It gives me a great pleasure to introduce our Mises Memorial Lecturer, Renaud Filliou.
Renaud is professor of sociology at the University of Lille in France.
He first studied the natural sciences and received an engineering degree from the Ecole
Centrale de Lyon.
He then went on to study philosophy, sociology and economics and received graduate degrees
in those fields and then a PhD in sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris.
He has done extensive research and very very good research and actually cutting-edge research
and teaching in Austrian economics and has recently published a book in French that introduces
the main techniques of the school to the French audiences. Currently he's working on Austrian
macroeconomics as well as price theory and epistemology, a true renaissance man, Renaud.
So it's difficult for me to express with words how honored I am to have the opportunity to give this 2012 Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture.
So I wish to thank Professor Joe Salerno, of course, for the invitation, all the staff here at the Mises Institute,
for the flawless organization, and Professor Guido Huisman for his support.
Von Mises, Von Mises is the economist I most admire, as is probably also the case for many people in this room, and he fully deserves our admiration.
As an outstanding scientist, a great epistemologist and a leading fighter for liberty.
And in this lecture, I want to pay tribute to the depth and relevance of his conception of theoretical social science as praxeology.
Misesian praxeology rests upon two main pillars, first, the concept of action, and second,
the a prioristic character of the theories of human action.
When he developed these insights, von Mises had mainly economic science in mind, and that's
perfectly understandable.
Now I would like to illustrate his principles of action and of a priorism with the help
of another branch of social science, namely the sociology of delinquency.
And this survey will offer an unusual but also, I hope, an instructive perspective on the
foundation of social sciences as elaborated by von Mises.
The title of von Mises' greatest treatise, Human Action, clearly indicates the foremost
importance that he attached to the concept of action.
And his whole theoretical and epistemological edifice is built upon this key concept.
It devotes many pages to his presentation.
His starting point is the definition of action as a conscious or purposeful behaviour, and
he then deduces the main components implied in this concept.
So I will review them very briefly, beginning by ends and means, the two most basic elements
of a Theory of Action, causality, the relationship between ends and means implies the category
of causality, the means at the very least are causes and the ends are effects, rationality,
an action is necessarily rational in the sense that it's always adapted to the end pursued
on account of the personal knowledge of the actor, but the choice between ends on the
is a value judgment that specifically belongs to the acting person and is neither rational nor irrational.
Scale of values.
So the ends envisioned by an actor can be crudely materialistic or highly refined,
but whatever their concrete content, their value or importance for the acting person is purely subjective
and they are ranked along a scale that is ordinal, no measure or calculation of subjective values is possible.
Then we have imputation. The means of an action only play an instrumental role in bringing about a chosen end.
The value is derivative, it's imputed or ascribed to them from the value of end.
Profit, psychic profit or loss. An action, if successful, will bring a subjective or psychic profit,
an unmeasurable but positive difference between the value of the end reached and the value of the end foregone.
And if the action isn't successful, there's a psychic loss.
Then we have time, when action necessarily takes place in time.
Its aim is always set in the future, since the present cannot be changed.
Uncertainty. Action also implies change and uncertainty.
If the future was certain, no action could possibly change it.
There would be no role for acting.
Now, in the 1920s and 1930s, von Mises was very busy laying down the foundations for a theory and epistemology of action.
During these same decades, sociologists and criminologists were developing theories in which the core concept was not action, but rather culture.
Modern criminology, or sociology of delinquency, appeared in the 1920s with the classic treatise by Edwin Sutherland, who is considered as the most influential criminologist of the 20th century.
Born in 1883, who was two years younger than von Mises, so they both belonged to the same generation,
and Sutherland developed a famous culturalist theory according to which criminal behaviour is explained by the antisocial or pro-delinquency value system held by the criminal.
More specifically, his theory rests upon two main principles.
First, a learning principle, very simple, delinquency or criminality is learned.
This learning is a socialization process that takes place in small and intimate groups,
where members mainly learn two things, criminal techniques and pro delinquency values.
This idea of learning may seem overly simplistic but it was very important
because it broke with the genetic theories of criminality
The second principle of this culturalist criminology is called differential association, so here each individual belongs to some groups that favor conventional or law-abiding behavior, such as family for instance, and may also belong to groups that favor antisocial or delinquent behavior.
may also belong to groups that favor antisocial or delinquent behavior, such as groups of young delinquent peers.
The individual is confronted to contradictory or conflicting influences.
If antisocial values predominate around the individual, then he will become a delinquent.
and if conventional or pro-social values predominant, then he will comply with the law.
And on a more general level, this explanation belongs to the cultural spreading that was developed by the first Chicago School of Sociology
and which uses the idea of cultural conflict in order to account for the pathologies, including crime of course,
of the great American cities in the first decade of the 20th century.
In the 1950s, two criminologists, Sykes and Mazza, provided one of the first convincing criticisms of this culturalist criminology.
They showed that criminals or delinquents, in fact, do not have a set of values different from that of the general population.
And they came to this conclusion through an investigation of the arguments used by the criminals themselves when they tried to justify their own illegal actions in court.
And they observed that these offenders do not challenge the conventional value system.
Rather, they use what these authors famously called neutralization techniques
that help them to excuse their own behavior.
For instance, they use the technique of the denial of responsibility.
They justify, try to justify their illegal behavior
by saying that they were pushed by an overwhelming force
because they were drunk or needing drug or angered and so on.
Now, what's very interesting here is that
But in all these kinds of arguments used by the offenders themselves, the conventional
system of moral and legal norms is implicitly taken for granted. It's not criticized, it's
not attacked. It is acknowledged and circumvented. So even if the delinquents have specific subcultures,
those are not directly opposed to the conventional and usual morals prevalent in society. Criminals
in their own words are not committed to a pro-delinquency system of values.
The culturalist explanation by Sutherland is totally contradicted by these observations.
And also, the theoretical question of the cause of delinquency now drastically changes.
Sutherland tried to answer the question, how do some people acquire an anti-social value
The system that turns them into criminals, but now the question becomes more subtle.
Why do some people break the moral and legal rules to which they otherwise believe, even
if not very strongly?
And at this point, the sociology of delinquency is ready to take a praxeological turn that
is to some extent similar to the subjectivist revolution that took place in economics at
in the end of the 19th century.
And indeed, once the culturalist approach is discarded, the Misesian conception of action
becomes highly relevant, and there are two reasons why this is so.
In the culturalist approach, delinquency is an end in itself.
Breaking the law is valued as such.
Now praxeology has nothing to say about ends and valued judgments.
In the words of von Mises, its object is means, not ends.
It does not seek to explain, for instance, why some people choose asceticism while others
choose hedonism, why some people enjoy refined pleasures while other people enjoy good pleasures
and so on and so forth.
So if the difference between criminals and non-criminals was their respective value systems,
and praxeology would not have much to say about criminality and maybe nothing at all.
The question why do some people choose alinquency would be similar to the question why do some
people enjoy classical music.
But if the moral values are more or less the same, they cannot by themselves alone explain
why an individual commits a criminal act and another one in similar circumstances does
not.
The difference between criminality and non-criminality essentially becomes a choice of means, not
of ends.
And to that extent, delinquent acts are perfectly legitimate objects of a praxeological analysis.
Quebec criminologist Maurice Cusson has consistently followed this line of analysis.
He has shown that delinquent action indeed follows the same kinds of ends as law-abiding
Action, such as the search for wealth, prestige, power, the difference is that the means are
obtained through theft, fraud or illegal physical violence.
There is a second reason why sociology of delinquency was ready in the 50s to take a
praxeological turn and break with culturalism.
The culturalist approach rests upon a very naive conception of the relationship between
culture and behavior.
Culture is supposed to follow the rules prescribed by the culture or subculture in which the
individual has been socialized.
And if I can use this metaphor, culture is conceived as a computer program and the individual
supposedly follows the cultural moral code just like a computer follows the steps of
a program.
Now as we have seen, offenders believe in the conventional moral code, even if not very
In the culturalist framework, this situation is paradoxical, and very difficult to account
for.
In the Misesian framework, on the other hand, the explanation is straightforward.
Even if a person is reluctant for moral reasons to break the law, she will choose an illegal
Act if it brings a higher psychic profit than the alternative legal acts.
Let's suppose that an individual would prefer everything else equal to choose legitimate
means rather than illegal means in order to reach his ends.
In the context of a specific decision, he can nonetheless choose illegal means for the
simple reason that they allow him to reach an end that is sufficiently high on his value
scale.
It is thus very easy to account for the common sense observation that people sometimes break
their own moral code.
And to sum up here, the culturalist approach is plagued by a paradox.
If an individual has been socialized in a culture, how could he possibly act against
the rules prescribed by this culture?
And this paradox completely disappears when we use the basic praxeological concepts, ends,
Means and Psychic Profit.
The praxeological solution to this culturalist paradox
is a bit reminiscent of the marginalist solution
to the paradox of value in economics.
After this criticism of or this critic of culturalism,
the next significant theory developed
in the field of sociology of delinquency
is the theory of social control.
This theory clearly belongs, as I will show,
to the Praxeological Paradigm Framework Very briefly, this theory explains why individuals
commit more or less serious delinquent acts by the fact that their bond to society is
weak or broken.
Now the expression bond to society is not very Misesian to say the least.
It seems to imply a holistic conception of society that von Mises forcefully criticizes.
But society here is not at all conceived as a separate entity that exists above and beyond
the individual.
And I'm going to show that, in fact, social control theory can easily be expressed in
a praxeological language.
Let's follow the presentation offered by one of the most prominent exponents of social
Control Theory and a great sociologist, the American Travis Hershey.
In his well-known book, Causes of Delinquency, he explains that the bonds to society mainly
consist in the attachment to others and the commitment to conventional lines of action.
Both of these elements have a straightforward praxeological interpretation.
The attachment to others, to family, to friends, to peers, to co-workers and so on, is the
fact to care about them, to be sensitive to their needs, and in terms of action, attachment
is reflected in lending a sympathetic ear and providing help or advice.
These acts can be carried out as hands in themselves, when it pleases us to help others
for the sake of helping.
But quite often, they are also means, means for the individual who wants to get in return
some marks of respect, affection, love or friendly help.
And in order to get these valuable services, the individual chooses to create and maintain
relationships with other people through friendship, wedding, parenthood and other kinds of associations.
So attachment, as a means towards ends, clearly falls under a praxeological analysis.
The second element, commitment to conventional lines of action.
This commitment explains why most of the people, most of the time, do not carry out any criminal
act.
This is very simply because if they were caught, these conventional lines of action would be
threatened by legal or informal sanctions.
Their educational career would be at risk, or their job, or their family life, or their
spare time activities, etc.
The praxeological translation is here obvious.
The values of the ends sought through conventional lines of action are higher than those of delinquent
In other words, carrying out a criminal act would, in this case, result in a psychic loss.
It's also interesting to note that Hirschi uses a correct conception of subjective cost.
The cost of a delinquent act is not the legal and informal sanctions that may ensue.
It is the ends, and strictly the value of the ends, that could not be reached anymore if these sanctions were incurred.
So this is a nice illustration of the Austrian concept of subjective cost.
To sum up, the theory of social control explains that the weaker is the bond to society of an individual,
the less he is attached and committed, the more he tends to carry out delinquent acts.
And this theory can be considered in the interpretation I have given as a praxeological theory.
Most people follow the rules most of the time because there is a social control inciting
to conformity and the avoidance of deviant acts, but this control is not an external
force emanating from a holistic society.
It can and should be analyzed in terms of ends, means, instrumental rationality and
and Psychic Profit.
Now if the theory of social control is right in that the bonds of delinquents to society
are weak, then the question of group delinquency immediately arises.
How is it that delinquency is quite often a group phenomenon, especially juvenile delinquency?
Are not delinquents tightly bonded to the group of peers with which they carry out their
A delinquent activity, and this was the starting point of the Culturalist Theory, whose premise
is that delinquency requires an interpersonal transmission of techniques and values that
can only take place in a small and tightly-knit group. This is pure Culturalist Theory. Social
control theory, on the other hand, claims that delinquents are weakly bonded even to
to their delinquent peers, a fact that has indeed been corroborated by empirical study.
A simple and convincing praxeological explanation of group delinquency has been provided by
Maurice Cusson, whom I have quoted before.
He shows that a delinquent act is easier and less risky to perform when in group.
In a burglary, for instance, accomplices are quite helpful.
They can monitor the area, help in picking up and carrying more spoils.
The burglary can thus be quicker and safer for the offenders.
In a hold-up or a robbery, a group of criminals is more frightening than a single individual
and reduces the risk that the victims will refuse to comply, flee or even attack the
offenders.
In the case of shoplifting, the accomplices can distract the seller while the stealing
goes on smoothly. Furthermore, in the case of teenagers, the members of the group can
turn delinquency into a sort of game in which each one challenges the others to perform
delinquent acts. With a group, delinquency is safer, quicker, more efficient and possibly
also funnier. In other words, constituting a group is a means to reach the valuable ends
looked for through delinquency. The culturalist theory explains the constitution of delinquent
groups through a quite mysterious and largely ad hoc socialization process. But we see that
the explanation provided by Cusson, on the other hand, is crystal clear and rests upon
on solid praxeological ground.
Let's now turn to another crucial feature of delinquent action, namely its impulsiveness.
The concept of impulsiveness can be translated into the economic language as high time preference,
and again here, as we shall see, the Misesian conception of action is highly relevant.
The impulsiveness of teenage delinquents and of adult criminals has been noticed for a
long time and by several authors.
The most detailed analysis to date has been developed by Gottfriedson and Hirschi in the
book which is my personal favorite on the whole subject of delinquency, A General Theory
of Crime, 1990.
The starting point is a description of typical delinquent acts, such as burglary, robbery,
homicide, auto theft and so on.
Here is, for instance, a description of the typical burglary.
I quote, a young male or group of males knocks on a door not far from where he lives, finding
When he is taking no one home, he tests the door to see if it's open.
And if it's open, as it often is, he walks in and looks to see if the dwelling contains
anything of interest that he can quickly consume or easily haul away.
In most cases, the proceeds of the burglary are quickly consumed, used up, given away
or discarded."
Of course, not all burglaries fit this pattern, but this is the typical burglary and the basic
nature of this activity can only be deduced from a typical scenario, not from the very
rare and unusual burglaries reported by the mass media or from those entirely fabricated
for movie audiences.
Based on this understanding of what burglaries and other acts of violence or fraud typically
look like, Gottfriedson and Hirschi conclude that almost all delinquent acts share a series
of essential features that go as follows.
They provide a quick and easy gratification of desires.
They are exciting and thrilling but offer few, if any, long-term benefits.
They require little skill or planning and they show insensitivity to others since they
result in suffering of the victim.
So in short, the typical delinquent act displays all the characteristics of an impulsive act.
And people who commit this kind of act on a regular basis can be labeled impulsive.
They tend to grab very short-term gratifications while jeopardizing their long-term projects,
assuming they have any.
In the terminology of Gottfriedson and Hirschi, they are characterized by a low self-control.
Maurice Cusson uses a suggestive expression, he calls this psychological feature presentism.
And in economics, of course, we would say that they have a very high time preference.
Now, in the very first chapter of his treatise, von Mises devotes a section to the analysis
of the relationship between impulses and action.
He explains that, of course, people have impulses, impulses to grab things that are not theirs,
to molest people that they dislike, and so on.
But most of the time, they choose to resist these impulses because yielding to them would
be much too costly.
And this, what is it?
It's the core of the theory of social control.
And von Mises adds two very interesting considerations first. When an individual yields to his impulses,
it's still an action, not an automatic behaviour. Emotions, impulses affect the terms of the
choices faced by the actors, but they do not prevent nor replace action. Anger, for instance,
may favour the use of physical violence as a means. But whether in anger, in fear or
For in a quiet mood, the person acts nonetheless. She consciously uses means in order to reach a chosen end.
And here is his second consideration. The reason for yielding to an impulse is to be found in high time preference.
The benefits from an impulsive act are immediate, but the negative consequences are often suffered at a later date.
So, the higher the time preference, the more the future inconveniences are disregarded and
the more likely the person will yield to her impulses.
And this, this is the core of the theory of low self-control by Gottfriedson and Hirschi.
So the analysis offered by von Mises on the subject of impulses, even though it's quite
short, is brilliant.
He anticipates some of the most important theoretical developments that have taken place in the following decades in the study of delinquency.
A very important phenomenon can also be explained with the help of the concepts of impulsiveness and time preference.
It's the relationship between age and delinquency, which is called the age curve.
So let's take a look at the following figures that show the relation between the age of offenders and indicators of delinquency.
The first one here, age curve male criminal offenders, England and Wales, 1842, 1844.
Second one, age curve of male criminals at first conviction, England, 1908.
and the last one, Age Curve of Arrest for Property Crimes in the United States, 1999.
So all these curves are from very different years and very different countries,
but they show exactly the same pattern.
The tendency to commit delinquent acts peaks around age 18, then quickly diminishes.
So a massive and natural phenomenon of rehabilitation occurs with age.
How can this phenomenon be accounted for?
Certainly not by the culturist theory,
which is in fact contradicted by this pattern.
Why would small primary groups of individuals,
socialized within delinquency,
why would they tend to dissolve and disappear after age 18?
Gottfriedson and Hirschi have provided an explanation
that I find quite convincing for this phenomenon.
They say that when people grow up, they tend to become more and more mature,
which means that their time preference decreases.
They become less and less impulsive with age.
So when people age, they tend to commit less and less delinquent acts,
hence the shape of the age curve.
But it must be made clear that this process that occurs with age
is not a praxeological phenomenon.
It's a psychological phenomenon, of course, and ultimate data from a praxeological viewpoint.
I would now like to take, as a last example, another major development in sociology of delinquency,
the so-called routine activity theory.
It was expounded at the end of the 1970s by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Falso to criminologists.
And these authors start from a puzzling phenomenon.
Between 1960 and 1975 in the United States, delinquency exploded.
Robberies increased nearly fourfold in just 15 years.
Aggravated assaults increased nearly threefold.
Rapes, homicides, burglaries, each also increased nearly three-fold according to police data.
There is of course much to be criticized in police data.
But since they are collected roughly in the same way year after year, they offer a quite
reliable image of the evolution, not of the level but of the evolution of delinquency.
This explosion of delinquency is all the more enigmatic that this very period was quite favorable from a social and economic point of view.
Unemployment was low, poverty in the official sense was diminishing, and income inequalities were also decreasing.
So it's impossible to explain this surge in delinquency from 1960 to 1975 by the usual scapegoats such as unemployment, poverty and inequality.
The starting point of the explanation offered by Quinn and Felsen for this puzzling phenomenon is a consideration of the minimal conditions for a predatory criminal act to occur.
They contend that three minimal conditions are required.
First, a motivated offender.
Second, a suitable target.
And third, the lack of a capable guardian.
But they immediately cast aside the first condition, a motivated offender.
They take for granted that there are motivated offenders,
always have been and always will be, they focus instead entirely on the two last conditions which are both purely situational and from their own their theory is extremely simple.
If it so happens that suitable targets multiply and that capable guardians are more and more lacking, then we should expect an increase in the number of criminal acts.
And they show that these are just the circumstances that occurred in the period of the 1960s and 70s.
Let's just take one example, burglaries.
Thanks to the increased quantity of consumer goods produced, houses were more and more often filled with suitable targets such as electronic devices,
vinyl records back then, bottles of alcohol, jewelry, fancy clothes, and so on.
Furthermore, in the case of electronic devices, their weight and size significantly decreased during this period so that they became easier to carry away.
As far as capable guardians are concerned, they were indeed more and more often lacking during this period.
Houses were more often empty during the day simply because the proportion of women working was increasing.
Also, families were leaving their houses empty to go on vacations that lasted for longer and longer periods.
So, the routine activity of American households around their house was greatly altered during the 60s and 70s,
and this is the explanation of the name of their theory, routine activity theory.
This alteration in the routine activity explains, for a big part, the upsurge in burglaries, and in other aspects also.
So, in a general way, these authors show that in the period considered, delinquent action has become more rewarding, less difficult and less risky.
So the initial puzzle, an explosion of delinquency in a quite favorable economic situation, has been solved by adopting a strictly praxeological approach.
The authors did not care at all about the motivational or cultural aspects of delinquency.
Instead, they analyzed delinquent acts or means toward ends and discovered that these acts could henceforth reach more valuable ends at lower costs.
In the Misesian language, we can say that the psychic profit of delinquent acts tended to rise relative to other kinds of acts and that, therefore, delinquent acts were more often carried out.
Culturalism, however, has not said its last word.
Let's take a look at the following figure.
Trends in Murder and Robbery, United States, 1972-2006.
A surprising phenomenon occurs in the 1990s.
During this decade, the delinquency rate in the United States has been divided by two.
This is a very substantial drop.
Now, this evolution is quite difficult to explain.
The most obvious cause would be the huge increase in the number of people behind bars.
According to the statistical calculations of some authors, this policy has had a quite
strong negative effect on criminality, but other authors find weak correlations.
So there's no consensus between statisticians on this topic.
And furthermore, in Canada, a similar strong decline in delinquency has occurred, which
cannot be explained by an increase in the incarceration rate, since no such increase
has taken place there.
And among the other explanations, none is really convincing.
For instance, the strong economy of the 90s, the changing demographics with a lower proportion
of teenagers and young adults, the increase in the number of the police, the improvements
in police organization and practice, etc.
Even when all the aforementioned causes are taken together, they do not seem to deliver
are a satisfactory explanation of such a significant and unexpected phenomenon.
So, some criminologists fall back on a culturalist explanation.
Mark Wimet, for instance, a Canadian criminologist, thinks that the decrease in criminality in the 1990s
could be an effect of, I quote, the new ethos of moderation, unquote,
that characterizes the US and Canada since the 1980s, a new ethos of moderation that's observable in the reduction of overall drinking and smoking.
The drop in delinquency could thus be explained by an important change in collective values.
And the famous American criminologist James Q. Wilson also considers that the usual factors are not sufficient to explain the phenomenon.
And he concludes a recent paper in the Wall Street Journal by saying that, I quote,
crime in the United States is falling because of a big improvement in the culture, end quote.
Well, it's true, it's true that major surveys in moral values conducted worldwide tend to show that culture is slowly but surely improving.
But this culturalist explanation is hardly satisfactory.
The connection between the two phenomena, criminal behaviour on the one hand and moral surrounding on the other, is never clear in the culturalist approach.
And this is the main reason why this approach is unsatisfactory and inferior to the praxeological approach.
Let's now turn more briefly to the second main element in the Misesian conception of social science, namely the a prioristic character of praxeology.
This issue is controversial, not here, but outside.
It's not an exaggeration to say that almost all social scientists today reject a priori, almost all of them.
They are positivists in the sense that they believe that in social science a theory can be corroborated or falsified by empirical data.
And they think quite simply that social science is an empirical science in the exact same way the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and so on.
This positivistic viewpoint is of course totally rejected by von Mises.
According to him, the theories of human action are logically deduced from the postulate of action combined with specific initial conditions.
The postulate of action states that human action consciously uses means in order to
reach chosen ends. This postulate is a priori true. It would make no sense to test it against
experience in order to check its validity. So the whole edifice of theoretical social
science has an a prioristic character too, since it is logically deduced from this postulate
of Action.
I will now show that the development of the sociology of delinquency properly understood
exemplifies the Misesian a priorism.
One of the main episodes in the sociology of delinquency in the 20th century was the
critic and demise of the culturalist theory, as I have explained above.
As we have seen, this theory has been convincingly criticized by showing, with the help of empirical
Investigations, that criminals do not have a system of values opposed to that of conventional
surrounding society.
So it seems that we have here an example of an empirical refutation of a theory of social
science, namely the culturalist theory of criminality is empirically refuted by the
data, by the empirical data.
But according to von Mises in social science, theories can be neither confirmed nor refuted
by empirical investigation.
So does this episode, very important episode in the history of sociology, contradict the
Misesian a prioristic conception and the answer is a resounding no.
In this case study, the empirical investigation shows that criminals do not have a system
A system of values that extols criminality as such.
But the question, do they have an antisocial value system or do they not?
This question is purely empirical, it's devoid of any theoretical content whatsoever.
It is a historical question whose answer is to be found in an examination of historical
evidence.
And this is just what sociologists such as Matzah and Hirschi have done.
They have analyzed some relevant historical material collected with the methods of observation,
interview, surveys, etc. and they have concluded from these historical sources that so far
they could tell, criminals do not have a value system opposed to the conventional one.
Their statement is an empirical generalization from the little number of cases that they
they have studied to criminals in general.
They resort to an inductive inference
in order to reach an empirical generalization,
an empirical generalization,
but this kind of generalization is not,
not at all a universal law.
It clearly belongs to the branch of history,
not of praxeology.
In our society, we have good reasons to think
is that most delinquents, if not all of them, share the common system of moral values.
They are not deeply committed to it, obviously, but they share it nonetheless.
And this is a historical statement that could be proved wrong in another society or at another period.
So the refutation of the culturalist theory is not at all the refutation of a praxeological law.
It is the rejection of a historical premise of the Culturalist approach and Misesian a priorism is in no way contradicted, in fact it's not even challenged by this example.
The Routine Activity Theory offers another example that shows the relevance of epistemological a priorism in the social sciences.
This theory, as we have seen, explains the great surge in delinquency in the 1960s and
70s by a deep change in the routine activities of American households, and especially the
dispersion of these activities away from home. Stated in a positivist vocabulary, this theory
is a hypothesis according to which delinquency, first variable, is positively related to the
The dispersion of activities outside of home, second variable.
In order to test this hypothesis, the authors calculate an empirical indicator of dispersion
and they find that there is indeed a positive and statistically significant correlation
between the level of delinquency and the intensity of dispersion outside of home, even when economic
and demographic changes are controlled.
So the scientific enterprise of these criminologists can quite easily be expressed in a positivist
framework.
They formulate a hypothesis and then test it against empirical evidence.
But this interpretation, strictly speaking, is incorrect.
In fact, the authors expound a praxeological theory and their empirical study neither corroborates
nor refutes this theory. Here is, I think, the praxeological core of the explanation
provided by Cohen and Felsen. When an action, for instance a delinquent action, becomes
more rewarding, less risky and less difficult, then it will tend to be more widespread, everything
else equal. Can this statement be empirically tested? No, it's a pure logic of action
related to psychic profit, and it should be noticed that the authors never even attempt
to test this core statement. But then, what's the meaning of their empirical study? Because
in their paper there is a very large empirical part. Is this empirical investigation useless
and irrelevant? No. It's in fact very useful, but must be correctly interpreted. It's not
This is not an empirical test of the theory, rather the empirical study is intended to check the conditions necessary for the application of the theory.
Are these conditions indeed present in the historical reality of a given period?
Delinquent acts will be more numerous if they become more rewarding, less risky and less difficult, everything else equal.
This is the praxeological reasoning true with a prioristic certainty.
Now in the period under study, do these acts indeed become more rewarding, less risky and
less difficult?
This is the question that the empirical or historical investigation has to answer.
At first sight, it may seem as if the authors are testing their theory against the fact,
is demonstrating that Misesian a priori is erroneous, but they are not.
Their core theory is a priori true, and they test its applicability to a specific historical period.
Misesian a priori is not contradicted, it's in fact exemplified by this very important case study in sociology.
This example of the routine activity theory and the previous one of the culturalist approach
approach, both show that if words are not used carefully, they can mislead us into adopting
the positivist viewpoint.
When we say the culturalist theory has been refuted by an empirical investigation, we
use the word theory in a questionable sense.
We should say more rigorously that an empirical premise of the culturalist paradigm has been
invalidated.
When we say that the routine activity has been tested, routine activity theory has been tested
against the empirical evidence, we should say that the conditions of applicability of
the routine activity theory have been checked for a specific historical period.
The scientific vocabulary is full of positivist traps that can only be avoided if we stick
take to the very strict demarcation specified by von Mises
between history on the one hand and praxeology on the other.
Let me now conclude.
In order to pay tribute to Ludwig von Mises, I have tried to show in this lecture
that his thinking on the foundation of social science is fruitful
and relevant well beyond the realm of economics.
I have taken the example of the sociology of delinquency,
There is no doubt that all the branches of sociology could be considered as well.
His conception of action and his prioristic epistemology are both essential in order to
understand the development of the sociology of delinquency.
And his praxeological framework in turn is nicely exemplified by some of the most important
and theoretical developments in this field since the 1950s, such as social control theory,
low self-control theory and routine activity theory.
It's now time for me to thank you very much for your attention.
And they did a study of the beginning of abortion in this country.
I presume they started having abortions also in Canada about the same time, and they attribute
this big decline in delinquency to about 15 to 20 years after we started having a lot
of abortions, and so we eliminated the unwanted children.
And what this illustrates to me, I don't know if I believe that or not, but it's a very
Convincing Argument, is that perhaps using a libertarian paradigm of analysis of all
kinds of problems is dysfunctional. We need to broaden the various paradigms we have to
look at our economy and human action. Okay? The other comment is, as a physician, I see
people who can pass a lie detector test. I once had a patient whose job was doing lie
And they're called psychopaths. They have no human empathy. You can teach them all the rules you want in the world and they never internalize it.
And they kind of trump Mises' idea of human action because they're not really like humans like the rest of us.
Yes, about free economics. This is the idea that the decline in the delinquency rate in the 1990s is due to the fact that the people who would have committed these acts have not committed them because they do not exist, because they have been aborted following the legalization.
As far as I know, the statistical studies show that there is a correlation.
Yes, it is significant, but it's quite small.
And I consider this kind of explanation as, well, honestly, I don't think it's very solid.
But since there is a statistical result that goes with it,
economists, positivist economists take this very seriously.
But I don't, frankly.
As far as the question of empathy is concerned,
of course there are psychopaths.
But for psychopaths, it's very important that other people respect the rules.
The point was that delinquents have more or less the same moral code as the rest of the population.
And in the case of psychopaths, they have the same moral code.
They strongly defend private property, especially theirs.
So, their case can also be explained by the theory that I have presented in this lecture,
I think.
You disagree?
I was wondering, in the case of the 1957 study that you mentioned, which was supposed
to provide an empirical refutation of the culturalist hypothesis, what relevance do the statements of criminals in court have?
I mean, of course, in court it's very unlikely that they would brag about the greatness of murdering and killing and raping and so on,
but that they would rather appeal to the value judgement of their judges and then try to take somewhat exemptions.
So could you comment on this?
Yes, there has of course been, follows up, other studies showing exactly the same point,
but I have quoted this study of 1957 because it was the first one.
And the arguments, we can say that the offenders believe the arguments that they are expounding.
They do not live in a world where all their ideas, all their principles are hidden and
when they are in front of the court, they use purely instrumental presentation of these
arguments.
They really believe in them.
And this is corroborated, of course, by other studies that have been observed in other settings,
not only in this one, but this one is very important because it was the first one, historically
Yes, with regard to the decline in crime in the 1990s, do you think the improvements in technology could be attributed to some of that decline in the sense that cell phones are ubiquitous and you can call an ambulance or a police officer real quick or you can take a picture of a criminal in the act, things like that?
Well, it's an explanation that I have not found in the literature.
But I remember that in France, there was a sharp decline many decades ago,
a sharp decline in the murder rate,
and people were explaining this by the fact that the ambulances were coming much faster,
but I don't know, and so the people who would have died, in fact,
were taken to the hospitals and saved and so on.
That's possible, but I think if it's an explanation,
and it probably is, its impact is very small, in my opinion.
And in the literature, I have never seen it quoted.
Returning to your very interesting discussion of time preference,
could you comment on what you've seen in the literature
on differences in time preference rates, not within an individual's lifetime, but across
individuals, across cultures, across groups, and maybe within groups over time.
For example, people have often suggested that social policies, the welfare state or so-called
social insurance programs, maybe even monetary expansion and price inflation, might result
is involved in an increase in average rates of time preference which might explain some of the behavior at hand.
Has this been discussed in the recent literature?
Well, the main idea is that of course the rates of time preference are very different across individuals in a given society.
So we have very high time preference on one side and very low on the other.
And of course the delinquents are on the side of the very high time preference.
But I have not read, amongst criminologists,
I have never read the idea that
this rate of time preference could result from social policy.
But this is the idea that we find in Hoppe's works, for instance,
and maybe Bansfield, an author that he often quotes,
But who is not often quoted in the Sociology of Delinquency literature?
I haven't found him.
So the sociologists of delinquency do not make this relation,
this relationship between delinquency and the welfare state.
And this may be because most of delinquents are very young people, teenagers.
So, how are they affected, and are they affected at all by the schooling system, or things like that?
This is the question that is not found in this kind of literature.
They do not take the political philosophy step, but they should have a higher viewpoint on these questions.
It would be very interesting.
Other questions?
I don't think I'm a positivist, but I do have some questions, and they relate to kind of what this gentleman said.
You know, if you look at the curve of crimes committed by age groups, something happens to young people.
And it seems to me that you explain it as a time preference change, but that seems to be an effect rather than a cause.
And perhaps we could explain the cause as physiological changes, as young people become more mature, their brains develop better,
and they have a better understanding of how to control their behavior.
And so if you accept that, maybe you don't, I'm asking the question,
as a causative effect of crimes by young people,
why couldn't other physiological issues come into effect to explain crime?
And the thing that struck me is that we have a huge prison population here
that are basically hardwired sociopaths
and they're hardwired sociopaths because their mothers mainly have been drug addicts, alcoholics,
a very high percentage. I don't know what it is. Maybe you would not. I hope you would
give us some elucidation of that subject. But, you know, they don't exercise normal behavior.
I mean, they are hardwired sociopaths. They have no empathy. They don't think like the rest of us.
They don't behave like the rest of us. What is your opinion of that?
Well, these cases, I think, are of a psychiatric nature, and this is maybe why I am not really
able to answer to you.
These cases are of, I would say, no interest, almost no interest to sociologists, but rather
to psychiatrists and psychologists.
And I think that there are very, very few people of this kind, very, very lucky, you
Do you think there are many? No, there are very, very few.
Yes, I'm inclined to agree with the previous speaker in this respect that you say that the members of the delinquent group effectively share the same values.
They do, but only in respect to themselves. Right? In other words, they have a conception of private property, they offend it.
Yes, but it's my private property, not other people's private property, right?
So one way to perhaps explain this, which doesn't run necessarily counter to what you say but
would supplement it, is that if you take the sort of Confucian notion of moral development,
which is that you have a natural sphere, which we all have, right, then you have the utilitarian.
And the critical moment, which corresponds roughly in the teenage years and especially
in men, is the movement from the utilitarian to the moral, which involves coming to see
other people exactly as you are yourself.
And that's the critical moment.
Now, most of us manage to reach it at some level and to maintain it more or less intermittently
throughout our lives.
But some people never seem to do it or seem to do it with less success than others.
And it's identified, if you like, so they are morally, effectively immature, right?
So yes, they are utilitarian, they will use other people, they will defend private property
for themselves, they will defend personal integrity for themselves, but not for other
people.
Yes, but they are able to, you know, to expound more general principles.
Of course, they are extremely attached to their own private property, and not to those of others.
But they can express general principles, and on a matter of general principles,
I think that they favor private property. Not as a general principle, not only for themselves,
but also for others but just that they don't care about others so they can steal from them easily
but they will not defend a general principle that runs counter private property as a general system
I don't think they will but they are not political philosophers of course they they do not
they do not think a lot about those questions you know but on a casual in a casual way
They are not revolutionaries. They want to change the system.
No, they are okay with the system, don't you think?
Thank you very much for your remarks and for your questions.
Thank you very much.