Why do wrong currents of thought recur?
Historically, there have been absurd theories and practices that have been branded as "science" in an attempt to control the direction of human evolution. These theories often ignore the fundamental differences between humans and animals, and abuse the scientific method.
For example, Professor Ivanov of the Soviet Union once conducted a horrific experiment called the "Human-Ape Hybrid Experiment" at the Sukhumi ape breeding base. Their goal is to create a group of indefatigable super-soldiers.
Behind this attempt is an over-esteem of science and unrealistic illusions about human evolution. However, this practice is clearly an abuse of science and a serious violation of human dignity.
We cannot allow science to be a tool to promote some political or social ideal. Instead, science is supposed to be used to reveal the laws of nature, help us better understand the world, and serve the well-being of humanity.
Therefore, we need to have a deeper understanding of science and think more rigorously. We need to prevent science from being misused, from becoming an instrument of some kind of power or ideal.
We need to use science to advance humanity, not to control or disrupt human evolution.
The ideal of "utopia" was once practiced by scientific methods in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other places, that is, to achieve fairness and equality in production and distribution by replacing the market economy with a planned economy, so as to build an ideal society free from crisis, exploitation and inequality.
However, the result was the opposite, with economic collapse, political turmoil, human destruction, and civilizational regression ensuing. Humanity once believed that science and reason would bring prosperity, but in the end it was a bloody hell.
In his book The Counter-Revolution in Science, Hayek warned us that the wrong way can lead to the misuse of the scientific method when studying human society. Although experiments such as social Darwinism and the planned economy have gone bankrupt, the remnants of positivist economics remain.
One of Mises's greatest predictions of the 20th century was that utopian experiments would only bring chaos, want, and slavery, and the planned economy of the Soviet Union was proof of this prophecy.
1.Samuelson predicted that the Soviet economy would overtake the United States in 1997, but the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and Samuelson, despite the large amount of data at his disposal, had a wrong frame of thinking, causing fallacies to take over his mind and thus embark on the wrong path.
2."Positivist" economics, represented by Samuelson, tried to summarize theories by induction, but the economic growth data of the Soviet Union was an illusion, not the truth.
The Austrian school of economics argues that economics is the study of human beings and must be rooted in the study of human nature. 3.Subjective axiology is one of the basic theories of the Austrian school, which believes that the "value" of commodities is given by people, and can only be divided into high and low, and cannot measure the specific size of value.
Because there is no such thing as a scale that can truly measure subjective feelings such as "satisfaction".
The core idea remains the same, and the language is reorganized. 1.The external material world can be measured precisely, for example, the volume of a bottle of water can be measured in milliliters, ** in yuan.
And the inner world, such as human needs and feelings, is difficult to measure. This is a problem that needs to be solved urgently. 2.There is an omnipotent organization that has mastered the factors of production of the whole society, such as steel, labor, etc., and can plan the production of any goods and services to meet the needs of the population.
But the problem is that when they ask the needs of the population, each person's needs may differ depending on the order of importance in their hearts, and some may even hide their true thoughts.
3.When the economic activity is over, due to the lack of ** signals, this organization can only count how many tons of steel are consumed, how much labor, etc., but it cannot calculate what the total cost is.
At the same time, since each person's inner world is unknowable, they cannot know whether everyone's needs are being met or not, and the total return of economic activity cannot be calculated. 4.In such a situation, we cannot be sure whether scarce resources are being used efficiently, and society may fall into scarcity and chaos.
The crux of the problem, Mises argues, is the lack of a bridge between "immeasurable human subjective feelings" and "measurable objective material world", i.e., the "real**" that comes out of market transactions
5.In the paradise on earth depicted by utopianism, since there is no private property rights, there is no free trade, so it is impossible to produce "** and therefore no economic calculations."
Over time, the economy will inevitably collapse. 6.This leads to the logic of "positivism": the problem is not in the theory itself, but in the real world. The advantages and disadvantages of the two sides are not only reflected in the judgment of specific problems, but also in the proof of the laws of basic economics.
For example, the "Giffen commodity problem" discovered by the Englishman Giffen in Ireland clearly violates the "demand theorem", that is, the higher the demand, the less demand. This is the conflict between the real world and the theory, and we need to solve it.
Faced with this difficult problem that shook the foundations of economics, "positivist" economics and the Austrian School took immediate action. We can see the significant difference between the two sides from the research and argument of the two.
Positivist economists Jason and Miller conducted an experiment in Hunan Province to randomly distribute rice shopping coupons to the local poor, and they found that the "Giffen commodity problem" did exist - subsidies led to a decrease in the demand of the poor population for rice, and after the subsidies were removed, people began to buy rice urgently.
This left them in a state of confusion: Could it be that the "needs theorem" is wrong? However, in the view of the Austrian school, this dilemma can be easily solved by simply reasoning about human nature.
They believe that "the motivation of human behavior is the ranking of the importance of one's various desires". After satisfying basic physiological needs, people will have less demand for other goods in the way that the "needs theorem" is presented.
In Ireland, due to the Great Famine, "living" has become the first need of people, as long as they have money, the first thing to buy is potatoes, and people's demand for potatoes will inevitably decrease - once a full meal needed 3 potatoes, but now only half a potato can be satisfied.
Therefore, the "demand theorem" still holds. It is ironic that the Austrian School, which has been hugely successful, has been continuously marginalized and even accused of being "detached from reality".
In addition to the inevitable failure of the planned economy, Mises also succeeded in the Great Depression of 1929, not only saving his own net worth, but also successfully saving the Austrian economy.
Keynes, the "father of macroeconomics", and Owen Fisher, the "first-generation monetarist", continued to study the U.S. economy and trends, and as a result, the two suffered heavy losses in the Great Depression - half of Keynes's wealth went down the drain, and Owen Fisher not only lost all his wealth, but also owed huge debts and died in poverty and illness.
Not only did the Great Depression of the 20th century prove the anticipation of the Austrian School, but also the 2008 global financial tsunami that we experienced a decade ago: Wall Street investor Peter Schiff based on the Austrian theory of the 2008 financial crisis.
As early as 2001, the U.S. Congressman and Austrian economist Ron Paul warned that a bubble in the housing market would trigger a recession. And "positivist" economics, when faced with the Queen of England's question, "Why didn't you make it to the financial crisis", replied: "It is not our theory that is wrong, but the real world." ”
In his book The Counter-Revolution of Science, Hayek lamented: "Positivist "economics" treats man as a lifeless atom and tries to describe him with unpredictable mathematical models. ”
This is a classic misuse of the scientific method.
The Counter-Revolution of Science is a completely different book from positivist economics. The core concept of Austrian economics is "individualism", emphasizing that the basis of economics must be to pay thorough attention to individual people, abandon the study of abstract "countries, societies, and nations", and pay attention to concrete and vivid people.
The book also follows the idea of Kant's philosophy, arguing that human knowledge is not only acquired through experience, but also has a **, and that is human reason. Kant believed that the human mind has a unique structure, and the knowledge derived from this structure is called "transcendental knowledge", which is the underlying operating system for human beings to understand the external world, and "empirical knowledge" is only the data input into this operating system.
Mises and Rothbard added a branch of economics to Kant's "transcendental theory" through The Behavior of Man and The Economy, and the State, and they constructed the edifice of economics with several self-evident axioms.
In Aupai Economics, we don't need to memorize complex theorems or transformations of higher mathematics, we just need a logical brain and an empathy to understand human nature, and the edifice of economics will magically stand in your mind.
This is the charm of Austrian economics. In the field of human ethics and morality, the debate between Austrian economics and positivist economics is equally intense. For example, in the Leshan incident in China, 30,000 bees stung three cows, and as a result, the bees lost their bee needles and all died.
Beekeepers and cattle herders are pitted against each other, and mainstream economics argues that the boundaries of property rights should be arranged according to the total cost to society. However, the Austrian school disagreed, arguing that Coase's theorem infringed on private property rights, blurring the boundaries of property rights and preventing society from forming stable expectations of property rights.
Private property rights are the foundation of a market economy, and only a stable expectation of property rights can promote the prosperity of a country.
Coase's theorem states that whoever costs less bears more responsibility. However, this cost is not only an economic cost, but should also include a psychological cost. For example, the bee-stung cows raised by a farmer and his wife are irreplaceable for the couple, although their value cannot be measured in monetary terms.
Just as the wind and rain can enter at will, but the king cannot infringe on private property rights. Coase's theorem calculates the sum of each person's property rights as a whole, but is this reasonable?
Let's illustrate with a small example. Xiao Wang and Xiao Ming's salaries are both 10,000 yuan. Now, Xiao Wang is negotiating with the boss that he is willing to reduce Xiao Ming's salary to 5,000 yuan and increase his salary to 20,000 yuan, so that their overall income has increased from 20,000 yuan to 250,000 yuan.
However, will Xiao Ming agree to this proposal? Because the value between different people cannot be summed as a whole.
Hayek pointed out in his book The Counter-Revolution of Science that scientologists are obsessed with abstract concepts such as "society", "state", and "class", describing man as a "free atom", pursuing value neutrality, expelling value judgments, and ultimately leading human society to enslavement.
With their blind worship of advanced technology and misuse of the scientific method, they have caused a century of catastrophe for mankind. Nowadays, we are once again mired in fatal conceit, whether it is East Asia, Europe and the United States, there are scientific and technological elites who have put forward the idea of resurrecting the "planned economy", and some people even think that human beings can be designed at will through gene editing technology to achieve the elimination of disease and poverty and improve the IQ of human beings.
However, these currents of thought are all wrong, and their roots lie in the approach of scientism. Although we have rejected erroneous trends of thought such as "Nazism" and "Social Darwinism", we have flocked to the approach of scientism.
We need to realize that criticizing the wrong trend of thought can only change the wrong trend of thought, and we need the wrong side.
They tend to ignore the important fact that the object of scientific research is usually a matter with definite, specific properties, such as the Earth, the Moon, iron, etc.
The basic premise of science is that the properties and properties of these substances do not change under specific observational conditions. However, the object of study in the field of social sciences is the subjective world of human beings, that is, the human mind.
Human nature is complex and changeable, and human behavior will change depending on different concepts. Human society is a bottom-up "emergent phenomenon", and fundamentally speaking, it cannot be precise. "
Scientologists"The refined models constructed ignore the basic premises of science and are in fact a rebellion against science. Teacher Liu Yejin once said: "As long as the progress of science continues, it is inevitable that people will use scientific and engineering thinking to organize the rational conceit of human cooperation order."
Therefore, the book "The Counter-Revolution of Science" will always be of great value. Some people mistakenly think that "The Counter-Revolution of Science" is concerned with "the direction in which economics should go", but in essence, it is wary of the abuse of reason, and is really concerned with the big question of what humanity will choose to go between freedom and slavery.