An instrument of next week's ah-gotta-hav-one gadgetry, sustained by a Hav-a-Chat mentality and confirmed in their magical world of bastardized grammar?

Squeers has disqualified himself from participating in the discussion by his earlier assertion that nothing can be either proved or disproved, thus disclaiming rationality as a method. His criticism of others for enjoying life for its own sake, while he plays on the internet, displays pious hypocrisy.

Tanver claims rationality as a method but fails to provide any rational justification for his conclusions against the market, or in favour of policy.

It is axiomatic that voluntary exchanges are mutually advantageous, otherwise they wouldn’t take place. Tanver makes no attempt to prove his claim that this view is “flawed”. Homo economicus, the personification of the businessman, is a straw man, because in reality man seeks to satisfy his values in order of their importance to him, regardless whether or not they are monetary values.

The idea that our instincts for fairness and sympathy establish a case against voluntary co-operation – “the market” - and in favour of co-operation based on force and threats – “policy” – is confused. Man has evolved social emotions precisely because the division of labour is more productive than labour in isolation.

As for Keynes, those who think we can make real wealth – roads and bridges and hospitals – by printing paper are in no position to criticize the irrationality of others.

Tanver assumes that the GFC proves his assumption of the irrationality of markets. But while the price and supply of money was at all times controlled by government, it is completely irrational to blame the resulting mess on “laissez-faire hubris”, rather than its opposite “central planning hubris” or “policy hubris” – especially when the entire argument against political manipulation of the money supply for the sake of cheap credit is precisely that it causes the boom and bust cycle, by promoting instant grat over savings.

Tanveer introduces the supposed virtues of policy without the slightest attempt to justify it. He reasons simply “because problem, therefore policy is the solution”.

But if the original problem is man’s imperfection, policy could only be a solution if it could presumptively supply perfection, or a better outcome...

...This prepresupposes exactly the same of policy as religion presupposes of God. Tanver’s assumes that in the State we supposedly have available a source of knowledge, capacity and moral goodness over and above human imperfection. This is not a scientific belief, it is a superstitious belief.

The fact that our brains are plastic in the sense that they can to some degree assign functions to different parts provides no justification of any policy.

Problems are no justification of policy unless the government can do better. For example with brain development and child protection, government’s outcomes by every measure – abuse in care, illiteracy, mental health, suicide, teenage pregnancy, homelessness, unemployment, you name it – are far *worse* than the ordinary standards of parental responsibility in the community.

The fact of an alleged general preference for short-term over long-term reward provides no reason in favour of government paternalism or regulation. Firstly the *method* of blandly assuming a God-like benevolence and beneficence on the part of the State is rationally impermissible.

Also, at least in an unhampered market, people’s desire for instant grat must be balanced against the future cost which themselves must pay. Interest rates are the price of preferring gratification now to later. Monetary policy is to permanently promote cheap credit by *lowering* interest rates i.e. promoting short term over long term satisfaction. This affects the entire economy, value system, and social morality. Thus the general phenomenon of high time preference - consumerism, debt, etc. - that Tanver criticizes is a *government epidemic*, not a market epidemic – promoted first and foremost by the social democrats!

Tanver’s entire *method* of assuming an intrinsic conflict between individual self-interest and the common good, with the state available to supply the want of man’s virtue and reason, has no basis in reason or evidence and no better than a superstition.

Man’s social nature is in no way an argument against voluntary or in favour of involuntary relationships: on the contrary.

www.mises.org

PH,
I've in the past made the perfectly valid observation that nothing can be "ultimately" proved or disproved. I've advised you before to look at Rorty or Fish or Anti-foundationalism generally. Also look at Kant on Hume and Heideggar on Husserl. Then look at Roy Bhaskar.
Your trouble, PH, is that you cannot conceive of a reality outside capitalist economics.
As I've also said before, I would welcome a return to free marketism, the shortest path to emancipation.

Squeers
Unfortunately, appeal to absent authority and mind-reading are no advance on your original illogic of denying the possibility of rational proof or disproof.

You still haven’t answered whether Pythagoras’s theorem can be proved or disproved?

Nor dared to deny that the laws of physics or logic apply to human action?

You have in no way shown any reason why coerced social relations should be preferred to voluntary social relations.

Peter Hume,
I hope to have more time to duel with you over your Mises obsession when it doesn't take me too far off track and I have the time.
In the meantime, I've made some thoughtful comments on this thread and I'd rather have them interrogated. Otherwise, I doubt there's anything of interest to me here.

OUG,
I'd be interested to know what your concept of mind is.
The Psyches are supposed to be trained to take a meta-view of their diagnostics, but I suspect that at the end of the day they're servants of the system. Conclusions come too easily in all the sciences.