WEBVTT NOTE Commentary 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.080 I have a problem in commenting on these papers that I didn't see any of the papers in advance. 2 00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:13.640 I didn't know what Joseph Salerno was going to say, but I didn't see any other papers. 3 00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:18.200 I thought I was going to have the same problem on another session that I was supposed to 4 00:00:18.200 --> 00:00:22.280 comment on a paper on social doctrine. 5 00:00:22.280 --> 00:00:29.040 I hadn't seen any papers for that, but fortunately for me that session was cancelled and it's 6 00:00:29.040 --> 00:00:38.040 It's too bad they didn't follow a similar policy on this session, then it would have been much better that way. 7 00:00:38.040 --> 00:00:46.040 Well, now, Joe Salerno was asking, was Rothbard a mainstream economist? 8 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:55.040 I'd like to ask, suggest to me a similar question, to what extent was Rothbard a mainstream philosopher? 9 00:00:55.040 --> 00:01:04.540 And I'd like to suggest one respect in which he was, in which he was influenced by some of the contemporary philosophers of his time. 10 00:01:04.540 --> 00:01:13.540 He was a student at Columbia of Ernest Nagel, who was a very important philosopher of science, and he thought very highly of Nagel. 11 00:01:13.540 --> 00:01:21.040 Nagel wasn't a logical positivist, although he was somewhat influenced by them, but he was somewhat called a logical empiricist. 12 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:36.200 And one point Nagel stressed very much is that in using a concept in a scientific theory, you have to show how that concept should be applied in practice. 13 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:41.520 And I think there is kind of a whiff of empiricism in Murray Rothbard in two respects. 14 00:01:41.520 --> 00:01:50.120 In talking about preference, he always stresses demonstrated preference, what difference the 15 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:53.280 preference makes in action. 16 00:01:53.280 --> 00:02:00.120 You see in his great paper, 1956, Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics, this basic 17 00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:07.080 point he uses to criticize in criticizing standard welfare economics is that we just 18 00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:14.360 have to operate strictly on demonstrated preference, and if you do that, then you can show that, 19 00:02:14.360 --> 00:02:21.080 you can't show that any interference with the free market will increase utility. 20 00:02:21.080 --> 00:02:25.960 And another way in which you see this is in his criticism of the concept of monopoly price, 21 00:02:25.960 --> 00:02:33.440 he says that people talk about monopoly price, can't show how the monopoly price differs 22 00:02:33.440 --> 00:02:34.640 from the competitive price. 23 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:41.160 So I think here we see possibly the influence of what he learned from Nagel in that respect. 24 00:02:41.160 --> 00:02:45.200 He was called a mainstream philosopher. 25 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:53.880 Now the next paper by Vladimir Krauss was a very interesting paper, criticism of Keynes 26 00:02:53.880 --> 00:02:56.400 relying on George Reisman. 27 00:02:56.400 --> 00:03:03.760 I must tell you one story, Reisman's book, he knows this much better than I do, it's 28 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:23.760 It's an extremely complicated book. When it came out, I was very reluctant to review it because the book is over a thousand pages long and they're double column pages, so it's equivalent to reading at least two books the size of Human Action. 29 00:03:23.760 --> 00:03:28.060 It reminded me of a line from one of Tennyson's poems, 30 00:03:28.060 --> 00:03:30.860 but I go on forever. 31 00:03:30.860 --> 00:03:34.120 So Reisman wanted me to review it. 32 00:03:34.120 --> 00:03:36.320 Usually people don't want me to review their books, 33 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:38.440 but he wanted me to review his. 34 00:03:38.440 --> 00:03:44.000 And he said to me, wouldn't you feel bad 35 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:48.440 if you didn't review the book till after I died? 36 00:03:48.440 --> 00:03:51.840 And I'm afraid I laughed when he said that. 37 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:58.640 I did review it and I gave it a positive review, but I can't say I understand it all that well. 38 00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:08.880 But now, as I understood Mr. Krauss's paper, he claimed that there was a fundamental contradiction 39 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:16.960 in Keynes's system equivalent to 2 plus 2 equals 5, and I'm not clear at all what the 40 00:04:16.960 --> 00:04:44.480 Contradiction is Supposed to Be. He said that Keynes wrongly, going against John Stuart Mill, Mill had said demand for commodities is not demand for labor, but Keynes wrongly thought that demand for commodities generates demands for capital goods. 41 00:04:44.480 --> 00:04:52.920 Well, it's not clear to me if suppose Keynes did think, which I think he did, that demand 42 00:04:52.920 --> 00:05:03.040 for consumption goods will generate demand for capital goods, that involves him in the 43 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:16.200 claim that demand for commodities is demand for labor, is demand for capital goods, it's 44 00:05:16.200 --> 00:05:23.040 just that one will generate the other, and I don't see how even accepting Mill's claim 45 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:29.840 would lead to the view that demand for commodities doesn't generate demand for capital goods. 46 00:05:29.840 --> 00:05:35.160 I'm not saying Keynes was right to think that, but it's not clear what the contradiction 47 00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:36.160 is supposed to be. 48 00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:47.680 And also, even if, say, Keynes were completely wrong about this, I'm supposing he was involved 49 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:56.600 in going against Mill, I suppose his doctrine did amount to wrongly saying that demand for 50 00:05:56.600 --> 00:06:02.160 Commodities is Demand for Capital Goods. 51 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:06.760 I don't see that that would be a contradiction unless he said that, because if you say, say, 52 00:06:06.760 --> 00:06:13.880 one thing is something else, if you say something can be both red and blue, it isn't clear that 53 00:06:13.880 --> 00:06:21.780 it's a contradiction to say something could be demand for commodities and demand for capital 54 00:06:21.780 --> 00:06:22.780 goods. 55 00:06:22.780 --> 00:06:28.100 I don't see what the contradiction is supposed to be, I'm not saying that it is, that Mill 56 00:06:28.100 --> 00:06:32.900 was wrong, in fact it seems to me Mill was probably right, but I just don't see what 57 00:06:32.900 --> 00:06:38.840 the contradiction is, but I perhaps if I studied Riesman's chapter more thoroughly I would 58 00:06:38.840 --> 00:06:39.840 grasp this. 59 00:06:39.840 --> 00:06:46.700 Now to turn to Eckhart Kohler, I'm not at all, not only have I not seen his paper, I'm 60 00:06:46.700 --> 00:06:50.120 not at all familiar with the Freiburg School. 61 00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:59.200 If I could say a little bit about Walter Euken's father, Rudolf Euken, who was a philosopher, 62 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:07.120 but that wasn't the topic of the paper, but two things that did occur to me was when he 63 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:13.640 was talking about the similarities between the Austrian and Freiburg School, he concentrated 64 00:07:13.640 --> 00:07:23.480 on the similarities between the monetary proposals of the Freiburg School and Hayek's proposals 65 00:07:23.480 --> 00:07:29.320 for monetary denationalization, but one thing I think would be interesting to find out, 66 00:07:29.320 --> 00:07:35.480 maybe does this in the paper, is the analysis of the monetary system the same, or is it 67 00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:38.080 just that they come up with similar conclusions? 68 00:07:38.080 --> 00:07:43.200 What is the way they actually analyze the monetary system? 69 00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:48.440 And then I think it would also been, I wondered, one point that I think Austrians would have 70 00:07:48.440 --> 00:07:56.460 some trouble with is including the trade bills in the, what he called the monetary metric. 71 00:07:56.460 --> 00:08:03.820 And I think also in addition to comparing the plan with Hayek's proposal, it would be 72 00:08:03.820 --> 00:08:12.760 interesting to compare it with the more Mises-Rothbard type of system where you have commodity 73 00:08:12.760 --> 00:08:18.600 Money, usually a gold standard and 100% reserve banking. 74 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:26.080 Now to turn to the last very interesting paper by Antonio Massala, the only problems I had 75 00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:32.080 with that excellent paper had to do with what he said at the beginning kind of in late 19th 76 00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:35.080 or early 20th century background. 77 00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:39.800 I wouldn't think, although there's certainly people who differ with me, it would be accurate 78 00:08:39.800 --> 00:08:46.680 to say that Mill, John Stuart Mill, believed in a religion of science or that science could 79 00:08:46.680 --> 00:08:53.680 solve our social problems. That's a belief more commonly associated with Auguste Comte. 80 00:08:53.680 --> 00:09:00.560 Although Mill was influenced by him, he largely rejected Comte's views. You know, if you look 81 00:09:00.560 --> 00:09:07.200 at Mill's posthumously published essays on theism, he doesn't seem to be taking science 82 00:09:07.200 --> 00:09:13.340 This is a religion at all. There are people like Maurice Cowling who do incline to that 83 00:09:13.340 --> 00:09:19.800 interpretation that he was somewhat of a company, but I tend to think that's wrong. I also don't 84 00:09:19.800 --> 00:09:26.900 think Keynes can be viewed as someone who believes in a sort of a science will solve 85 00:09:26.900 --> 00:09:35.000 all our problems. If you read Keynes' treatise on probability, he seems very doubtful about 86 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:41.320 about what we can general propositions can establish. He's very much influenced by the 87 00:09:41.320 --> 00:09:47.840 philosopher G. Murray. He's rather doubtful about what we can know, especially about knowing 88 00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:53.860 about the future, although he doesn't go so far as Murray did in questioning how much 89 00:09:53.860 --> 00:09:57.560 we could know about future consequences of our actions. So I don't think he's really 90 00:09:57.560 --> 00:10:05.640 in this scientific tradition at all, but one thing I think Mr. Masala is quite right about 91 00:10:05.640 --> 00:10:13.660 is when he stresses how much Thatcher was opposed to the sort of the consensus of the 92 00:10:13.660 --> 00:10:20.200 Labour Party and the sort of the sort of the elites of the post-World War II period. 93 00:10:20.200 --> 00:10:27.140 I remember I was talking once to my friend Philip Afoot who taught at Oxford for many 94 00:10:27.140 --> 00:10:33.700 years, was very much in this elite group. I think she'd been very sympathetic to the Fabian Society. 95 00:10:33.700 --> 00:10:40.340 I said to her, I noticed that Margaret Thatcher had gone to Somerville College, which was her college, 96 00:10:40.340 --> 00:10:45.860 and Philippa Foote said to me, oh yes, yes she went, she did go to Somerville, but she wasn't 97 00:10:45.860 --> 00:10:52.180 really one of us. So I think that that would be enough from me. I'm sorry. 98 00:10:57.140 --> 00:10:59.140 Thank you very much.