Safe sex

The condom is useful to protect just the body.

If you want to protect the soul too, use the sacrament of matrimony instead.

Be humble

In the field of praxeology, a suspicion of having arrived to a discovery is a strong symptom of insufficient reading rather than of outstanding genius.

Best wishes

I don't dream of a Castro dead, but of a Castro conservative.

Maybe not so different

"In addition to the law of marginal utility, there is another factor influencing the rankings of each individual's value scale. It is obvious that the amount that Johnson will supply at any price is limited by the stock of goods that he has available." Rothbard, Murray. Man, Economy, and State. Page 126.

"Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it. If a commodity were in no way useful -in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification- it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labor might be necessary to procure it." Ricardo, David. Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. 1817 -third edition, 1817-. Chapter I, section 1, paragraph 2. Page 17-18.

What is rescuable in the labor theory of value

Every purposeful action aims to improve the value of goods; this is, to bring them closer to the achievement of ultimate ends.

This is true since, given an ultimate end, a good of lower order is more valued than one of a higher order.

Falsifiability in the pure logic of choice

The fundamental axiom of purposeful action isn't itself fasifiable, but every single other axiom in order to unfold a theory based on the scientific method of pure logic of choice (subsidiary axioms) has to be falsified in order to test the validity of a theory derived from such axiom. (1)

(1) Confront against Friedman's The Methodology of Positive Economics. Originally in: Essays in Positive Economics. The University of Chicago Press, 1953.

Believing in the pure logic of choice

An assumption needed to apply the pure logic of choice to others is that they undertake purposeful behavior. In principle, it could be conceivable that other people who externally seem to act purposefully, simply act by instinct or in a mechanical way or randomly.

The assumption can not be falsified since the hypothesis that mind is the ultimate first praxeologically relevant cause of decision is not itself external or material.

It has to be accepted that, in this respect, the pure logic of choice with respect to others lays on an act of faith.

It has to be taken into account, that the praxeologist not only believes, as Milton Friedman's instrumentalism would be fully pleased to require, that agents behave as if they would have a purpuse, but believes that they actually behave in such a way.

Minimum wages

Minimum wages are of those blunt symptoms of general ignorance about economic laws. The existence of minimum wages isn't of benefit to anyone but to their professional defenders (ILO's advisors and similar apparatchiki).

Exchange value

Exchange value on a right, the importance of what I can get by handing over the property on such a right, is the one social link which can keep peace among selfish people. (The only other social link is love: the disposition to undertake human actions just for the sake of contributing to the happiness of the other.)

Exchange value can be improved by others making better offers. This is how the efforts by others to improve their productivity benefits me.

On the definition of good

A good can only be caracterized as such ex post facto. Before a would-be good being effectively bought (autistically or interpersonally exchanged for a price), there's no praxeologic way of distinguishing it from a general condition of welfare.

Interpersonal versus autistic exchange

The distinction between interpersonal and autistic exchange is engineerial, not praxeologic.

What and what is not production

Is there a praxeologic relevance in differentiating between changing what's external to the mind in order to accommodate it to a given scale of values and changing the scale itself in order to accommodate it to a given "external-to-the-mind"?

Yes, there is. A change in the value scale, since is internal to the mind, has no human action manifestation whatsoever.

A change in the outmind can occur by way of either human action or not. Every change in the outmind which brings it closer to the (subjetive) satisfaction of wants is production.

Every successful (in terms of effective satisfaction of wants) human action is at once human action and production. Unsuccessful human action is human action but not production. External changes turning into satisfaction of wants occurred without the concourse of human action are production but not human action.

Every human action aims at production. So, is there a relevant role for the concept of consumption in praxeology? Nope. Consumption is a thymologic, not a praxeologic, concept. There where production ends and consumption begins is the exact frontier between the realms of praxeology and thymology.

Production without human action is production at no cost. (1)

(1) Confront against Israel Kirzner's An Essay on Capital. 1966 -Augustus M. Kelly, Publishers-. Page 5: "Any program of production [...] involves costs." However, here the word program must be interpreted as referring to (by definition deliberate) human action exclusively; this is, excluding "non-human-action production". This interpretation is backed by the sentence in Kirzner next to the previously quoted: "As seen by the economist the cost to [the agent] of the production program that he adopts, consists in the opportunities that he has rejected in order to exploit the program that he has adopted."

Worker and employer: two strong parties

Frequently, the relation between worker and employer is seen as that of a weak party (the worker, of course) facing a strong one (the abusive employer).

In many cases, this is a very misleading picture. Indeed, a more accurate way of describing the relative power of these parties is that of a strong one (the employer) facing an as well strong one (the worker who can dismiss his employer as a new opportunity appears).

The best way of protecting an employer is allowing free competition among firms, a very important part of which is competition for employees.

When the worker is devoid of his power by erecting barriers to entry of competition, then you do have a weak party facing a strong one. This way, abuse turns unavoidable. Passing legislation to supposedly protect the artificially weakened party, too often results in no more than smuggling abuse.

The first battlefront for unions truly moved by the interest of the worker should be tearing down barriers to entry of competition. Owners of firms privileged by protectionism can well lose a substantial portion of profits due to this, but industrious workers have nothing to lose but their chains.

And bear in mind that to expect from an employer unleashed from competition to remain kind to the worker is naivety, pure and huge.

That's an easy one!

The weekly publication The Economist asks what went wrong with economics.

Regrettable though it is, the answer sets so simple: scorning praxeology.

Money proper versus money representatives

There's a distinction praxeologically very relevant to do: money proper and money representatives.

The distinctive feature of money proper, vis-à-vis a money representative, is that money proper absolutely cancels a debt.

The distinctive feature of a money representative, vis-à-vis money proper, is that a money representative serves merely as a sort of IOU. It doesn't matter whether or not the creditor sometime decides to claim debt cancellation. It doesn't matter if the debt is against a specific debtor or against whoever who happens to fulfill certain more or less predetermined requirements. What matters is that a money representative, unlike money proper, doesn't cancel a debt.

This classification doesn't exactly follows Mises's Appendix B to his outstanding The Theory of Money and Credit. I consider Mises's categories as innecesarily tainted by historic development rather than praxeologic relevance.

The rather materialistic distinction between commodity monies and fiat monies is a nothing but a rough approximation to the important distinction pointed out above.

Distinction between money proper and money representatives belongs to the (praxeologic) pure theory of posesion. As such, the institution of legal property plays a major role. This could result in problems to define concrete assets. For instance, I'm not pretty sure if the Costa Rican colones which I carry in my pocket are no liability to anyone or if I could go to court to demand that the Central Bank of Costa Rica give me something in exchange for colones. Currently, as the Central Bank is commited to free sale of dollars (receiving exclusively colones), my colones could somehow be seen as money representatives of dollars proper.

This sheds light on other important aspect of money representation. Effective substitutability requires a reasonable expectation of the price of the credit instrument (money representative) in exchange for the asset which cancels the debt (or alternatively for another money representative, not homogeneous with the original).

As money qua money (this is: without taking into account its use value, but exclussively its exchange value) requires the expectation of it being accepted in an eventual future exchange, it could be argued that money qua money is a representative of something else, that money money qua money is (praxeologically though not legally) nothing but a representative! Ironic as it sounds, this is precisely the core of Macleod's credit-theory of money. (1)

(1) On the difference between use value and exchange value, see Menger's Principles of Economics, chapter VI.

1949

A rich intellectual tradition about to be forgotten.

A lot of wise men compelled to abandon their motherland forever.

Many mocking the now foreigners.

Many treating them as radicals.

Some of the wise men explicitly choosing to deny the old tradition.

Some furtively moving to other fields of research.

A man with the firm conviction of preserving what nobody cares of anymore.

It seems fiction but it's the real-life story of how Human Action was written allowing this way new generations the joy and honor of getting linked to the Austrian School of Economics.

Green policy

A way of spurring tree planting is spending a lot of paper. This will rise tree demand, encouraging suppliers to offer more trees.

Illegal drugs

The one case I have heard of to keep the illegal status of some drugs is the damage on addicts.

However, so far I have never seen junkies in a rally defending the current illegal status of some drugs or fighting for further prohibition on others, say, alcohol or tobacco.

Military lesson from Central America

If you don't have an army you'll never need it. (Costa Rica, Panama)

If you have an army, you will eventually find a use for it. (Currently, Honduras)

A recondite source of money supply

Not only coin minters or check issuers are money suppliers. Every single agent who is in disposition to sell the money he owns adds to the supply of money.