Bootstraps

that “[i]t is customary to say that acting man has a scale of wants or values in his mind when he arranges his actions. On the basis of such a scale he satisfies what is of higher value, i.e., his more urgent wants, and leaves unsatisfied what is of lower value, i.e., what is a less urgent want. There is no objection to such a presentation of the state of affairs. However, one must not forget that the scale of values or wants manifests itself only in the reality of action. These scales have no independent existence apart from the actual behavior of individuals. The only source from which our knowledge concerning these scales is derived is the observation of a man’s actions. Every action is always in perfect agreement with the scale of values or wants because these scales are nothing but an instrument for the interpretation of a man’s acting.” (Human Action V1)

A number of things to say in response to this perspective.

First, I’ve been hearing a lot in the news lately about how the arts are suffering so terribly from the current recession. Though this is unfortunate for practitioners and patrons of the arts, it makes perfect sense. On the “scale of value”, art is a luxury that will be indulged only when affordable. When the well runs dry, it will be one of the first things to go. This is because, of all the realms of culture, art is probably farthest removed from the bare necessities of life, to which people will cling in times of dearth in lieu of superfluities.

Second, Mises is taking a position that is very important, I think, for ethics, and it doesn’t receive as much attention as I think it should. He is saying that there is no real difference between doing and choosing: to do is to choose, and to choose is to do. This is important because prevailing habits of thought give a great deal of weight to “mental life”, to such things as intentions, desires, beliefs, and other volitions confined between the ears and never realized in the actual world.

An interesting example is agnosticism. I have long argued that agnosticism is a form of atheism because, regardless of what’s “going on inside your head” when you think about the prospect of a deity, you cannot live like you don’t know. In religion especially, we often place too much emphasis on what a person believes as opposed to how a person behaves. I have argued that if you want to know whether or not a person believes in God, do not ask him what he thinks, because you’ll get nothing but a muddle. Instead, watch how he behaves. This will give you the real answer to your question.

At the same time, though, it seems to me that Mises is missing something crucial. A person’s actions can indeed be an imperfect reflection of the person herself. The reason for this is precisely the bedrock economic truth that people always act under constraints that fall outside their control. A person’s domain of choice – her available options – may be limited in such a way that she must act in a way that does not at all reflect her values or goals, because to act in that way is the best of her available options.

Is this important? Is it important that a person would choose differently (perhaps better?) if given a wider domain of choice? Or is her actual choice among her actual alternatives the only relevant objects of study?

For Mises’s purpose – purely positive economics or “praxeology” – it seems to be irrelevant. Obviously, it was so to Mises himself. However, if he had thought the issue all the way through, he might have thought differently. For Mises never tires of insisting (correctly) that the fundamental category of human existence and the fundamental subject of economics is “human action”. And he never tires of defining action as teleological or goal-oriented and goal-driven. Finally, he never tires of insisting that people act only in order to eliminate “uneasiness”. (In fact, he practically uses this definition to argue against the existence of an active deity.)

But isn’t the fact that a person would choose x if x were available, regardless of whether or not x actually is available, important to teleology and therefore to human action? Don’t people act, more often than not, in order to expand their domains of choice, so that the “better” option is actualizable for them? In other words, don’t people’s “ideals” matter tremendously, apart from their actual choices and actions? In fact, can people’s actual choices and actions even be understood apart from an understanding of what they would choose if things were different?