 While i appreciate your attempt to help clarify matters for me, i regret to inform you that the mark was missed. Not only did you miss dealing with perhaps the most salient objection that i raised (to say nothing of others) with those that you did attempt to explain, you only served to illustrate for me that you do not see the flaws in your own reasoning.
Let me remind you of what you did not answer. The very meaning of the term a priori indicates that the truth of the statement is so obviously true that no sane person would doubt it. It is something so easy to understand that it can be seen to be true without need to put it to the test. As a simple example, we know without going out to examine every triangle that we can find that they all have 3 sides. We know it to be true because that is our definition of the word. And so i will repeat for you that given that Austrianism is almost universally rejected (as was admitted in the article you had me read) by definition it cannot therefore be based on a priori knowledge. It is inescapable logic. If Austrianism is in fact so obviously true that only the real dullards would need to be told why that is so and once shown, even they would get it, why then the almost universal rejection? Indeed, the very notion that the vast majority of people would disagree with something that is the product of a priori knowledge is a complete contradiction in terms. It is akin to the claim that all blondes are bald when we know that baldness means to be without hair of any colour. When the vast majority of folks disagree with you on this matter--though not necessarily on this page-- all claim to a priori knowledge is forfeited if for no other reason than continuing to make use of the term changes its meaning from that which is self-evident to that which is so obscure that hardly anybody agrees.
Before going on, let me say that i find it sad that von Mises found it necessary to make this claim. He had some very keen insights into how economies work and there is a good deal of insight to be gained in its study. But i fear that his bombastic claim has turned off many that might otherwise have profited from the exposure. And that is sad.
The first of my points that you attempted to address, if i understood you well, actually struck me as advertisements for central banking and quantatative easing to infinity. i understood you to mean that prices should have plummeted some 20 years ago. i took you to have meant that it was not seen as being a permissable outcome as opposed to one that would be impossible; for as all agree, in free markets there are not only those who never lose, there is also a weekly list of failed U.S. banks. And so the Japanese embarked upon their quest to print their way out of the certain misery they would have otherwise faced. Your explanation of this phenomenon of stable prices over a 20 year period of monetary inflation by the logic that prices would have been lower if not for all the central bank interference is both spot on and just the advertisement Bernanke can use when he rolls out the next round of QE to infinity and beyond. He can tell his detractors how the average Japanese person has been able to live in a world of relative price stability for the past 2 decades and with the yen having appreciated some 62% against the dollar during that time, Japanese citizens now enjoy cheaper imports and they can travel abroad more frequently. He could then ask his American audience if they think they have done as well as the Japanese have over the past 2 decades. It would be strictly for rhetorical purposes of course and that would become obvious with his next words. And those would be his explanation for this national disgrace: the Japanese have had a 16 year advantage over us and so that is why we must double our efforts. "It worked for the Japanese" will become the mantra and some clever chap will put those iconic words on tee shirts, mugs, fridge magnets, baseball caps and billboards.
Sorry about that. i got a bit carried away there, though i do trust that you understood the underlying point i was making. By your own admission, central banking, using one of the most odious tools at its disposal, has shown itself capable of averting imminent disaster in the economy. Now i hear you without your need to say that a central bank may be able to postpone the inevitable, but its arrival has already been determined by actions already taken. Not only do i hear you, but i see that 2 paragraphs down in you latest response, you have provided me with my answer to your yes but. "...human action is very difficult to predict timingwise." How very true that be. As you claimed in a previous post, humans have free will. And so we are forced to use statistical analysis when making predictions and so no certain outcome is assured for an individual event. Be that as it may, the real problem with that whole line of reasoning is that economics is a profoundly human activity that affects the life of everyone not emulating Diogenes, who went off to live in a barrel as a hermit. As such it ought to tell us with as much detail as possible what is coming down the pipe. A thing that claims to know with certainty that this or that is going to happen, yet cannot say with specificity when it will happen because other things keep getting in the way and it really is not known what other future events might also forestall the inevitable, what we are left with is something other than science with its immutable laws. Saying B will follow A without beginning to even place the event temporally is very much like the claim that Jesus will return to do whatever it is he is supposed to do, only unlike the Mayans, who at least had the decency to provide us with a date to determine the validity of their claim, Christians were given no such time frame. Will Jesus return? Will Japan go through a catastrophic hyperinflationary period? Could be. But at what point does the absence of proof start to become a problem?
Let me put it to you this way: Euclid never had to tell anyone that if they would just be more patient, the triangle they were observing would eventually have internal angles that totalled 180 degrees; explaining that the triangle had been unduly influenced by some outside force. That which cannot be demonstrated is at very best theory, at worst, utter malarky. Just having to wait until something happens can be utterly disasterous when it comes to our economic well being when we are trapped in the here and now, having to act. Being unable to say when a thing will happen leaves us without any inkling as to how we should time our own decisions. Coming up with a system that cannot be disproved because the system states that an absence of proof for it is not proof that it is wrong and there is no example where it can be shown to be wrong if for no other reason than insufficient time has passed to demonstrate its universal truth; well, that is sheer genius. But it sure is not science!
You then went on to rebuke me for having not properly attributed booms and busts as phenomena of fractional reserve banking. Were there not booms and busts in ancient Rome, centuries before fractional reserve banking? Methinks there were.
In your next paragraph you claim that just because you cannot profit from a priori reasoning does not make it false. That may be so, but you would expect that in a field such as economics, that ought to be at least part of the objective.
As for your penultimate paragraph, many non-Austrians also bought precious metals and have continued to do so on the dips. What gives the best guidance is understanding capital flows. When that is observed, you have a pretty good chance of being on the right side of where the market is going, being able to adjust your position in real time as the money gets moved around.
If responding, kindly address the definition paradox or do not bother.
 Commented 4261 days ago |
| Beginning of the headline :I.
The saying that things may work nicely in theory, but do not necessarily work in practice is well known.[1] It is typically meant to disparage the importance of theory, suggesting it would be too far removed from practical matters to help in solving the issue at hand.
The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in his 1793 essay "On the Popular Judgment: 'This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice,'" responded to such criticism; in fact, he responded with his essay to criticism leveled against his ethical theory by the philosopher ChristianGarve (1742–1798)... Read More |
