z których wyczytywał on potem publicznie, że "fundamenty gospodarcze są silne" i "nie ma ryzyka recesji", podczas gdy Austriacy, korzystający z opracowanej ponad 90 lat wcześniej czysto dedukcyjnej i niematematycznej teorii cykli koniunkturalnych, wiedzieli, że są one nadzwyczaj słabe i że recesja jest nieunikniona.

Kompilacje stosownych cytatów można znaleźć tutaj i tutaj.

I wreszcie - o skuteczności przedsiębiorcy na rynku nie decyduje zaplecze matematyczne, tylko - jak to opisują Austriacy - nieformalizowalna i nawet niewerbalizowalna umiejętność przewidywania niepewnej przyszłości, intelektualna empatia umożliwiająca danej osobie rozumienie potrzeb konsumentów i ich wydajne, często innowacyjne zaspokajanie, wiedza tymologiczna, verstehen - coś, co posiadał Carnegie, Walton czy Jobs, a nie Gauss, Euler czy Pitagoras.

Podsumowując, nie widzę powodów, żeby nie przyjąć wersji, zgodnie z którą tzw. "ekonomiści matematyczni" to osoby, które wiedzą, że nie mają wystarczającej inteligencji numerycznej, żeby zostać matematykami czy astrofizykami, ani też wystarczającej inteligencji technicznej, żeby zostać przyrodnikami, a mimo to w ramach wrodzonej większości domniemanych "intelektualistów" pychy próbują epatować "śmiertelników" swoją matematyczną kabałą, choć logicznych argumentów na rzecz owocności takiego epatowania nie bardzo widać.

On Social Rights: or, a Fiction Serving a Fiction

The adherents of collectivized ethics claim that "social rights" trump individual rights. Hence, on pain of logical inconsistency, they have to admit that the "social system" is supposed to serve "society", not any particular individual. This conclusion, when read without committing the fallacy of conceptual realism, says that a fiction should serve another fiction. No wonder that the benefits of shaping interhuman relations along these lines are wholly fictitious as well.

The Structure of American Financial Statism

Almost all of the highest ranking regional US central bankers (i.e., political commissars in charge of central planning of interest rates and money supply) are at the same time chief executives of various commercial banks. In other words, the shape of the modern banking industry is that of macroeconomic communism combined with corporate favouritism - the very antithesis of laissez-faire capitalism. Thus, whoever claims that the recent financial crisis (or, for that matter, any financial crisis of the last 100 years) has anything even remotely to do with laissez-faire capitalism is either a perfect victim of statist propaganda or a cynical beneficiary of the status quo. Tertium non datur.

A Brief Comment on Ron Paul vs Paul Krugman

Here is a link to the discussion. My overall impression is that Ron Paul did very well, much better than his opponent (and here I'm talking just about style, not substance). While he could have talked about the capital structure, intertemporal coordination of production, and malinvestments, he talked instead about the destruction of private American savings and the Fed as an inexhaustible source of funds for political spending (especially welfare and warfare spending). Thus, he addressed genuine concerns of a lay audience while remaining intelligible to it. Krugman, on the other hand, produced nothing except for unsubstantiated statist platitudes.

As for my few bits of friendly criticism, if I were in Ron Paul's place and had his quickness of mind, I would not bring Friedman into the debate at all, but if I happened to mention him, I would not shirk from agreeing that he was indeed a "leftist" (or, to use a much more meaningful word, a statist) on monetary issues. I would use this as an opportunity to introduce von Mises as an example of a full-blooded monetary free-marketeer, and demonstrate that the pop-intellectual discourse is chock full of elementary semantic confusions.

I would also immediately counter any mention of "fiscal stimulus" with a few concise but pithy remarks concerning the fact that siphoning funds from the free market, i.e., that sector of social relations which is the sum total of mutually beneficial interpersonal transactions, guided by price signals and disciplined by the threat of incurring losses, and transferring them to the state apparatus and its clientele, i.e., that sector of social relations which is insulated from the profit and loss system and beneficial only to the transferees, can only lead to plunging the economy further into the quagmire of parasitic attitudes, calculational chaos, and prolonged investment uncertainty. Of course, if I were Ron Paul, I could actually make that concise and pithy.

Finally, I'm confident that Krugman will try to use this very short exchange of words with Dr. Paul as a pretext for not debating any other Austrian economist in the future (including especially Bob Murphy). For all his erudition and competence, I doubt that Ron Paul cares to know all the ins and outs of contemporary academic economic jargon, which makes Murphy, an academically trained "dismal scientist", an even more dangerous debate opponent for Krugman, capable of effectively preventing the latter from being able to hide behind the veil of sophistical econobabble. This, of course, is not to say that Ron Paul's performance in this debate was any less formidable. All in all, I believe that this brief exchange provided yet another illustration that the Austrians have the Keynesians on the run, and the fact that they seem to be getting more and more opportunities to demonstrate this is a hopeful sign.

Global Macroeconomic Communism is Here

We live under global macroeconomic communism. One of the most important market prices, the one responsible for the intertemporal coordination of production - that is, the interest rate - is not determined by the rate of social time preference (dependent on the totality of individual decisions of market participants regarding how much of their income to spend and how much to save), but by the edicts of the monetary central planning bureaus known as central banks. Likewise for the magnitude of money supply.

It cannot be overstressed that this type of communism is infinitely more insidious, and hence, in an important sense, more dangerous, than the crude type known from the Soviet Union and its satellites. The former assumed all the external appearances of a market economy - it is like a wolf in sheep's clothing or like a ripe, beautiful apple with a drop of deadly poison inside, whereas the latter looked like a plain wolf or like a rotten apple all along.

Hence, playing on people's envy and ignorance, its commissars (the central bankers and their cronies) can easily blame global economic distortions, caused by their manipulations of interest rates and the money supply, on "deregulation", "capitalism", "greed", or any other hackneyed bogeyman in the world, thus receiving even more political power from the hands of the befuddled masses and triggering a vicious circle of ever wider politicalization and socialization of the economy.

Thus, always be ready to educate those around you about the reality behind the veil and the ways to make the veil fall.

A Short Note on the Illusion of Progress

Humankind continues to be as superstitious as it has always been. Religiously inspired superstition gave way to scientifically inspired superstition. One irrational doctrine - uncritical fideism - gave way to another irrational doctrine - technocratic scientism. The belief in the divine right of kings was replaced by the belief in the legitimate paternalism of bureaucratic "experts".

In fact, things got worse on this front - the modern superstition is even more irrational than the old one. One can treat seriously the argument that you owe obedience to the supreme being who endowed you with free will and reason, since you literally owe that being your status as a free agent. By the same token, it is possible to treat seriously the claim that you owe obedience to the direct representatives of such a being. But how can one treat seriously the claim that some human beings owe their status of free agents, and thus obedience, to other human beings, none of which enjoys any special divine imprimatur?

In any event, the common denominator of old and new superstitions is clear - it is statism, the belief in the salutary influence of centralized violence, aggression and coercion. If humankind is ever to grow into intellectual and moral maturity, it has to disabuse itself of this belief first and foremost.

The State Cannot Guarantee Anything

Contrary to what even some libertarian theorists seem to believe, there is no tradeoff between liberty and security, or between liberty and "welfare". Contrary to a premise usually taken for granted, the state cannot "guarantee" anything. In fact, it is in a much worse position to guarantee anything than a charitable institution or a business enterprise is. This is simply because the latter two have a reliable source of income, where by "reliable" I mean a source based on consensual support, enthusiasm and respect for the services they offer. In other words, as long as they continue to provide their patrons with the services of a sufficient quality, they can expect their income to remain steady or even grow.

The monopolistic apparatus of violence, aggression and coercion, on the other hand, cannot boast of having any such reliable source. Its situation is ever precarious in this respect - it is ever threatened by the possibility of its milking cows "voting with their feet", moving into the grey market, or ceasing entrepreneurial activity altogether. At the same time, it keeps growing the number of welfare dependants - those who decided to bet their lives on the belief that the state possesses a magical cornucopia capable of supporting them from womb to tomb.

In sum, unlike that of a charitable institution or a business enterprise, the state's relationship with its source of income is not based on mutual respect, appreciation and gratitude, but on resentment, constant threats of violence and the prospect of ever-growing parasitism. This, of course, leads to ever less resources being at its disposal and ever more entitlement claims being made on them. Far from being able to guarantee anything, in the long run such an entity is bound to be dead, to quote a most profoundly dead peddler of the cornucopian story.

Let us never ever believe that with sufficient determination and coercive power, one can eliminate the constraints of scarcity. That way lies the upside-down world of sophistical destruction.