[xorbie]

Now reading the rest.

[ QUOTE ]

So you can say that the drug addict would really "prefer" not to shoot up, because he knows that its bad for him and his kids and whatnot but then still does, and that's fine. But that isn't the kind of preference that Austrians are talking about. Austrians talk about preferences revealed by actions; at the moment he took the action, he prefered taking that action to the available alternatives. How he formed that preference scale is not relevent to the study of purposeful action as such. That is not to say that it is not interesting, or cannot be the subject of scientific inquiry. It is both. But just like quantum mechanics is interesting and scientific but is not structural engineering, so too is the study of how and why preferences form interesting and scientific but not praxeology (Mises actually had a name for a science like that, thymology, but it never caught on).

[/ QUOTE ]

Fair enough. We can talk about it that way, and I'll have to invent some word for what I, and most everyone else, means when they say "prefer". I hope you will at least allow me to stop you every step of the way and explain that if we use "preference" your way, that what I normally believe to be good and important about "preference" may no longer hold.

[ QUOTE ]

Similarly, what "rational" means to an Austrian is not "logical", or "perfect", or "infallible", or "dispationate", or "far thinking", or "sane", or "profit maximizing" or any of that. It simply means purposeful. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. You could be completely insane and think that shaving your head and painting your ass green will bring world peace. But you still shave your head and paint your ass green purposefully in the belief that it will help you achieve some desired end, and that is the only sense in which an Austrian ever claims that man is a "rational actor".

[/ QUOTE ]

And we know, quite well, that this same crazy man might shave his head but then paint his ass brown instead of green. Even according to your rather constrained definition, people are not rational. Their actions don't line up with either their stated "preferences" or their previous revealed "preferences". And it's not because they don't have the information, it's because our (human) brain does not make decisions correctly always.

[ QUOTE ]

It doesn't mean they won't regret their action either, regardless of whether the action achieved or failed to achieve the intended goal. Austrians would simply say that if they experience regret, they have revealed a mistake, either of choice of ends or means or lack of information or what have you, and for their trouble reaped a psychic loss rather than a psychic profit.

[/ QUOTE ]

So in a nutshell, we do not always prefer our "revealed preference".

[ QUOTE ]

Austrian economics makes no value judgements about which ends are good or bad. Your end could be to destroy civilization, and a proper understanding of Austrian economics could help you achieve that end. It is truly value neutral (unlike a lot of mainstream economics which sneak in normative bits through the back door, imo, but that's another thread).

[/ QUOTE ]

All this tells me is that Austrian economics is completely useless as a stand alone discipline (and I'm not claiming you've said anything different), which is what makes its usurping of language all the more annoying.

[ QUOTE ]

But what Austrian economics can do is tell you, via the logic of purposeful action as such, is whether the means you choose to achieve your ends are good or bad, in terms of achieving your stated ends. Your end can be to help the poor, and you might choose the means of a minimum wage, and economic analysis can show you that this is a poor choice of means because it has the opposite effect. Your end could be to help the poor get access to good quality affordable housing, and you might choose the means of rent controls, and economic analysis can show you that this is a poor choice of means because it has the opposite effect.

[/ QUOTE ]

So what would you say about my preferences if, after I read your post, I choose to enact rent control? Since, you know, that is the subject at hand. It seems like Austrian economics has a good deal to say about results and economic behavior and all that good stuff and [censored] all to say with the topic at hand.

[ QUOTE ]

You have fundamentally [censored] up preconceived notions about what my beliefs are, and your tirade makes that clear.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which of my points was wrong? I'm not interested in semantics, so if you need me to clarify something, just ask. I want to know what of all the empirically proven things that I presented are somehow wrong, and I don't want to hear about how someone uses language differently.