printNow for something completely different. A blogger has claimed it was outrageous of me to belittle Glenn Beck’s brain power without the attendant detailed textual exegesis and footnotes—just about. I had mistakenly surmised that among those with a modicum of intelligence certain things are manifestly true. Alas, the culture has deteriorated to such an extent that no a priori agreement exists about intelligence and its manifestations.
Since Beck, mercifully, doesn’t write (he will, he will; the dreaded book will appear in the fullness of time), there are vaults of TV-time evidence to prove he is not too bright. For anyone who possesses a smidgen of intelligence, who lives in America, has watched a lot of TV, and listens to the radio; let us establish a couple of a priori truths:
Beck is a bit of a simpleton. Rush Limbaugh isn’t the brightest. Hannity is not too smart. Nor was poor Anna Nicole Smith, RIP. If civilization means anything, some things in this world must simply be accepted as axiomatic. But standards mean squat, I know, I know!
And while we’re at it, the economic laws of supply and demand do not need empirical proof for their validation; they are a priori true. Or, as Gene Callahan puts it in this excellent essay, “they are logically prior to any empirical study of economic phenomena.”
It is also insightful to listen to the commercials that advertise these programs. The current commercial for the Glenn Beck program, which has been running for a month, is audio of a woman calling in to mention that she read a tabloid rumor that Martha Stewart was going to adopt some foreign kid as Madonna had done. Beck responds with some joke about how if anyone can get colors right, it is Martha Stewart. Get it? Colors? Interior decorating? Har har har. Duh.
Other radio hosts play ads that feature a stupid caller being made fun of for his stupidity, or the host reading a “stupid criminal” newspaper story to us, etc. “Tune in to my show, and listen to me make fun of people.” Great.
The laws of supply and demand: when the supply goes down, the price goes up, ceteris paribus in a free world.
Intelligence: the efficacy of the brain according to the most objective standard of efficacy, which is the brain’s ability to discover the universal metaphysical and moral truths.
The law of supply and demand is not axiomatic because a man could easily choose to sell his stuff at any price. Perhaps the rarity of the commodity doesn’t change his desire to sell it at a low price. Though he might make more money by increasing the price of his stuff, he might want to give it to a friend to return a favor. Nonetheless, the “law” is a good generalization.
[How do you think Callahan would respond?]
Intelligence, however, is axiomatic, and the axiomatic definition that I provide here.
In answer to your question Mrs. Mercer, I don’t know how Gene Callahan would respond to my comment on the law of supply and demand. In his essay, Callahan defends the legitimacy of a priori reasoning. He says nothing of which laws are a priori, and the issue of supply and demand is not raised. In fact, he was speaking of a priori view about human nature as the backbone of economics.
Callahan’s essay is excellent in that it asserts the necessity of a priori assumption in all endeavors. What Callahan doesn’t say, however, is that it is the job of philosophy to posit or negate such assumptions. Thus, the natural and social sciences rest on philosophy.
“standards mean squat..” You hit a very large nail on its all too obvious head. That statement covers a lot more ground in contemporary society than just TV talking heads.
I am an old man who’s been around the block a few times. I watched professional reporters from Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley to the insipid and pathetic Hannity. Now, this guy Beck, is an insult to every human being with a bit of decency. He exemplifies what we have become as people.
I blame it on the diversity-obsessed, multicultural idiocy that permeates our society. Because we are all supposed to be “equal”, we are all equally intelligent! The concept that true intelligence, like great beauty and great talent, is actually a limited resource, befuddles puny minds. I likened it to the the economic concept of scarcity.
But silly me, if people can’t understand supply and demand, why should I expect they can comprehend scarcity!
[And this is a woman who says she’s no intellectual!]
To Jeanne: Dynamite comments. I want to be just like you when I grow up.
[But you are, Hugs, you are. Now, now children, no need to compete.]
To Edward: An individual selling a rare commodity at a low price does not contradict the laws of supply and demand. This is the point of Callahan’s article and Mises’ aprioristic theory of human action. Observation and experience cannot trump a priori economic principles. Indeed, economists use a priori economic principles to make sense of their observations and experiences.
Although the laws of supply and demand are not a priori premises in and of themselves, they are laws about market dynamics deduced directly from Mises’ “ultimate given,” i.e., the a priori premise of human action (man behaves with purpose). Logic dictates that these deductions—if correctly drawn—must be true if Mises’ a priori premise is true. As you point out, philosophy has everything to say about whether or not there is truth in Mises’ a priori premise (which is rooted in Kantian epistemology).
[When you think about it, an individual selling a rare commodity at a lower than market price does not really contradict the laws of supply and demand that describe the general dynamics of price in a commodity exchange market. According to his theory of human action, Mises would say (as you have pointed out) that your hypothetical individual acted rationally, i.e., purposefully. His purpose was to exchange the rare commodity for some satisfaction he valued even more than a higher price.]
Mises explains his meaning of an a priori truth as follows:
“But the problem of the a priori is of a different character. It does not deal with the problem of how consciousness and reason have emerged. It refers to the essential and necessary character of the logical structure of the human mind.
“The fundamental logical relations are not subject to proof or disproof. Every attempt to prove them must presuppose their validity. It is impossible to explain them to a being who would not possess them on his own account. Efforts to define them according to the rules of definition must fail. They are primary propositions antecedent to any nominal or real definition. They are ultimate unanalyzable categories. The human mind is utterly incapable of imagining logical categories at variance with them. No matter how they may appear to superhuman beings, they are for man inescapable and absolutely necessary. They are the indispensable prerequisite of perception, apperception, and experience.”
For an exhaustive explanation of the epistemological basis of Mises’ theory of human action, see his “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science.” It is available at no charge on-line at the Mises Institute [http://www.mises.org/books/ufofes/]
Thanks, Mr. Schaeffer, for your insightful comments. Incidentally, before I read your comment, it crossed my mind that I had been sloppy in my characterization of the law of supply and demand. I say that the law is if the supply goes down, the price goes up. Actually, the law is if the supply goes down, the DEMAND goes up. It is IN RECOGNITION of this law that the price would go up, because the businessman would assume that the demand has risen, and that people are thus willing to pay more for the commodity. Thus, there is a correlation between demand and price, which is why there can be confusion there.
Again, the law of supply and demand is not a priori. It is simply a good generalization. If the supply of a commodity goes down, then the demand goes up only if a) consumers are aware of the decreased supply, and b) the commodity is ESSENTIAL. For ex., people need water. If they know that the supply of water is limited, they are willing to pay more for it because people can not live without water. However, the same can not be said for non-essentials like fancy sunglasses. If the manager of a store tells me that there is only one pair of a certain kind of sunglasses priced at $200, that isn’t going to change my demand for the commodity because I’m not willing to pay $200 for a pair of sunglasses.
As for your comment on Mises’ view of a priori truths, I disagree with it. He is basically saying that logic can not be disputed. That’s true. But logic alone does not justify libertarian economics. Nothing that Mises wrote totally succeeds in justifying the libertarian political philosophy. You need real philosophy – right down to an explanation of the nature of the universe – in order to do that; not some passing referrence to an “a priori” profit motive.
Edward,
We disagree on the efficacy of the law of supply and demand. You think this economic law is a “good generalization.” I think this law is immutable, applying at all times and in all situations. I think of it this way: A market must be comprised of two or more individual traders. Each trader behaves purposefully, i.e., each, as Murray Rothbard writes, attempts “to exchange a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one,” each has his own specific wants and means available for obtaining them.
However, in the real world time, knowledge and resources are limited. Therefore, each trader must prioritize his list of wants and list of means according to his own personal value scale. Each may rank water higher on his want list than designer sunglasses, but each values differently and each must be willing to part with items of marginal value on his means list in exchange for items of marginal value on another’s means list. Designer sunglasses may rank last on your value list of wants, but substantially higher on the want list of another. Water may rank highly on your wants list, but lower on some other’s means list (someone who may own a surfeit of water, for instance).
The point is each individual trader enters the marketplace with their own personal lists of marginally valuable wants and means ranked in descending order. This is the economic law of supply and demand (marginal utility) that ALWAYS applies and must always apply so long as man’s knowledge, time and resources are limited. These individual priority lists of wants and means intersect and interplay in the marketplace to form the market supply and demand curves of which we speak.
By the way, you are correct that “logic alone does not justify libertarian economics.” Mises’ economics were always value-neutral politically. However, he did write a book advocating the classical liberal political philosophy. Called “Liberalism” it is also available at no charge from the Mises Institute. [http://www.mises.org/liberal.asp]
Mr. Shaeffer, again thanks for the input. I wasn’t aware that the law of supply and demand made a provision for a) the consumer’s knowledge of supply, and b) the fact that supply could be a totally irrelevant factor in the presence of inadequate demand. That defies the simple language of “supply is inversely proportional to demand.” But if that’s what’s implied in the law, then you are correct in saying that it is immutable.
Yes, Mises – and all other free market economists – have done a woefully inadequate job explaining the metaphysical and moral basis for capitalism. The beauty of value-neutral libertarianism is that it’s the easy road. But the fact of the matter is that the greatest economic policy that you can have is not that of liberty. The greatest economic policy is that of philosophical enlightenment, and for liberty to merely be a byproduct of that enlightenment. I am much more conerned with the fact that I am surrounded by fools than I am with the fact that I live under a de facto dictatorship, for the de facto dictatorship is merely a symptom of the disease.
Man… I realized just how much I miss Mises’ writings. He was quite brilliant, and managed to go so deep with HUMAN ACTION that perhaps it will be still many more years before scholars finish learning all they can from it.
Of course, if they stop reading ‘It Takes a Village’. [Or, as I say, “It Takes a Village Idiot”]
Bravo Edward. You point out the shortcomings of Mises’ economic “theory” succinctly.
And Alex, “it takes a village” is most likely good reading (I haven’t read it) if it is true to its title. There are many applicable synonyms for the term village. In this interpretation village = family. It also means infrastructure. And as with most human derived “laws” there are exceptions to the generalizations. I welcome any challenge to this premise.