Monday, January 5, 2015

The “Incompleteness” of Menger’s Subjectivism, As Viewed by Kirzner and Lachmann



An implementation of subjectivism to the study of economics has always been a key tenet of those who view themselves as operating within the Austrian School’s framework.  As the often repeated quote by Hayek goes, “...it is probably no exaggeration to say that every important advance in economic theory during the last hundred years was a further step in the consistent application of subjectivism.”.[1]  Of course, this “consistent application” is a process that has taken place over time within the school, whose members can hardly be said to hold homogeneous views.  As such, this essay will survey how two members within the school, Israel Kirzner and Ludwig Lachmann, have viewed the work of Carl Menger, the school’s founder, and how they both have found his application of subjectivism incomplete in some form or another.  This essay will not aim to critique their opinions, but merely to exposit them.

Before moving further, it is paramount to explain that both Kirzner and Lachmann respect the work of Menger and have found it instrumental in regards to their own subsequent research and writing.  Kirzner maintains that Menger’s insights remain “...central for economic understanding.”[2] and Lachmann writes, “... there are few pioneers in the history of thought to whom it is given to witness the completion of what they have set in motion.”.[3]  Lachmann goes on to state that there is in fact no criterion by which to judge whether a particular intellectual movement has indeed been completed or has reached its end.  In all, they are intellectual, scientific, processes.   

To cut to the chase, as Kirzner sees it, Menger’s work can be taken as a departure from the view where economic phenomena is shaped and determined purely by a physical environment within which economic activity occurs.  Rather, economic activity is seen as a causal relation among the myriad of consumer preferences within an economy.  Menger’s analysis becomes flawed, according to Kirzner,  because of “...his odd belief that this shaping influence exercised by human wants occurs inexorably and automatically, as it were without the intermediation of the human will.”.[4]  Kirzner links this to another error, wherein Menger’s price theory assumes perfect knowledge among actors.[5] [6] 

Kirzner provides two examples where these errors have been picked up by other economists and held as truths. 

First, as an example, Kirzner mentions that Joseph Schumpeter used Menger’s understanding of “automatic” transitions of consumer demand into appropriate patterns of production, via imputation, to reject Mises’ economic calculation problem as being a dilemma at all for planners who did not have access to market prices.  Schumpeter argued that economic calculation would still be possible, even without market prices, “...from the elementary proposition that consumers in evaluating ('demanding') consumers' goods ipso facto also evaluate the means of production which enter into the production of these goods.”.[7] As Kirzner sees it, Schumpeter was merely using Menger’s own theory to link, automatically, consumer preferences to a correct allocation of production factors.

Secondly, Kirzner maintains that this perfect knowledge assumption was passed on from Menger on to the mainstream, claiming that this “...disturbing flaw in Menger’s subjectivism has, in the modern mainstream version of it, become its most central identifying feature.”.[8]  As a historical view of the period, Kirzner goes on to state that by the 1920s, Austrian economists paid nearly no attention to the problems of uncertainty or the ignorance of economic actors and that this is the case because Menger’s assumption was retained during this period.[9]  He claims that Lionel Robbins' 1932 book, The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, was a major contributor in further exasperating this error.  According to Kirzner, Robbins’ book assumes perfect knowledge at the level of the individual actor within an economy and, as such, this assumption can be extended to the economy as a whole, making it possible to know all desires and possibilities.  Under such a view, the economy is no longer seen as a catallaxy of human activity, but rather, merely as facing an allocation problem that can easily be solved.[10]  Viewed in such a light, Kirzner posits that the mainstream “...expanded the flaw in Menger’s system to the point where the subjectivist element in Menger’s heritage was virtually smothered.”.[11]

Moving on to Lachmann, we find two criticisms of Menger’s incomplete subjectivism.  One such evaluation deals with Menger’s apparent belief in an objective, or as Lachmann puts it, “universal ranking order of preferences”.  Secondly, Lachmann criticizes Menger’s lack of a distinction between the natural and social sciences in regards to exact laws and how this lead him to possibly take a deterministic view of human action .  As Lachmann sees it, these underlying elements may have prevented Menger from taking subjectivism as far as those who have followed in his footsteps. 

Before moving further, it may be worth while to quote a passage from Menger’s Principles of Economics.  Despite never using the word “subjectivism” in his work, or rather, the German variant, it should be clear that Menger did indeed perceive of value as being molded in this way.[12]

As Menger says:


“Value is thus nothing inherent in goods, no property of them, nor an independent thing existing only by itself. It is a judgement economizing men make about the importance of goods at their disposal for the maintenance of their lives and well-being. Hence value does not exist outside the consciousness of men.”[13]


As Lachmann notes, despite this clear representation of the subjectiveness of value, Menger undermines this by seeing “the judgments economizing men make” as being directed towards an objective scale of wants.  To support this claim, Lachmann quotes another passage from Menger’s Principle of Economics, merely a few pages after the quote mentioned above.  The emphasis below is mine:


“The maintenance of life depends neither on having a comfortable bed nor on having a chessboard, but the use of these goods contributes, and certainly in very different degrees, to the increase of our well-being. Hence there can also be no doubt that, when men have a choice between doing without a comfortable bed or doing without a chessboard, they will forego the latter more readily than the former.”[14]


As Lachmann sees it, such a view leads Menger to infer, in error, that a universal order of wants exists in all individuals.  As such, we would be able to predict the choices each individual will make.  Furthermore, Lachmann sees little room for any changes in preferences in such a mode of thought.[15]

As Lachmann puts it, in Menger’s mode of thought, individuals can frequently err in their judgment of wants, but this mis-judging is always away from an objectively ordered scale and “...as we can only mis-judge that which exists objectively, the subjectivism of our conscious minds contrasts sharply with the objective, almost physiological, nature of our wants.”.[16]  If this was the case, as Lachmann points out, following Menger’s thought, only one method of action could be objectively efficient.

Moving on to the second critique of Menger made by Lachmann, we find that it is a metaphysical one in regard to exact laws.  According to Lachmann, Menger writes in his Untersuchungen that “...in the field of human phenomena exact laws (so-called ‘laws of nature’) are attainable under the same conditions as in that of natural phenomena.”.[17]  As such, Lachmann interprets Menger as viewing no difference between the natural and social sciences, in regards to the operation of their laws. 

Moving on from Menger’s homogeneous view of the operation of exact laws in all sciences, according to Lachmann, he distinguishes these from “empirical laws”.  These empirical laws can be said to rest on observation and, as compared to exact laws, may have exceptions to their applicability.  Menger uses the law of demand as an example of their distinction.

Menger sees the law of demand as not just explaining that a rise in demand, all else equal, will correspond with a rise in price, but that under specific conditions, that this price rise can be exactly and quantitatively determined.[18]  As such, the specific conditions he outlines are that all the participants must maximize their utility and as a result, they must be free of error and ignorance — essentially a world of perfect knowledge.  In essence, such a world is radically different than our own and we cannot find such laws in the real world.

As Lachmann quotes Menger, such exact laws are:

“...unempirical when tested by reality in its full complexity. But what else does this prove than that the results of exact research do not find their criteria in experience in the above sense? The above law is, in spite of everything, true, completely true, and of the highest significance for the theoretical understanding of price phenomena as soon as one looks at it from that standpoint appropriate for exact research. If one looks at it from the point of view of realistic research, to be sure, one arrives at contradictions…but in this case the error lies not in the law, but in the false perspective.”[19]


Stemming from this, Lachmann asks how Menger reconciled subjectivism with the determinism of the exact laws.  Lachmann asks, "In a world governed by exact laws, how much room is there for individual choice and decision?".[20]  As Lachmann sees it, Menger did not see any problem with this dualistic approach.  To support this he quotes a passage from Menger’s Untersuchungen, where Menger states that the starting point and end point of all human economizing is strictly determined. Menger goes on to say that:


“Arbitrary judgment, error, and other influences can, and actually do, bring it about that acting men take different roads from a strictly given starting-point to a just as strictly determined goal of their action. It is nevertheless certain that, in the above circumstances, only one road can be the most efficient.”[21]


Lachmann wonders how a “strictly determined goal of action” can be reconciled with free will and choice and what this means for subjectivism.  Despite this problem, Lachmann praises Menger’s introduction of the concepts of error and ignorance as foreshadowing further developments in economics to be made in the 20th century. 

In all, both Kirzner and Lachmann find errors in the works of Menger, but they both consider him an important figure in the history of economic thought.  As Lachmann describes Menger, he was “...an Aristotelian who had to live in an age of triumphant positivism, was a nineteenth century subjectivist who was unable to rid himself of his reliance on objective wants and his quest for ‘exact laws’. But at the same time his work points beyond itself and beyond his day to important issues with which we are today intensely concerned.”.[22]
      

  




[1] Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. The Counter-Revolution of Science. 2nd ed. Glencoe, Ill.: Liberty Press, 1979.  pg. 52.
[2] Kirzner, Israel. "The Subjectivism of Austrian Economics." In New Perspectives on Austrian Economics, edited by G. Meijer. London: Routledge, 1995. pg. 12.
[3] Lachmann, Ludwig M. "Carl Menger and the Incomplete Revolution of Subjectivism." In Expectations and the Meaning of Institutions, edited by Don Lavoie. London: Routledge, 1994. pg. 213.
[4] Kirzner, pg. 13.
[5] Ibid.
[6] This assertion seems to be in direct conflict with William Jaffe’s interpretation of Menger’s work.  Jaffe writes that Menger viewed humans as ““...bumbling, erring, ill-informed creature[s], plagued with uncertainty, forever hovering between alluring hopes and haunting fears....”.
Jaffe, William. "Menger, Jevons and Walras De-homogenized." In William Jaffé's Essays on Walras, edited by Donald A. Walker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. pg. 321.
[7] Schumpeter, Joseph. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper, 1942. pg. 175.
[8] Kirzner, pg. 14.
[9] Ibid.
[10] This argument is very similar to one given by James M. Buchanan.  See Buchanan, James M. What Should Economists Do? Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979. for more on this.
[11] Kirzner, pg. 15.
[12] Lachmann, 1994, pg. 214.
[13] Menger, as quoted in Ibid.
[14] Menger, as quoted in Ibid.
[15] Ibid. pg. 215.
[16] Ibid. pg. 214-215.
[17] Menger, as quoted in Ibid. pg. 215.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Menger, as quoted in Ibid.
[20] Ibid. pg. 216.
[21] Menger, as quoted in Ibid.
[22] Ibid. pg. 217.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Mises' Interest in Free Banking Post Human Action



Bettina Bien-Greaves is an important, though, sadly, somewhat forgotten figure within the American Austrian School.  She was one of Mises’ most devoted disciples and attended nearly every one of Mises’ NYU seminars.[1]  During these seminars, Mises would often propose possible research questions in an effort to pique the minds of his students to various topics, which Bien-Greaves recorded on handwritten and typed notecards.[2]  Below is a list of some of the research questions that Mises proposed to his students on the topic of free banking, showing that he, at the very least, had an interest in it.[3]     
  • April 30, 1953
      • Book suggestion: History of the abolition of free banking.
  • April 30, 1953
      • Book suggestion: "There is no book that answers the question, 'What ideas were responsible for the fact that the 19th century liberals did not apply the liberal principles to banking?' This is one of the most important historical problems because this was in fact the problem that brought about the fall of the liberal policies, of capitalism, etc."
  • December 6, 1956
      • Book suggestion: What did the countries' governments do in order to make credit expansion technically possible? Legal tender legislation? The (illegible) to free the banks from the obligation of redeeming banknotes, etc.?
  • May, 1959
      • Mises' definition of inflation: "an increase in the money supply exceeding the demand for cash holding."[4]
  • December 7, 1961
      • Book suggestion: Historical book on the struggle for free banking.
  • October 7, 1965
      • Book suggestion: Free banking and its disappearance.
  • November 4, 1965
      • A history of the free banking movement. Research in this area would probably involve French and German sources. 
  • April 21, 1966
      • PhD thesis suggestion: Free banking.

[1] See here for a recording of her questioning Mises on an array of topics: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ_dSo1Es4Q
[2] See here for a typed list of these: https://mises.org/etexts/Mises_Research_Ideas.pdf And the typed/handwritten notecard scan: https://mises.org/pdf/misesideas.pdf
[3] Mises discusses free banking and fiduciary media at some length in Human Action, specifically in  the subchapter, "The Money-Substitutes", located in the chapter "Indirect Exchange" (pages 433 - 450 in the 3rd revised Regnery Press edition of the book published in 1966).
[4] The reason I've included this particular note on my list is that most so-called "Free Bankers" use this definition.  On a related note, the 100% reservists maintain that Mises eventually moved to a definition of inflation similar to Rothbard.  If this is the case, this must have occurred after 1959.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Rethinking Economics


Last month, I travelled to New York City for the first ever Rethinking Economics conference being held there.  In short, the student organized conference was orchestrated in an effort to critique what they call “Mainstream Neoclassical Economics” and to bolster a change in pedagogical methods in classrooms.  Now, as an Austrian who views himself in the minority, even in Austrian circles, the conference immediately piqued my interests.  What I experienced at the conference was an agglomeration of talks and panels ranging from topics such as agent based modeling, Post-Keynesian economics, to feminist economics.  In all, I found some sessions extremely insightful, while others were quite dull and unimaginative. 

The first day of the conference, Friday, September 12th, started out quite well with a talk given by two of Rethinking Economics’ founders, Yuan Yang and Thomas Vass.  They provided a brief sketch of the group’s history and how it was formed in response to their disenchanted experiences while studying economics in undergraduate classes all the way up to their doctoral classes. For example, during his talk, Vass explained how he began to have doubts about some of the assumptions and usefulness of some models in his undergraduate experiences only to be told that they would make more sense in graduate classes, but of course, once he reached graduate classes and the same doubts continued, he was told that they would make more sense while taking doctoral classes. It seems to be a neverending spiral into uselessness.  In all, Yang and Vass proposed three questions which would be the themes of the conference:

1)      Why should we rethink economics?
2)      What needs to be rethought, specifically?
3)      How do we rethink economics? 
Another major talk from the first day’s sessions was the “Macroeconomics and Policy Making” panel, featuring Paul Krugman, James Galbraith, and Willem Buiter. The panel was probably the most attended session of the whole conference, filling up the NYU Tishman Auditorium to nearly full capacity.  Despite the panel’s billed name, discussion on central bank policy, for example, was quite lax.  In fact, it only really coming up to any extent in the post panel Q & A session.  Instead of talking about this central issue, the speakers spent a large amount of time discussing climate change and how to enforce particular taxes to mitigate it.  Also of note, throughout the panel, Galbraith would often make exceedingly populist comments, for example railing that the banking profession is replete with fraud and that bankers should be arrested.  In all it was a painful panel to listen to. 



James Galbraith, Paul Krugman, and Willem Buiter


Out of the remaining sessions, there was a hodgepodge dealing with inequality and mentioning Piketty more times than a typical NYC cab driver honks his horn in an hour. Of course, these speakers offered a myriad of typical prescriptions to “mitigate” the issue, such as wealth taxation, guaranteed jobs, and other forms of redistributionism.  In all, these talks were the least enlightening to me and I felt as though they were a bit outside of conference’s stated goals as laid out by the founders in their opening remarks. 




Deirdre McCloskey


Despite these rather pedestrian talks, there were a number of astute and insightful ones.   For example, Steve Keen’s talk on Post-Keynesian economics was really centered on stressing the concept of dynamics in theory.  I wish he could have talked a bit more about uncertainty with the Post-Keynesian framework, but sadly his talk was cut short due to time issues.
Another interesting presentation was given by Philip Mirowski on Saturday evening.  Entitled “Should Economists be Experts in Markets or Experts in Human Nature?”, it examined a wide array of literature and ideas on markets.  Harking back to some of his previous works, such as Against Mechanism or More Heat Than Light, Mirowski pointed out that most of orthodox economics has been done in an attempt to emulate physics and that, as he put it, its humanism is “palpably fake”.  A large chunk of the talk focused on what markets actually are and how they operate as institutions, even outside of human action.  For example, he mentioned a 1993 paper by Gode and Sunder entitled “Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders”.  I haven’t read the paper, but essentially, as Mirowski described it, it centers around an experiment where, similar to Vernon Smith’s market-clearing experiments with humans, “zero-intelligence” robots were able to clear a double auction market.  Mirowski sees this example of  market clearing as evidence that its occurrence in markets is more so attributable to the rule structures of the market institution than the intentionality of those that comprise it.  It almost makes me think of Hayek’s notion of spontaneous order, where certain orders emerge unplanned, not of anyone’s own design.
The next day brought two more interesting sessions; The morning Austrian Economics session, and Peter Boettke talk “What is Left out of Mainstream Economics Textbooks?”. 
Led by Liya Palagashvili, the Austrian session was well attended.  After a brief and competent overview of some major themes in Austrian economics, the floor was opened up to a group discussion.  I was a bit disappointed to hear some of the attendees conflate Austrian economics with libertarianism or other moral or preference positions.  For example, a question was asked on whether Austrians thought Bitcoin was good or bad.  Another example was when one attendee claimed that Austrian theory states that fractional reserve banking is fraud.   Of course, such comments are grossly in error as Austrian theory itself is wertfrei, or, said another way, value free.  One’s own prescriptions or value judgments are outside the scope of the theory itself.  Thus, Austrian theory has nothing to say on whether Bitcoin is good or bad or if fractional reserve banking is fraud or not.[1]
Peter Boettke’s talk was an interesting look at the distinction of what he calls mainline and mainstream economics.  As he has explained in the past together with Fink and Smith, the mainline tradition “... focus their scholarly efforts on studying how … individuals, acting in their own self-interest, create complex social arrangements under the division of labor that align individual interest with the social interest.”, as compared to the mainstream, who seem to follow whatever is the current fashion in scholarship and that  “Rather than focusing their scholarly efforts towards studying the social arrangements that emerge to align individual and social interest, mainstream economists focused their attention on modeling the choice of cognitively perfect individuals in ideal situations, leaving no room for institutional analysis and operative mechanisms to explain how markets work given behavioral deviations from the hypothesized ideal man.”[2] [3]  In essence his talk was an appeal for replacing homo economicus with homo agens.  




Peter Boettke with his talk's title slide.

In all, despite not being overly impressed with all that happned at the conference, it offered a great ability to connect with professors, students, and others who are interested in problems of rethinking economics.  It was fun chatting with both Mirowski and Boettke at the conference, as well as other students about a myriad of topics.  From discussing time and uncertainty with Post-Keynesians, Stigler’s Coase Theorem with Boettke[4], to the differences between Mises and Rothbard with fellow Austrians, the event was worth the trip.



[1] Not even all Austrian economists qua moral theorists see it as fraud either.
[2] Boettke, Peter J., Fink, Alexander and Smith, Daniel J., The Impact of Nobel Prize Winners in Economics: Mainline vs. Mainstream (October 26, 2011). American Journal of Economics and Sociology 71(5): 1219-1249; GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 12-43., 1220-1221.
[3] For more on this, see Boettke’s 2012 work, Living Economics.
[4] See McCloskey’s article “The So-Called Coase Theorem” for more on this.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Who is Ludwig Lachmann?

Here's a link to a slideshow I created for the May, 7th event, "Who is Ludwig Lachmann?", hosted in tandem by the Boston and Manchester Austrian Economics groups:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_rLKTqVqDkxFOTPZ229R6p0vfJ7C8h_MJ36G7ZDvmVE/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

Over the course of the next few weeks, I intend to post a few introductory entries here in regards to Lachmann's life and works.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

About Me


My name is Michael Valcic and Kaleidic Catallaxy will be the blog where I’ll post my thoughts on various aspects of economics from a Lachmannian and Misesian point of view. The name Kaleidic Catallaxy was chosen to stress two notions that I believe are paramount in explaining human action.

Firstly, as George Shackle explained it, kaleidic, stemming from the word kaleidoscope, implies a “…society, interspersing its moments or intervals of order, assurance and beauty with sudden disintegration and a cascade into a new pattern”.[1] This view stresses that we live in a world where individual actors’ subjective valuations, expectations and knowledge are in flux. Some actions may spur coordination, while other actions may destroy them and bring about a variety of new elements. The word catallaxy, as used by Mises and Hayek, stresses that instead of viewing the market as an ‘economy’ – a view where actors have common values and goals – the various properties of a market are outgrowths of the many unique values and goals of the human actors within it.[2]
I’ve had an interest in the social sciences, especially economics and history since I was an adolescent.  Hearing stories about daily life affairs in socialist Yugoslavia from my grandparents with all of their struggles piqued my interest in economics and comparative institutional analysis.  I began to seriously look at the works of Marx and Engels and Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose in an effort to gain some understanding.  Eventually, at some point in 2007, I discovered Mises’ essay, “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth”, which was an enlightening first introduction to Austrian economics.  I soon began to read the other works of Mises, Rothbard, and Böhm-Bawerk, among others.  I would eventually start reading the works of Lachmann around 2010 and have been tremendously influenced by his thought ever since. 
Why would I wait until now to start a blog?  Well, I honestly didn’t care much about writing about economics, especially from a radical subjectivist position, but after an event held in tandem by the Boston and Manchester Austrian Economics groups, I have changed my mind. I presented a brief sketch of Lachmann’s life and important ideas at this event, – see a write up of it by my friend, Andrew Criscione, here[3] – which generated a positive reception.  On top of this, there seems to be a dearth of blogs coming from a similar viewpoint.[4]  So why not start now!
Using Lachmann’s own terms, it seems that his work has been lost “in the wilderness”[5] in the mainstream, as well as in orthodox Austrian thought.  With this blog, I will aim to raise some interest in his work and attempt to find a way out of the wilderness and back to civilization. 


[1] Shackle, G. L. S.. Epistemics and Economics: A Critique of Economic Doctrines. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1991), 76.
[2] Shenoy, Sudha R.. Towards a Theoretical Framework for British and International Economic History: Early Modern England. (Auburn, Ala: Mises Institue, 2010), 47.
[3] Criscione, Andrew. "Resurrecting Lachmann." Boston Austrian Economics Group. http://www.misesboston.com/2014/05/resurrecting-lachmann/ (accessed May 22, 2014).
[4] At the time of this writing, the only two I know of are: http://radicalsubjectivist.wordpress.com/ and http://austrianomnibus.blogspot.com/
[5] Lachmann, Ludwig M., “The Salvage of Ideas” in Expectations and the Meaning of Institutions, ed. Don Lavoie.   (London: Routledge, 1994), 161.