Peter Calcagno, Joshua Hall, and Robert Lawson have written up the results of an empirical test concerning Mises’s vs. Rand’s value theory, by looking at housing patterns in Charleston, South Carolina. Here is the paper.
I would post this without comment to see what happens but the authors made me promise to point out that it is not serious. Indeed, sometimes it is hard to tell!
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If I am reading the regression output table correctly, neither the Mises nor Galt coefficients are statistically significant.
It’s just really strange that anyone would consider Rand and Mises opposites in any conceiveable way. Their ideas are in perfect harmony. Most of what Rand wrote about appears in Human Action as off-hand comments from Mises.
that’s a nice neoclassical paper, isn’t it? the regression data is certainly of use for a benevolent central planner – he can use zoning laws etc. to maximize social welfare.
for a comparison of mises and rand, have a look at youkins: “philosophers of capitalism” (http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/other/philcap.html).
@Ryan
how could you possibly come to that conclusion? There may be some commonalities in the detail, granted, but Rand’s objectivism (Not to mention the bizarre personality cult grew around her, inflating her ego to monstrous proportions) is light years away from Mises worldview.
Of signal importance to me is that whereas Mises dealt with all human action without discrimination ( Or judgment come to that) , and explicitly recognised that the so-called factors of production are reflected in various combinations through each human’s actions, Rand classified people them into various economic constituencies ( Just like Marx did). And having thus sorted people into classes, she made no secret of regarding all of them , save the capitalist, as sub-human, worthy only of contempt. She reserved her most acute venom for consumers, whereas Mises rightly placed consumers and their preferences at the very top of the economic food chain.
Big difference.
not to mention that mises lacked the hubris to turn his very indepth logic into fiction. rand’s ‘atlas shrugged’ i tried, i REALLY tried to read it, the thing read like the communist manifesto. it wasn’t even as entertaining as guy debord’s the society of the spectacle.
polemic is polemic is polemic. mises writings are intensely considered, comprehensive and enjoyably discursive. my only whinge about mises is his use of a lot of uncommon nomenclature, a lot of it after looking up dictionaries i learn is just shorthand for more common, longer phrases, such as ‘ceteris paribus’ ‘all else being equal’… and so on. but that’s why although i have given human action to my sister and her fiance, and to my intelligent friends, i wouldn’t suggest it for ‘mere mortals’. it’s just a bit too mind numbing for people who start to drift off when a sentence extends beyond three phrases.
also i think it says a lot that mises specialties are ‘praxeology’ and ‘catalactics’ and not anywhere do you see isms… he even refuses to go into ethics on many subjects that it is easy to be drawn into such a discussion.
the last time a writer got my attention in such an all-encompassing way it was hakim bey. i now would probably cringe at the remnants of marxism and sentimentalist traditionalism that he espouses extensively, but that same hard core individualism that was essential to what made hakim bey so compelling for me is what is so appealing about mises, except, and this is something that has become so much more important to me since those hazy days, no appeals to emotions whatsoever. mises is as clinical as you can get. he rejects all appeals to emotion in his thesis, whatsoever. what i like about this is that it gives you the intellectual armory to deal with every BS argument that interventionists, socialists, communists, leftists, rightists, republicans, democrats, tea partiers, and so on like to bandy around.
prime example: militarism is inferior to the capitalist division of labor because the former does not actually produce anything and the latter could live without the former but not contrarywise. to paraphrase. so many points you can demolish just with that rock hard concept of catalactic voluntary division of labor being superior to all forms of coercion in terms of productive capacity.
i’m 4/5ths through my first read of human action, and it won’t be the last, but at this point i’m just wondering what the answer to the question of intellectual property rights is, although i’m inclined towards permitting all versions, as we see in the computer software industry, overall open source is the big winner, but exclusive licenses and closed source seems to have a valid position because of the utter ephemerality of computer data… i mean, even though warez versions often hit the torrents on or before the day of official release… anyhoo i’m going so far off topic.
Ludwig von Mises FTW
Mushindo,
Did you get your info from wikipedia or have you actually read any of Ayn Rand’s work?
Please quote one passage in Ayn Rand’s work where ” “She reserved her most acute venom for consumers” If you would have stated that she reserved her most acute venom for pararsites you would have been much closer to the truth. ]That statement and your whole post is simply not based on any fact related to Ayn Rand that I am aware of.
I have read very little of Mises’ work but it would make sense to me that as an economist he wouldn’t judge as moral or immoral the actions of people. Whereas Ayn Rand was a philosopher whose primary objective is to provide a course of action for people based on discriminating between good and evil.
As for your claim she developed a cult like following, why do you feel the need to engage in ad hominen attacks?
Murray Rothbard’s exquisite little one-act play, satirising her inner circle, is most instructive.
Chris: “why do you feel the need to engage in ad hominen attacks?”
Not to answer for Mushindo, but I think all libertarians should distance themselves from her in any way they can (and as she did from us, thankfully). She *is* and always will be personally repulsive to the vast majority of humans and her “philosophy” is simply asinine. I mean simply: *forced* charity is evil, not charity. And that is the end of this minor thinker and cult leader. To the intellectual dustbin she goes, with the rest of Nietzsche’s half-baked children.
mpolzkill,
I have to put you in the category of someone who has either not read Ayn Rand or doesn’t understand her. But please do not take my word for it here is exactly what Ayn Rand said regarding charity from http:///www.aynrandlexicon.com
“My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
“Playboy’s Interview with Ayn Rand,” March 1964.
Before you spout off any more nonsense take the time to read and understand what she wrote. Are you proud to be known as a slanderer?
Chris
Of course I can’t get through her pulp novels. Slander Ayn Rand? That’s a larf. She habitually and ignorantly condemned other writers. It *is* a bit of joke of mine to speak of her and Randrods in much the same way they spoke/speak of others. Bottom line is, I don’t have to read L. Ron Hubbard to not want to be associated with that cult leader and I don’t have to read yours either (no one over the age of 18 who has studied actual literature and was then introduced to her could; with a straight face anyway). Let’s libertarians and Randroids just part ways, OK? Thanks.
To your usage of the quote: If I felt like it I could go find a dozen contradictory statements by her. She wasn’t a philosopher, she was a self-deluded crusader. And don’t worry about me, why don’t you tell your fellow crusading Randroids that charity isn’t an evil. I don’t think they all got the message.
Since your argument has degraded into mismash of insults and name calling I will bow out from further discussion. I will only ask that rational readers of this thread take the time to at the very least consult http://www.aynrandlexicon.com when someone makes a remark regarding Ayn Ran such as those in the previous posts.
Bow out of what? All I said is that libertarians should take any and all opportunites to distance themselves from this repulsive fan of serial killers and Richard Nixon (sorry for the redundancy, and please come to my YouTube page and watch her heir foaming out the mouth to see that these aren’t aberations) What name calling? Those were accurate descriptions. Yeah, yeah, a few thouasand hours of studying the “lexicon” and chanting the incantations and all “rational” people should get into line. I know cults, you’re in a cult.
peikoff needs to have his thyroid function tested.
The writers of the paper seem to have missed where Ayn Rand specifically defined the terms she was using. Just reading the first few paragraphs they mischaracterize her position and from then on they are set to knock down a strawman.
Ayn Rand believed the market prices are objective in the sense that they are determined based on actual entities: the personal and individual choices of all the market constituents. That is, they are a function of actual facts within the world. This is in line with Mises. When she says value is not subjective, she is not talking about economic prices but the philosophical concept of value. A value to her, philosophically, is that which objectively improves man’s life. So, for example, political freedom (laissez-faire capitalism) is a value whether you want to recognize it or not, as it is the means to live properly as a human being. It is objectively life-promoting, as we all know. Objective values to Rand are based on specific facts and requirements of man’s nature that need to be fufilled. Another, simpler example is food (in normal situations). Food is a requirement for you to sustain and improve your life, regardless of your wishes or whims. That makes it an objective value, but subject-orientated.
Being a Jane Jacobs fan, I googled I’am and as far as I can tell from the first google page, there is no indication that the people who designed the project ever read the book. The theme in the book was that in a successful local city community people can and are pleased to live and work in the same community, even in the same building. I can’t find any reference to any sort of business or place of employment in this residential building project.
The “Chinatown” in many large cities represents the Jane Jacobs ideal. Or consider the Ballard, Fremont, or Admiral districts in Seattle. One could be born, live one’s entire life, and be buried without leaving Ballard and have a GOOD life.
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