Saturday, December 28, 2013

Understanding Horowitz, the GMU Austrians and Bleeding Heart Libertarians

At the Horwitz Responds (Sort Of) post, an anonymous commenter provides some historical perspective:
Also lets not forget only very recently Horowitz had an article out that declared Mises to actually be a subjectivist. Not in the sense of subjective value preference, but in the sense of being able to know truth at all. If you even know the slightest thing about Austrian rationalist economics you would realise Mises definitely did not have this opinion.

To understand why Horowitz, the GMU Austrians, Bleeding Heart Libertarians are the way they are, you must read this piece by Murray Rothbard.
http://mises.org/daily/2337/

The genesis of their ridiculous approach to libertarianism and Austrianism, comes from their teachers during the 1980's, Don Lavoie and Diedre McClosky. Basically they were taught a form of nihilistic scepticism, that man cannot know any objective truth, that ethics and economics cannot be rationally deduced from self evident first principles, because all knowledge is a subjective whim and emotion.

This is why they dismiss the rationalist method of Rothbard and Hoppe, pay lip service to Mises, and instead worship at the altar of FA Hayek.

So what is the logical end result of believing there is no objective truth or ethics? It leads directly to an pragmatic, social engineering, progressive, do gooder view of coercive institutions.

11 comments:

  1. Horowitz claims John Stuart Mill is a classical liberal. This is just one of the proofs of the distortions used by the hermeneutians to twist "Austrian economics" in ways that enable them to inject empiricism into the human science of praxeology. He and his kindred are perverse in their interpretations and in their objectives.

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  2. Coordination Problem sounds like a blog you'd read when you weren't sure which socks to wear with which tie.

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    1. Or when you are not able to rub your belly and pat your head simultaneously.

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    2. or if you are interested in the economics of Hayek.http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=110&Itemid=27

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  3. Bleeding heart libertarians? I'm not sure I know what you mean.

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  4. Steve Horwitz, who in a bit of juvenile spite – defriended me on Facebook, is of little consequence to me (except his economics are often very good) and his “bleeding heart” libertarians, who spend so much obtuse time trying to persuade us that libertarians can be politically correct if they try really hard –are not worth much time. But, the frequent effort on this blog to be the arbiter of libertarianism is also annoying, as is Stephan Kinsella --who thinks Mr. Wenzel is a plagiarizing bad libertarian –but Kinsella defriended me too.

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    1. Steve's defrending you is a great example of his belief that "Libertarianism should be joyous and open, not angry and closed."

      www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/12/horwitz-responds-sort-of.html

      ...unless you were vulgar in some way...What do you think caused him to take such measures?

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  5. "But, the frequent effort on this blog to be the arbiter of libertarianism is also annoying."

    Yes, sometimes it can be annoying.
    But much more annoying is when some people think libertarianism is anything they want it to be; a kind of "anything goes" libertarianism where they support ideas or concepts that directly contradict libertarian first principles (the non-aggression axiom and private property rights).

    And so you have (to name but one example) people like Cathy Reisenwitz who claim that "slut shaming" or any really 'hurtful' comments are a form of aggression and should be against the law.
    You have people who write articles like "the libertarian case for re-instituting the draft" or "the libertarian case for a basic living wage for all" or things like that at a so-called libertarian think tank like CATO..

    So there most certainly should be SOME kind of arbitration of what libertarianism is all about. It is after all a specific philosophy and not just an inclusive fad for people disillusioned with the Democrat/Republican duopoly..
    Libertarianism is a philosophy of individual freedom; NOT an ideological refugee camp.

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    1. Exactly. It would be like a philosopher who called him/herself a Kantian, but who believed that the color red was an objective property of roses, and that objective ethical laws could be derived from human instincts and emotions. "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

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  6. "So there most certainly should be SOME kind of arbitration of what libertarianism is all about. It is after all a specific philosophy and not just an inclusive fad for people disillusioned with the Democrat/Republican duopoly..
    Libertarianism is a philosophy of individual freedom; NOT an ideological refugee camp."

    Agreed! Your comment here reminded me of something Tom Woods put up on his blog linking to a Salon article from a self-proclaimed former "libertarian " who decided he was better suited to be a liberal:

    http://tomwoods.com/blog/you-may-punch-me-in-the-face/

    Read through the article- it is a great example of what happens when someone gets the deluded and distorted version of libertarianism: confusion, intellectual destitution, and inevitable departure.

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  7. Great Rothbard article linked. So crushes Soros' idol in one psychoanalytical blow. Wow.

    read it.

    "after all, the positivists, much as they may be reluctant to admit it, also did not descend upon us from Mount Olympus. They grew up in old Vienna, and they found themselves in a Germanic world dominated by protohermeneutical creeds such as Hegelianism as well as by the young Heidegger, who was even then making his mark. After reading and listening to dialectics and protohermeneutics day in and day out, after being immersed for years in the gibberish that they were told constituted philosophy, is it any wonder that they — including for our purposes Popper as well as Carnap, Reichenbach, Schlick, et al. — should finally lash out and exclaim that the whole thing was meaningless or that they should cry out for precision and clarity in language?"

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