2. The Evenly Rotating Economy
Analysis of the activities of production in a monetary market economy is a highly complex matter.
An explanation of these activities, in particular the determination of prices and therefore the return to factors,
Factors, the allocation of factors and the formation of capital can be developed only
if we use the mental construction of the evenly rotating economy.
This construction is developed as follows.
We realize that the real world of action is one of continual change.
Individual value scales, technological ideas and the quantities of means available are
are always changing.
These changes continually impel the economy
in various directions.
Value scales change and consumer demand shifts
from one good to another.
Technological ideas change and factors
are used in different ways.
Both types of change have differing effects on prices.
Time preferences change with certain effects
on interest and capital formation.
The crucial point is this.
Before the effects of any one change
are completely worked out, other changes intervene.
What we must consider, however, by the use of reasoning
is what would happen if no changes intervened.
In other words, what would occur if value scales,
technological ideas and the given resources
remained constant?
What would then happen to prices and production and their relations?
Given values, technology and resources, whatever their concrete form, remain constant.
In that case, the economy tends toward a state of affairs in which it is evenly rotating,
that is, in which the same activities tend to be repeated in the same pattern over and
over again.
The rates of production of each good remain constant, all prices remain constant, total population remains constant, etc.
Thus, if values, technology and resources remain constant, we have two successive states of affairs.
B, the period of transition to an unchanging, evenly rotating economy
and B, the unchanging round of the evenly rotating economy itself.
This latter stage is the state of final equilibrium.
It is to be distinguished from the market equilibrium prices
that are set each day by the interaction of supply and demand.
And, the final equilibrium state is one which the economy is always tending to approach.
If our data, values, technology and resources, remained constant, the economy would move
toward the final equilibrium position and remain there.
In actual life, however, the data are always changing, and therefore before arriving at
At a final equilibrium point, the economy must shift direction towards some other final equilibrium position.
Hence, the final equilibrium position is always changing, and consequently no one such position is ever reached in practice.
But even though it is never reached in practice, it has a very real importance.
In the first place, it is like the mechanical rabbit being chased by the dog.
It is never reached in practice, and it is always changing, but it explains the direction in which the dog is moving.
Secondly, the complexity of the market system is such that we cannot analyze factor prices and incomes in a world of continual change
Unless we first analyze their determination in an evenly rotating world where there is no change, and where given conditions are allowed to work themselves out to the full.
Certainly, at this stage of inquiry, we are not interested in ethical evaluations of our knowledge.
College, we are attaching no ethical merit to the equilibrium position.
It is a concept for scientific explanation of human activity.
The listener might ask why such an unrealistic concept as final equilibrium is permissible
when we have already presented and will present grave strictures against the use of various
Unrealistic and Anti-Realistic Premises in Economics.
For example, as we shall see, the theory of pure competition so prevalent among writers
today is based on impossible premises.
The theory is then worked out along these lines and not only applied uncritically to
the real world, but actually used as an ethical base from which to criticize the real deviations
The concepts of indifference classes and of infinitely small steps are other examples of false premises that are used as the basis of highly elaborate theoretical structures.
The concept of the evenly rotating economy, however, when used with care, is not open to these criticisms.
For this is an ever-present force, since it is the goal toward which the actual system is always moving, the final position of rest, at which, on the basis of the given actually existing value scales, all individuals would have attained the highest positions on their value scales, given the technology and resources.
This concept, then, is of legitimate and realistic importance.
We must always remember, however, that while a final equilibrium is the goal toward which the economy is moving at any particular time,
changes in the data alter this position and therefore shift the direction of movement.
Therefore, there is nothing in a dynamic world that is ethically better about a final equilibrium position.
As a matter of fact, since wants are unsatisfied, otherwise there would be no action,
such a position of no change would be most unfortunate,
since it would imply that no further want satisfaction would be possible.
Furthermore, we must remember that a final equilibrium situation tends to be, though
it can never actually be, the result of market activity, and not the condition of such activity.
Far too many writers, for example, discerning that in the evenly rotating economy, entrepreneurial
Another danger in the use of this concept is that its purely static, essentially timeless
Mathematics conditions are all too well suited for the use of mathematics.
Mathematics rests on equations, which portray mutual relationships between two or more functions.
Of themselves, of course, such mathematical procedures are unimportant, since they do
not establish causal relationships.
They are of the greatest importance in physics, for example, because that science deals with
with certain observed regularities of motion by particles of matter that we must regard
as unmotivated.
These particles move according to certain precisely observable, exact, quantitative
laws.
Mathematics is indispensable in formulating the laws among these variables, and in formulating
theoretical explanations for the observed phenomena.
In human action, the situation is entirely different, if not diametrically opposite.
Whereas in physics, causal relations can only be assumed hypothetically and later approximately
verified by referring to precise observable regularities, in praxeology we know the causal
force at work.
This causal force is human action, motivated, purposeful behavior, directed at certain ends.
The universal aspects of this behavior can be logically analyzed.
We are not dealing with functional, quantitative relations among variables, but with human
reason and will, causing certain action, which is not determinable or reducible to
to Outside Forces.
Furthermore, since the data of human action are always changing, there are no precise
quantitative relationships in human history.
In physics, the quantitative relationships, or laws, are constant.
They are considered to be valid for any point in human history, past, present or future.
In the field of human action, there are no such quantitative constants.
There are no constant relationships valid for different periods in human history.
The only natural laws, if we may use such an old-fashioned but perfectly legitimate
label for such constant regularities in human action, are qualitative rather than quantitative.
They are, for example, precisely the laws
induced in praxeology and economics,
the fact of action, the use of means to achieve ends,
time preference, diminishing marginal utility, et cetera.
Another difference is one we have already discussed,
that mathematics, particularly the calculus,
rests in large part on assumptions
of infinitely small steps.
Such assumptions may be perfectly legitimate in a field where behavior of unmotivated matter
is under study, but human action disregards infinitely small steps precisely because they
are infinitely small and therefore have no relevance to human beings.
Hence the action under study in economics must always occur in finite, discrete steps.
It is therefore incorrect to say that such an assumption may just as well be made in
the study of human action as in the study of physical particles.
In human action, we may describe such assumptions as being not simply unrealistic, but anti-realistic.
Mathematical equations, then, are appropriate and useful where there are constant quantitative
of Relations Among Unmotivated Variables.
They are singularly inappropriate
in praxeology and economics.
In the latter fields, verbal logical analysis of action
and its processes through time is the appropriate method.
It is not surprising that the main efforts
of the mathematical economists have been directed
toward describing the final equilibrium state
by Means of Equations.
For in this state, since activities merely repeat themselves,
there seems to be more scope for describing conditions
by means of functional equations.
These equations, at best, however,
can do no more than describe this equilibrium state.
Aside from doing no more than verbal logic can do,
and therefore violating the scientific principle
of Occam's razor, that science should be as simple and clear as possible.
Such a use of mathematics contains grave errors and defects within itself.
In the first place, it cannot describe the path by which the economy approaches the final
equilibrium position.
This task can be performed only by verbal, logical analysis of the causal action of human
and Human Beings.
It is evident that this task is the important one, since it is this analysis that is significant
for human action.
Action moves along a path and is not describable in an unchanging, evenly rotating world.
The world is an uncertain one, and we shall see shortly that we cannot even pursue to its
The Theory of Money and State The Theory of Money and State
and the Misleading Picture of the World of Action.
Finally, the mathematical equations of the evenly rotating economy
describe only a static situation outside of time.
The mathematical economists or econometricians have been trying
without success for years to analyze the path of equilibrium
as well as the equilibrium conditions themselves.
Econometrician Frederic Tsoyton recently admitted that such attempts cannot succeed.
All that mathematics can describe is the final equilibrium point.
The mathematical equations of the evenly rotating economy differ drastically from the mathematical equations of physics,
which describe a process through time.
It is precisely through this description of constant quantitative relations in the motion of elements that mathematics renders its great service in natural science.
How different is economics, where mathematics at best can only inadequately describe a timeless end result?
For a discussion of the logical method of economics, see Human Action by Ludwig von Mises and The Neglected Work, The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy by J. E. Cairns.
If any mathematics has been used in this treatise, it has been only along the lines charted by Cairns.
I have no desire to deny that it may be possible to employ geometrical diagrams or mathematical
formulae for the purpose of exhibiting economic doctrines reached by other paths.
What I venture to deny is the doctrine which Professor Jevons and others have advanced,
that economic knowledge can be extended by such means, that mathematics can be applied
to the Development of Economic Truth as it has been applied to the development of mechanical
and physical truth, and unless it can be shown either that mental feelings admit of being
expressed in precise quantitative forms, or on the other hand that economic phenomena
do not depend on mental feelings, I am unable to see how this conclusion can be avoided.
The use of the mathematical concept of function is particularly inappropriate in a science
of human action.
On the one hand, action itself is not a function of anything, since function implies definite,
unique mechanical regularity and determination.
On the other hand, the mathematics of simultaneous equations dealing in physics with unmotivated
Motion stresses mutual determination.
In human action, however, the known causal force of action unilinearly determines the
results.
This gross misconception by mathematically inclined writers on the study of human action
was exemplified during a running attack on Eugen Boehm-Bawerk, one of the greatest of
all economists, by Professor George Stigler.
Yet the postulate of continuity of utility and demand functions, which is unrealistic
only to a minor degree and essential to analytic treatment, is never granted.
A more important weakness is Boehm-Bawerk's failure to understand some of the most essential
elements of modern economic theory, the concepts of mutual determination and equilibrium developed
by the use of the theory of simultaneous equations. Mutual determination is spurned for the older
concept of cause and effect. The weakness displayed here is not that of Boehm-Bawerk,
but of those like Professor Stigler, who attempt vainly and fallaciously to construct economics
on the model of mathematical physics, specifically of classical mechanics. Stigler appends a
A footnote to the above paragraph, which is meant as the coup de grâce to Boehm-Bawerk.
Boehm-Bawerk was not trained in mathematics.
Mathematics, it must be realized, is only the servant of logic and reason, and not their
master.
Training in mathematics is no more necessary to the realization of its uselessness for,
and Inapplicability to the Sciences of Human Action than, for example, training in agricultural
techniques is essential to knowing that they are not applicable on board an ocean liner.
Indeed, training in mathematics without adequate attention to the epistemology of the Sciences
of Human Action is likely to yield unfortunate results when applied to the latter, as this
example demonstrates.
To return to the concept of the evenly rotating economy, the error of the mathematical economists
is to treat it as a real and even ideal state of affairs, whereas it is simply a mental
concept enabling us to analyze the market and human activities on the market.
It is indispensable because it is the goal, though ever shifting, of action and exchange.
On the other hand, the data can never remain unchanged long enough for it to be brought
into being.
We cannot conceive in all consistency of a state of affairs without change or uncertainty,
and therefore without action.
The evenly rotating state, for example, would be incompatible with the existence of money,
the very medium at the center of the entire exchange structure.
For the money commodity is demanded and held only because it is more marketable than other
commodities, that is, because the holder is more sure of being able to exchange it.
In a world where prices and demands remain perpetually the same, such demand for money
would be unnecessary.
Money is demanded and held only because it gives greater assurance of finding a market,
and because of the uncertainties of the person's demands in the near future.
If everyone, for example, knew his spending precisely over his entire future, and this
would be known under the evenly rotating system, there would be no point in his keeping a cash
balance of money.
It would be invested, so that money would be returned in precisely the needed amounts
on the day of expenditure.
But if no one wishes to hold money, there will be no money, and no system of money prices.
The entire monetary market would break down.
Thus, the evenly rotating economy is unrealistic, for it cannot actually be established, and
we cannot even conceive consistently of its establishment.
But the idea of the evenly rotating economy is indispensable in analyzing the real economy.
Through hypothesizing a world where all change has worked itself out, we can analyze the
The Directions of Actual Change