mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) (02/02/85)
Mr Carnes showed, by his earlier questions concerning interest and
profit, that he is quite unfamiliar with the work of Bohm Bawerk. Yet
Carnes continues to argue against Bohm Bawerk, and does so by long-winded
quotation and citation of opposing economists. Since Mr Carnes is not
familiar with the work of Bohm Bawerk, he cannot directly judge the merits
of the counter arguments that he summons; he must rely on the authority of
the economists that he quotes. Which is to say that Mr Carnes is doing the
very thing that he wrongfully accused me of: he is arguing from authority.
But, then, hypocrisy is nothing new to the net.
The first authority that Mr Carnes quotes is Professor Sowell (as Mr
Carnes guesses, I have considerable admiration for Sowell). It is clear
from Sowell's comments that they were generated before he had recovered
from the brain-damage that he sufferred at Howard. Whether or not we
interpret Marx exactly as did Bohm Bawerk is somewhat irrelevant, which is
why I directed net-users to *Capital and Interest* instead of *Karl Marx
and the Close of His System*. Marx and other economists held that the
phenomenon of profit was indicative of exploitation of the worker. Bohm
Bawerk demonstrated otherwise (I outlined this demonstration in an earlier
entry).
Mr Carnes is quite correct that the habit of most economists of
assuming a capitalist framework represents a weakness; my area of interest
is cliometrics. But then Mr Carnes asks us to adopt 'DIALECTICAL
reasoning'; such a move would be religious rather than scientific. Hegel
argued that things developed dialetically because: 1) Dialectical reasoning
was the highest form of reasoning; 2) God used the highest form of
reasoning; and 3) the universe was God's mind at work. The reader may, of
course, object to points 1 and 3. But things get far worse with Marx, who
throws God out of the picture. Thus, what had been a logical deduction
from doubtful assumptions degenerates into a dogma.
Mr Carnes finds my flat-Earth analogy offensive. I find his variation
on the argument from authority, which we may perhaps call 'the argument
from dissent', offensive; and the flat-Earth case was merely a logical
extension of his nonsense.
Mr Carnes quotes Robert Kuttner (who, in turn, quotes Robert
Heilbroner) on mainstream economics; and the comments therein made seem
basically accurate (tho perhaps somewhat overstated). But here we have yet
another netnews straw-man! I'm not a champion of mainstream economic
orthodoxy. In previous entries I have: directed the reader to Ludwig
Edler von Mises (a man that the mainstream made a point of ignoring);
supported denationalization of the money-supply (when I took this position
during a conversation with Anna Schwartz, her response was a smirk) and
disassociated myself from Friedmanite Monetarists; and objected to the
models of Pure and Perfect Competition.
Waiting for it to roll back down,
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
The Apoplectic Economist