One Cannot Interpret Facts of Reality without Theories
2023-11-16
Many economists, including Milton Friedman, have claimed that reality is elusive and that one cannot know its true nature. Most mainstream economists also believe that data gives us the state of the economy. By inspecting numbers such as gross domestic product (GDP) or the consumer price index, only then can an economist accurately assess the state of economic conditions.
Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School of Economics have had a different view. According to Mises, the data is a historical display and, by itself, cannot provide the facts regarding the real world. To make sense of the data, one needs to have a theory beforehand that will allow one to interpret the data, and the theory must originate from something real that cannot be refuted. A theory resting on the foundation that
The More Complex the Society, The Less Government Control We Need
2023-11-15
Americans live in a complex world. That has made those who argue for ever-growing statism to often claim that “the more complex the society, the more government control we need.” One major reason is that this claim allows them to assert that even if liberty was appropriate in a long-past, simple “horse and buggy” age (as when America began as a country), it cannot possibly be so now.
When I hear such an assertion, the first thing I think of is whether the world we face today really is more complex for us than in the distant past. Regarding how much technology is in use, the world is clearly more complex. However, with regard to how many different skills and abilities someone in that distant past needed to survive, I am not so sure. A single person in the past might have to build their own