Teenage motherhood

Currently in Costa Rica there's a policy which looks for teenage mothers to remain in school.

By lowering the oportunity cost of teenage motherhood, this policy is encouraging teenage motherhood.

The more you help a teenage mother, the more you promote teenage motherhood, ceteris paribus.

Costa Rican policy on teenage mothers is a subsidy to irresponsibility.

Oil depletion never to happen

If people don't value oil, they don't extract it, so there's no depletion.

If people value it, they are going to try to buy it. The more the buy, the scarcer it turns. The scarcer it turns, the more expensive it is; so the less demanded it is and the slower it is extracted.

Extraction is going to arrive to a halt before complete depletion occurs.

Mises versus Rothbard on praxeology

From reading and comparing Mises's Human Action and Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, I conclude that you can learn better praxeology from Mises but more praxeology from Rothbard.

To me, these two books aren't substitute but complementary goods.

Problems are always for free

A situation which an agent wants to be "solved" is always a condition of his environment. Nobody is ever to incur (not even can he) in a cost for something which perceives as creating uneasiness.

Absolutely anything which is perceived as a problem, as something which provokes uneasiness, occurs in itself with no cost to the agent.

It's solution what can be costly.

Systematic failure of expectations

What is fundamentally relevant to answer in praxeology is not how agents form expectations but why expectations can fail systematically.

Since a systematic failure praxeologically analyzable can only occur with respect to the value of money and the interest, an expectations theory is only of avail in monetary theory and in theory of capital.

While a systematic failure of expectations on, say, choice of technology or industry be only viewed as a psychologic or otherwise statistic affair but not liable to praxeologic analysis, this failure is can't be a part of praxeology. By the way, historically people have learnt to avoid this kind of non praxeologic failure of expectations, so these failures tend to be more and more shortlived and innocuous.

The problem with systematic failure of expectations on money value and interest is precisely that the phenomenon is such that experience isn't enough guarantee of protection in the presence of governmental intervention.

Entrepreneur versus worker

The entrepreneur is, by definition, an ultimate decision taker. (1) Entrepreneurial human action is never based on obeying someone else's commands.

A human action undertaken by obeying other agent's command is not entrepreneurial but laboral. This is: labor is a human action commanded by someone else. So understood, labor can't be but social. Robinson Crusoe alone in his island can't be a worker. He'll remain an entrepreneur while not in the company of someone else's who gives him commands.

Human action only can be either entrepreneurial or laboral. The materialistic classification of goods of higher order among capital, labor, and land is an atavism of past political conflicts irrelevant to praxeology.

A command is understood as issuable only by agents and obeyable only by agents.

(1) Compare to Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, page 64.

Production and valuation as opposed processes

Lower order goods give value to higher order goods used to produce the first ones. Value goes from lower to higher order goods.

The process of production goes all the way back. Higher order goods serve to produce lower order goods. Production goes from higher to lower order goods.

The role of the entrepreneur is guessing a production process which back-matches a process of deriving value. This and only this is what the role of the entrepreneur is all about.

Governments are market institutions

Governments too are institutions which are constrained by this complicated system of incentives, competition, consumer sovereignty, and (summing up) spontaneous order which we usually call the market.

Governmental institution, in its productive activities, depends on the same praxeologic laws which apply to any other firm. A government which sells its products at more expensive prices than other governments or gives less quality in exchange for a given amount of money compared to others will receive less and less resources till it goes, sooner or later, to the bankruptcy; this is, to a situation of revolution in which governmental structure is fundamentally modified.

Governments open to competition (in the form of at least free migration in and out, access to information on the performance of foreign governments, and checks and balances) are more suitable to perform well and finally survive than those trying to impose barriers of entry to competition.

Although usually the epicenter of central planning of society, government is itself a sort of spontaneous ordering and, as such, it evolves in ways which can't be predictable but on the point that they will tend to survive if satisfy consumer sovereignty or disappear otherwise.

So, quoting Mises at length:
"A statesman can succeed only insofar as his plans are adjusted to the climate of opinion of his time, that is to the ideas that have got hold of his fellows' minds. He can become a leader only if he is prepared to guide people along the paths they want to walk and toward the goal they want to attain. A statesman who antagonizes public opinion is doomed to failure. No matter whether he is an autocrat or an officer of a democracy, the politician must give the people what they wish to get, very much as a businessman must supply the customers with the things they wish to acquire." Theory and History, page 187.

Cost-pushing and demand-pulling as monetary phenomena

So called cost-push inflation and demand-pull inflation don't have to be viewed as explanations contrary to the idea that inflation is a strictly monetary phenomenon. Increasing prices through cost-pushing and demand-pulling are indeed present in inflationary episodes and can validly be recognized from a monetary viewpoint. They have, however, to be viewed not only as manifestations or symptoms but as causes of inflation, via either money supply or money demand.

This is true even if you use the monetarist frame. For instance, remember of Friedman (1) setting down wages as a determinant of the velocity of money. According to this, a rise in wages (as in a policy of rising minimum wages) could not necessarily be reflected in unemployment but could rather put pressure on prices. In the extreme case, we would have:

(↑w)L+rK=
(↑v)M=
(↑P)Q

This is: we could have, following the necessary logic consequences of Friedman representation of v, a cost pushing on prices within the equation of exchange (or at least the Friedmanite version of it).

(1) Friedman, Milton. The Quantity Theory of Money−A Restatement. 1956 -University of Chicago Press, 1987-. Page 293. See particularly equation 13.

Gini as an envy coefficient

Gini coefficient of incomes can be interpreted as a measure of envy.

If it's high, people don't ask if there are some lazier and others more diligent. It's bad anyway because some earn more than others.

If it've risen, it doesn't matter if that occurred because some went farewell or the arriving of wealthy people. It' bad anyway because some earn more now than others.

In usual interpretations of the Gini coefficient, it doesn't matter poverty, it doesn't matter effort. The one thing it matters is inequality. And the more inequality there is the worse. What can be that but pure and blatant envy?

Le marché c'est moi

Some people complain about "market cruelty", "wild capitalism" and such terms.

As aesthetic judgements, this sort of terms can't be described as objetively wrong, but when using them we shouldn't forget that every time we buy a cheaper good leaving the producer of a more expensive one without a gain, every time we "betray" the firm we worked in by moving to another which pays us better, and in sum every single time we choose an option necessarily leaving others, we become part of that very cruelty and wilderness we are complaining of.

Coase Theorem of the use of resources re-expresed in terms of information

Even if you have the possession on some resource, it could be that the cost of using it be so valued by you that you prefer to leave it to other agent's control.

The more knowledge the other agent has on how to use the resource in order to give utility directly to you or to someone else which can pay something you value more than the resource itself, the more possible that you prefer to leave the resource to that other agent.

Professing to be wise, they shewed themselves fools

Holy Scriptures are full of parables and other metaphors because they have to reach people in very different places and times and levels of education.

It is intriguing how western modern man, self-considered the wisest among those of all lands and epochs, is particularly shortsighted to these metaphors.

Take for instance the Creation Story. In which everybody else has always seen a metaphor about the unique dignity of human life, the modern man looks for endergonic nuclear reactions during the first supernovas.

Of course, the modern man finds the Holy Scriptures far more overcome and therefore futile than anybody else; but, to be sure, this is not because of a privileged education but due to a complex of superiority rooted in a mere engineering specialization.

Permission to freely interpret the Holy Scriptures is but a step away from taking them into account whatsoever. Today, more than ever, we must avoid to read the Holy Scriptures without the aid of tradition and authority as that embodied in the Church. Modern man, raised to see Holy Scriptures with the eyes of a haughty, wise, amender instead of a humble, ignorant, pupil, needs more than anybody else of a loving but severe guide from Clergy.

Rules structure

A rules structure is a set of divisions of rights which formally has internal coherence.

Coercion

Coercion is not a human action against someone else's will but against some specific rules structure.

Confront this against the assertion: "Coercion occurs when one man's actions are made to serve another man's will, not for his own but for the other's purpuse" (1). If we follow this definition, I could say that anytime you undertake a service for another you are suffering coercion. If a service is being sold, it would surely be argued, then you are not suffering coercion since you are serving no another man's will but yours. But I would counter-argue: so, since due to the human action axiom you undertake any action but to serve your own will, there cannot exist coercion whatsoever.

That's why I like much more the definition of coercion "as the invasive use of physical violence or the threat thereof against someone else's person or (just) property" (2).

(1) Hayek, Friedrich. The Constitution of Liberty. 1960 -paperback edition, 1978-. Page 133.

(2) Rothbard, Murray. The Ethics of Liberty. 1982 -New York University Press, 1998-. Page 219.

Nostalgia for taboo

There are no many tabooes nowadays. This, more than a triumph for knowlegde, seems to me a loss for aesthetics, for economy of information, and ultimately for civilization.

Morals

Morals is information used to choose final ends.

What the heck is constructivism?

One of the terms which most has troubled me to really catch in is constructivism.

I have been trying to collect all the necessary conditions which define a particular phenomenon as an instance of constructivism.

By now, this is my collection:

1. Coercion. Constructivism in order to be relevant as a social phenomenon has to imply the violation of formerly defined rights of property. Merely defining in my mind an utopia is not constructivism. It is not even if I establish a campaing to persuade other people to voluntarily adopt my utopia. It is not constructivism when I plan a Victorian styled village inside my land and convince other people to buy a house there. I am simply entrepreneurly guessing a demand for Victorian styled villages.

And that's all. If the presence of intention or planning would be the characteristic feature of constructivism, every single human action would have to be deemed constructivist. So, it should be clear that intentionality per se doesn't necessarily implies constructivism.

Neither give I a damn for the praxeologic pertinence of identifying either animism (purposes of the things themselves) or artificialism (purposes of the makers of the things) as influences of specific human actions. These categories are maybe interesting for the thymologist but certainly not for the praxeologist.

So, I don't see any relevance whatsoever in the use of the term constructivism as something essetially distinct from coercion. To me, constructivism is a quite useless concept.

Aesthetics of sex under the sacrament of matrimony

By taking the sacrament of matrimony, the male also becomes a priest. It is the altar which is changed. The woman is the living altar of the husband. The female flesh although, at difference of stone, is physically corruptible, has a soul more adamant than diamond.

In the sexual intercourse under the holy sacrament of matrimony, mass celebration follows the carnal liturgy of love. By it, full communion between priest and altar is achieved. This solemn act, by being open to life, actualizes immortality. Sex becomes therefore into a means to love instead of a selfish end, a social instead of autistic human action.

Priest and altar are the exclusive congregation of this mass. In it, the priest offers all his life to his altar as his supreme worship to God. If Eucharist is performed by the priest, he drinks from the the most sacred chalice, which is in the altar.

What is conservatism to me

This post is about definition. Therefore, in the core it can't be judged as right or wrong from a scientific view point although it can be assessed from a logic perspective, especially in order to analyze its utility. Agreeing with its assertions only could ultimately achieve a convention but not, per se, to find the truth.

In his essay Why I am not a Conservative, Friedrich Hayek supplies reasons for not to regard himself as a conservative. This way, he was attempting to refute the perception which many had about him. Nevertheless, even after the publication of the essay in 1960, conservatives as conspicuous as Robert Nisbet continued considering him a conservative. There are reasons for this: Hayek was a declared foe of coercion; this is: of changing the distribution of rights. (As a matter of anecdote, I became a conservative thanks to Hayek.)

Conservatism of rights can collide with the fundamental classical liberal dogma of freedom only in a society allowing for legal slavery. In that unique scenario, the liberal would fight for changing the distribution of rights while a coherent conservative would defend the current distribution of rights.

What does a conservative conserve
There are several kinds of conservatism because there are several issues which may be desired to conserve. Two main kinds of conservatism are norms conservatism and moral conservatism.

A norms conservative pursues to conserve rights (or being redundant: property rights). Obviously, the existence of such rights has to have a refference to a concrete rules structure.

A moral conservative wants to conserve moral values: specific uses of freedom (i.e. property on oneself) and after all advices on how not to use freedom which transgression does not imply coercion (this is: violation of another's property). It is important to take into account, nevertheless, that to a norms conservative this conservation only can be done through moral means and not through coercion.

Conservatism as political ideology
Conservatism is an political ideology (an ideology which can be used by, say, a political party in order to guide its program) consisting in defending rights legitimately established in a concrete rules structure.

In the parliament, the conservative congressman radically defends the current rules structure and fiercely attacks bills looking for changing the rights frontiers but only fixing new frontiers where there were not. The conservative congressman typically proposes few laws and makes a lot of political control. In particular, this person never will propose a bill to re-distribute rights and will always analyze carefully bills which he presents to discard such re-distributions. Bills developed by him will pursue sanctioning and clarifying frontiers already draft.

In the executive branch, the conservative administration follows a tame obedience to the parliament. If it offers a bill will be exclusively to fine tune the State management.

The judiciary is called to be the most conservative of all political powers.