Der radikalste Universalgelehrte und in den USA bedeutendste Mises-Schüler.
MURRAY N. ROTHBARD (geb. 1926 in New York, gest. 1995 ebenda)
Ausgewählte Werke:
- America’s Great Depression. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, [1963] 2000.
- Economic Thought before Adam Smith – An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 1. Hants/Brookfield VT: Edward Elgar, 1995.
- Classical Economics – An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 2. Hants/Brookfield VT: Edward Elgar, 1995.
- Man, Economy, and State (with Power and Market), Scholar’s Edition. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, [1962/1970] 2004.
- Praxeology: Reply to Mr. Schuller, American Economic Review, December 1951, pp. 943–46.
America’s Great Depression
Part I: Business Cycle Theory
1 The Positive Theory of the Cycle
If one price goes up and another down, we may conclude that demand has shifted from one industry to another; but if all prices move up or down together, some change must have occurred in the monetary sphere. Only changes in the demand for, and/or the supply of, money will cause general price changes. 6f
Businessmen take their newly acquired funds and bid up the prices of capital and other producers’ goods, and this stimulates a shift of investment from the “lower” (near the consumer) to the “higher” orders of production (furthest from the consumer)—from consumer goods to capital goods industries. […] Now, unless time preferences have changed, and there is no reason to think that they have, people will rush to spend the higher incomes in the old consumption-investment proportions. In short, people will rush to reestablish the old proportions, and demand will shift back from the higher to the lower orders. […] commonly known fact that it is capital goods, and not consumer goods, industries that really suffer in a depression. 11
The “crisis” arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired proportions. The “depression” is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the boom, and reestablishes efficient service of consumer desires. 12
The government assured Federal Reserve control over the banks by (1) granting to the Federal Reserve System (FRS) a monopoly over note issue; (2) compelling all the existing “national banks” to join the Federal Reserve System, and to keep all their legal reserves as deposits at the Federal Reserve; and (3) fixing the minimum reserve ratio of deposits at the Reserve to bank deposits (money owned by the public). 26
What, then, was the proper government policy during the 1920s? What should government have done to prevent the crash? Its best policy would have been to liquidate the Federal Reserve System, and to erect a 100 percent gold reserve money; failing that, it should have liquidated the FRS and left private banks unregulated, but subject to prompt, rigorous bankruptcy upon failure to redeem their notes and deposits. 28
[30] Some writers make a great to-do over the legal fiction that the Federal Reserve System is “owned” by its member banks. In practice, this simply means that these banks are taxed to help pay for the support of the Federal Reserve. If the private banks really “own” the Fed, then how can its officials be appointed by the government, and the “owners” compelled to “own” the Federal Reserve Board by force of government statute? The Federal Reserve Banks should simply be regarded as governmental agencies. 29
Furthermore, entrepreneurs are trained to estimate changes and avoid error. They can handle irregular fluctuations, and certainly they should be able to cope with the results of an inflow of gold, results which are roughly predictable. They could not forecast the results of a credit expansion, because the credit expansion tampered with all their moorings, distorted interest rates and calculations of capital. No such tampering takes place when gold flows into the economy, and the normal forecasting ability of entrepreneurs is allowed full sway. We must, therefore, conclude that we cannot apply the “business cycle” label to any processes of the free market. Irregular fluctuations, in response to changing consumer tastes, resources, etc. will certainly occur, and sometimes there will be aggregate losses as a result. But the regular, systematic distortion that invariably ends in a cluster of business errors and depression—characteristic phenomena of the “business cycle”—can only flow from intervention of the banking system in the market. 35
2 Keynesian Criticisms of the Theory
3 Some Alternative Explanations of Depression: A Critique
We find no overproduction, we find now that the selling prices of products are below their cost of production. But since costs are determined by expected future selling prices, this means that costs were previously bid too high by entrepreneurs. The problem, then, is not one of “aggregate demand” or “overproduction,” but one of cost-price differentials. Why did entrepreneurs make the mistake of bidding costs higher than the selling prices turned out to warrant? 57
The often marked fluctuations of the stock market in a boom and depression should not be surprising. We have seen the Austrian analysis demonstrate that greater fluctuations will occur in the capital goods industries. Stocks, however, are units of title to masses of capital goods. Just as capital goods’ prices tend to rise in a boom, so will the prices of titles of ownership to masses of capital. The fall in the interest rate due to credit expansion raises the capital value of stocks, and this increase is reinforced both by the actual and the prospective rise in business earnings. The discounting of higher prospective earnings in the boom will naturally tend to raise stock prices further than most other prices. 79
It is the expansion of credit to business that overstimulates investment in the higher orders, misleads business about the amount of savings available, etc. But loans to consumers qua consumers have no ill effects. Since they stimulate consumption rather than business spending, they do not set a boom-bust cycle into motion. There is less to worry about in such loans, strangely enough, than in any other. 80
Part II: The Inflationary Boom: 1921-1929
Thus did America embark on its disastrous twentieth-century policy of inflation and subsequent depression—via a stimulation of legalized counterfeiting for special privilege conferred by government on favored business and farm enterprises. 120
Economic Thought before Adam Smith
Kuhn demolished “Whig theory of the history of science”: later is always better → “The inevitable result is a complacent and infuriating Panglossian optimism.” ix
1. The first philosopher-economists: the Greeks
[…] an unfortunate tendency among historians of thought to regard great thinkers of the past as necessarily consistent and coherent. That of course is a grievous historiographic error […]. 16
By analyzing the logical implications of the employment of means to the pursuit of ends in all human action, Aristotle brilliantly began to lay the groundwork for the Austrian theory of imputation and marginal productivity over two millennia later. 18
If we remember the snatches of economic thought contributed by the Greeks: Hesiod on scarcity, Democritus on subjective value and utility, the influence of supply and demand on value, and on time-preference, Plato and Xenophon on the division of labour, Plato on the functions of money, Aristotle on supply and demand, money, exchange, and the imputation of value from ends to means, we see that all of these men were focusing on the logical implications of a few broadly empirical axioms of human life: the existence of human action, the eternal pursuit of goals by employing scarce means, the diversity and inequality among men. These axioms are certainly empirical, but they are so broad and pervasive that they apply to all of human life, at any time and place. Once articulated and set forth, they impel assent to their truth by a shock of recognition: once articulated, the become evident to the human mind. Since these axioms are then established as certain and apodictic, the processes of logic – themselves universal and apodictic and transcending time and place – can be used to arrive at absolutely true conclusions. 19
2. The Christian Middle Ages
Yet Augustine ends by approving the role of the state, even though it is a robber band on a large scale. For while he stressed the individual rather than the polis, in pre-Calvinist fashion Augustine emphasized the wickedness and depravity of man. In this fallen, wicked and sinful world, state rule, though unpleasant and coercive, becomes necessary. Hence, Augustine supported the forcible crushing by the Christian Church in North Africa of the Donatist heresy, which indeed believed, in contrast to Augustine, that all kings were necessarily evil. 35
One of the founders of mystical Christian messianism was the Calabrian hermit and Abbot Joachim of Fiore (1145-1202). In the early 1190s Joachim adopted the thesis that there had been in history not just two ages (pre-Christian and post-Christian), but a third age, of which he himself was the prophet. The pre-Christian epoch was the age of the Father, of the Old Testament; the Christian era the age of the Son, of the New Testament. And now was coming the fulfillment, the new third age, the apocalyptic age of the Holy Spirit, in which history was soon come to an end. The third age, which for Joachim was to be ushered in during the next half-century, in the early or mid-thirteenth century, was to be an age of pure love and freedom. 62
[…] no work or property […] no Church or Bible or state, but only a free community of perfect spiritual beings who would spend all their time in mystical ecstasy praising God until this millennial Kingdom of Saints would usher in the Last Days, the days of the Last Judgment. 63
Orthodox view: amillenialist => there is nothing that human beings can do to speed up the Last Days. Heretic view: chiliastic => man must first set up a Kingdom of God on earth as a necessary condition either for Jesus’s return or for the Last Judgment. Generally, as we shall see further in the Protestant Reformation, post-millennial views lead to some form of theocratic coercion of society to pave the way for the culmination of history. 63
3. From Middle Ages to Renaissance
[…] Focus on the devastation caused by outbreaks of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century is partially correct, but superficial, for these outbreaks were themselves partly caused by an economic breakdown and fall in living standards which began earlier in the century. The causes of the great depression of western Europe can be summed up in one stark phrase: the newly imposed domination of the state. […] In the fourteenth century that balance [between Church and the State] was broken, and the nation-state come to hold sway, breaking the power of the Church, taking, regulating, controlling and wreaking devastation through virtually continuous war for over a century (the Hundred Years’ War, from 1337 to 1453). 67
It was particularly fateful that Philip the Fair [Philip IV., king of France (1285-1314)] inaugurated the system of regular taxation in France. Before then, there were no regular taxes. In the medieval era, while the king was supposed to be all-powerful in his own sphere, that sphere was restricted by the sanctity of private property. The king was supposed to be an armed enforcer and upholder of the law, and his revenues were supposed to derive from rents on royal lands, feudal dues and tolls. There was nothing that we would call regular taxation. 68
4. The Late Spanish Scholastics
5. Protestants and Catholics
One of the pernicious effects on scholarship of Max Weber’s Protestant (actually Calvinist) ethic as the creator of capitalism has already been seen: the neglect of the actual rise of capitalism in Catholic Italy, as well as in Antwerp and southern Germany. Another associated Weberian fallacy is the popular idea of Calvinism as ‘modern’ and revolutionary, as the creator of radical and democratic political thought. But we have seen that Calvinist and Protestant political thought was originally statist and absolutist. Calvinism only became revolutionary and anti-tyrannical under the pressure of the opposing Catholic regimes, which drove the Calvinists back to natural law and popular sovereignty motifs in Catholic scholastic thought. 168f
6. Absolutist thought in Italy and France
There is a profound sense, too, in which Machiavelli was the founder of modern political science. For the modern ‘policy scientist’ — political scientist, economist, sociologist, or whatever — is a person who has put himself quite comfortably in the role of adviser to the prince or, more broadly, to the ruling class. As a pure technician, then, this counselor realistically advises the ruling class on how to achieve their goals, which, as Machiavelli sees, boils down to achieving greatness and glory by maintaining and expanding their power. The modern policy scientists eschew moral principles as being ‘unscientific’ and therefore outside their sphere of interest. 192
There is no pretend value-freedom in Old Nick. He has simply replaced the goals of Christian virtue by another contrasting set of moral principles: that of maintaining and expanding the power of the prince. […] Modern social scientists, in contrast, pride themselves on being realistic and value-free. […] For, as Machiavelli knew full well, in taking on their role of adviser to the rulers of state, the ‘value-free scientist’ is willy-nilly, committing himself to the end, and therefore to the overriding morality, of strengthening the power of those rulers. In advocating public policy, if nowhere else, value-freedom is a snare and a delusion; 192
The main defect of the Botero-Malthus doctrine of population is that it assumes that two entities – population and the means of subsistence (or production, or living standards) – operate under laws that are totally independent of each other. And yet, as we have seen, population growth my be highly responsive to changes in production. Similarly, the reverse can be true. Increases in population may well encourage the growth of investment [198] and production, by providing a greater market for more products as well as more labour to work on these processes. Schumpeter puts the overall point well in his critique of Malthus: ‘… there is of course no point whatever in trying to formulate independent “laws” for the behavior of two interdependent quantities.’ 199
7. Mercantilism: serving the absolute state
As the economic aspect of state absolutism, mercantilism was of necessity a system of state-building, of Big Government, of heavy royal expenditure, of high taxes, of (especially after the late seventeenth century) inflation and deficit finance, of war, imperialism, and the aggrandizing of the nation-state. In short, a politico-economic system very like that of the present day, with the unimportant exception that now large-scale industry rather than mercantile commerce is the main focus of the economy. But state absolutism means that the state must purchase and maintain allies among powerful groups in the economy, and it also provides a cockpit for lobbying for special privileges among such groups. 213
8. French mercantilist thought in the seventeenth century
The system of mercantilism needed no high-flown ‘theory’ to get launched. It came naturally to the ruling castes […]. Theory came later; theory came either to sell to the deluded masses the necessity and benevolence of the new system, or to sell to the king the particular scheme being promoted by the pamphleteer or his confreres. Mercantilist ‘theory’ was a set of rationales designed to uphold or expand particular vested economic interests. Many twentieth century historians have lauded the mercantilists for their proto-Keynesian concern for ‘full employment,’ […]. It should be stressed, however, that the mercantilist concern for full employment was scarcely humanitarian. On the contrary, their desire was to stamp out idleness, and to force the idle, the vagrant, and the ‘sturdy beggars’ of Paris were forced to work for long hours, and two years later, ‘to take away all opportunity for idleness from the healthy’, all women able but unwilling to work were whipped and driven out of Paris, while all men in the same category were sent to the galleys as slave labour. 235
9. The liberal reaction against mercantilism in seventeenth century France
Thomas Le Gendre (1638-1706) supposed to have been first to have coined laissez-faire 261
The tragic end of the Burgundy circle illuminates a crucial strategic flaw in the plans, not only of the Burgundy circle, but also of the physiocrats, Turgot, and other laissez-faire thinkers of the later eighteenth century. For their hopes and their strategic vision were invariably to work within the matrix of the monarchy and its virtually absolute rule. The idea, in short, was to get into court, influence the corridors of power, and induce the king to adopt libertarian ideas and impose a laissez-faire revolution, so to speak, from the top. If the king could not be persuaded directly, then a new king’s ideas and values would be formed from childhood by liberal preceptors and tutors. Reliance on the good will of the king, however suffered from several inherent defects. One, as in the case of the Duke of Burgundy, was reliance on the existence and good health of one person. A second is a more systematic flaw: Even if one can convince the king that the interests of his subjects require liberty and laissez-faire, the standard argument that his own revenue will increase proportionately to their prosperity is a shaky one. For the king’s revenue might well be maximized, certainly in the short run and even in the long run, by tyrannically sweating his subjects to attain the maximum possible revenue. And relying on the altruism of the monarch is shaky reed at best. For all these reasons, appealing to a monarch to impose laissez-faire from above can only be a losing strategy. A far better strategy would have been to organize a mass opposition from below among the ruled and exploited masses, and opposition that would have given laissez-faire a far more solid groundwork in adherence by the bulk of the population. In the long run, of course, mass opposition, even revolution, was precisely what happened to France, a revolution from below that was partially if not largely inspired by laissez-faire ideals. The erudite and sophisticated laissez-faire thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, would have rebuffed such a suggested strategy as certainly inconvenient and probably lunatic, especially in the light of the failure of various inchoate peasant and other fronde rebellions of the mid-seventeenth century. Not least of all, men of influential and privileged status themselves are rarely inclined to toss all their privileges aside to engage in the lonely and dangerous task of working outside the inherited political system. 266f
11. Mercantilism and freedom in England from the Civil War to 1750
Locke […] was an ardent Protestant, but he was also a Protestant scholastic, heavily influenced by the founder of Protestant scholasticism, the Dutchman Hugo Grotius, who in turn was heavily influenced by the late Spanish Catholic scholastics. 314
The deep affinity between Locke and scholastic thought had been obscured by the undeniable fact that to Locke, Shaftesbury and the Whigs, the real enemy of civil and religious liberty, the great advocate of monarchical absolutism, during the late seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, was the Catholic Church. For by the mid-seventeenth century, Catholicism, or ‘popery’, was identified not with natural rights and checks on royal despotism as of yore, but with the absolutism of Louis XIV of France, the leading absolutist state in Europe, and earlier with absolutist Spain. For the Reformation, after a century, had succeeded in taking the wraps off monarchical tyranny in the Catholic as well as Protestant countries. Ever since the turn of the seventeenth century, indeed, the Catholic Church in France, Jansenist and royalist in spirit, had been more a creature of royal absolutism than a check on its excesses. In fact, by the seventeenth century, the case could be made that the most prosperous country in Europe which was also the freest – in economics, in civil liberties, in a decentralized polity and in abstinence from imperial adventures – was Protestant Holland. 316
“Richard Cantillon, who virtually founded modern economics in his remarkable Essay written about 1730” 332
14. The brilliance of Turgot
Galiani’s youthful work On Money was his great contribution to economics. […] In the course of rising in the bureaucracy, he completely changed his economic views, publishing the well-known Dialogues on the Grain Trade in 1770, which ridiculed laissez-faire and free trade, natural rights […]. In his private letters, Galiani reveals quite frankly the underlying reason for his later conservatism, adherence to the status quo, cynical Machiavellianism, and critique of any liberal or laissez-faire disruption of the existing state of affairs. Attacking the idea of worrying about anyone’s welfare but one’s own, Galiani wirtes: ‘The devil take one’s neighbor!’ […] He wrote that he was well satisfied with the existing French government because it was frankly expedient for him to do so; specifically, he did not wish to lose his luxurious income of 15 000 livres. 408
15. The Scottish Enlightenment
In a pre-physiocratic, proto-Keynesian piece of mischief, the Fable maintained that the vice of luxury, no matter how deplorable, performs the important economic function of maintaining the prosperity of the economy. […] Many, especially Hayek held Mandeville to be forerunner of laissez-faire; but he himself drew no laissez-faire conclusions; instead insisted that not free market, but “wisdom” and “dexterous management of a skilful politician” are needed to transform private vices into public gain. In fact: Keynesianism gone mad (vide his defense of the Great Fire of London). 421f
Hume’s Treatise was pivotal in its corrosive and destructive skepticism, managing unfairly to discredit the philosophy of natural law, to create an artificial split between fact and value, and therefore cripple the concept of natural rights on behalf if utilitarianism and indeed to undermine the entire classical realist analysis of cause and effect. […] In a sense, Hume completed the corrosive effect of the seventeenth century French philosopher René Descartes’s influential view that only the precisely mathematical and analytic could provide certain knowledge. 425
16. The celebrated Adam Smith
The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong; that […] Adam Smith was a shameless plagiarist. 435
the much revered Wealth of Nations is a huge, sprawling, inchoate, confused tome, rife with vagueness, ambiguity and deep inner contradictions. There is of course an advantage, in the history of social thought, to a work being huge, sprawling, ambivalent and confused. There is a sociological advantage to vagueness and obscurity. […] in one way, the Wealth of Nations is like the Bible; it is possible to derive varying and contradictory interpretations from various – or even the same – parts of the book. Furthermore, the very vagueness and obscurity of a work can provide a happy hunting ground for intellectuals, students and followers. […] such a book also provides a welcome built-in exclusion process, so that only a relatively small number of adepts can bask in their expertise about a work or a system of thought. In that way they increase their relative income and prestige, and leave other admirers behind to form a cheering section for the leading disciples of the Master. 436
17. The spread of the Smithian movement
Adam Smith’s lectures converted the merchants of Glasgow to a free trade position […]. A triumphant movement of Smithian disciples really begins only with Dugald Steward (1753-1828). [leading disciple of Smith, student of Adam Ferguson] 478
Taking the lead in introducing Adam Smith into German thought was Friedrich Georg Sartorius, Freiherr von Waltershausen (1765-1828) 494
Another was Christian Jakob Kraus (1753-1807) 495; 5th volume of his Die Staatswirthschaft was an incisive call for individualism, free markets, free trade, and a drastic reduction of government intervention. 496
Baron Karl von Stein (1757-1831): great statesman of reform 496
August Ferdinand Lueder (1760-1819): third member of Smithian professorial quadrumvirate in Germany 496
The fourth influential German Smithian academic was Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob (1759-1827) 497
Classical Economics
1 J.B. Say: the French tradition in Smithian clothing
A particularly outstanding feature of J.B. Say’s treatise is that he was the first economist to think deeply about the proper methodology of his discipline, and to base his work, as far as he could, upon that methodology. From previous economists and from his own study, he arrived at the unique method of economic theory, what Ludwig von Mises was, over a century later, to call ‘praxeology’. Economics, Say realized, was not based on a mass of inchoate particular statistical facts. It was based, instead on very general facts (fait genéraux), facts so general and universal and so deeply rooted in the nature of man and his world that everyone, upon learning or reading of them, would give his assent. These facts were based, then, on the nature of things (la nature des choses), and on the deductive implications of these facts so broadly rooted in human nature and in natural law. Since these broad facts were true, their logical implications must be true as well. 12d
In contrast to the Smith-Ricardo mainstream of Smithians who set forth the labour theory (or at the very best, the cost-of-production theory) of value, J.B. Say firmly re-established the scholastic-continental-French utility analysis. It is utility and utility alone that gives rise to exchange value, and Say settled the value paradox to his own satisfaction by disposing of ‘use-value’ altogether as not being relevant to the world of exchange. Not only that: Say adopted a subjective theory value theory, since he believed that value rests on acts of valuation by consumers. In addition to being subjective, these degrees of valuation are relative, since the value of one good or service is always being compared against another. 18
Essentially Say’s law is a stern and proper response to the various economic ignoramuses as self-seekers who, in every economic recession or crisis, begin to complain loudly about the terrible problem of general ‘overproduction’ or, in the common language of Say’s day, a ‘general glut’ of goods on the market. ‘Overproduction’ means production in excess of consumption: that is, production is too great in general compared to consumption, and hence products cannot be sold in the market. If production is too large in relation to consumption, the obviously this is a problem of what is now called ‘market failure’, a failure which must be compensated by the intervention of government. Intervention would have to take one or both of the following forms: reduce production, or artificially stimulate consumption.27
Therefore the supply of one good constitutes, at bottom, the demand for other goods. Consumption demand is simply the embodiment of the supply of other products, whose owners are seeking to purchase the products in question. [Say’s Law] 28
2. Jeremy Bentham: the utilitarian as big brother
Utilitarianism provided economists with the ability to square the circle: to allow them to make pronouncements and take firm positions on public policy, while still pretending to be hard-headed, ‘scientific’, and therefore ‘value-free’. […] This attitude of crude imitation of the physical sciences ignored the fact that people and inanimate objects are crucially different: stones or atoms don’t have values or make choices, whereas people inherently evaluate and choose. Still, it would be perfectly possible for economists to confine themselves to analysing the consequences of such values and choices, provided they took no stand on public policy. But economists burn to take such stands; in fact, interest in policy is generally the main motivation for embarking on a study of economics in the first place. And advocating policy – saying that government should or should not do A, B, C – is ipso facto taking a value position and an implicitly ethical one to boot. 56
3. James Mill, Ricardo, and the Ricardian system
The theory of class conflict as a key to political history did not begin with Karl Marx. It began, as we shall see further below, with two leading French libertarians inspired by J.B. Say, Charles Comte (Say’s son-in-law), and Charles Dunoyer, in the 1810s after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. In contrast to the later Marxist degeneration of class theory, the Comte-Dunoyer view held the inherent class struggle to focus on which classes managed to gain control of the state apparatus. The ruling class is whichever group has managed to seize state power; the ruled are those groups who are taxed and regulated by those in command. 75
The Ricardian system is now complete. Prices of goods are determined by their costs, i.e. by the quantity of labour hours embodied in them, trivially plus the uniform rate of profit. Specifically, since the price of each good is uniform, it will equal the cost of production of the highest-cost (i.e. zero-rent) or marginal land in cultivation. In short, price will be determined by cost, i.e. the quantity of labour hours on the zero-rent land used to work on the product. 89
4. The decline of the Ricardian system, 1820 – 48
It is very possible, however, that it was precisely Ricardo’s obscurantism that accounted for his success. For all too many people, laymen and professionals alike, obscurity and bad writing equal profundity. If they can’t understand it, and they hear at every hand that so-and-so is a great man and his theories the current light, their belief in his profundity will be redoubled. There are great charms to obscurity. Moreover, there are particular charms for the adepts who cluster around the great man, the circle of initiates who claim – probably correctly – that only they can truly understand his work. 103
5. Monetary and banking thought, I: the early bullionist controversy
The Bank of England had been the bulwark of the English (and, by serving as bankers’ bank, of the Scottish) banking system since its founding in 1694. The bank was the recipient of an enormous amount of monopoly privilege from the British government. Not only was it the receiver of all public funds, but no other corporate banks were allowed to exist, and no partnership of more than six partners were allowed to issue bank notes. As a result, by the late eighteenth century, the Bank of England was serving as an inflationary engine of bank deposits and especially of paper money, on top of which a flood of small partnership banks (‘country banks’) were able to pyramid their own notes, using Bank of England notes as their reserve. As if this were not enough privilege, when the bank got into trouble by overinflating, it was permitted to suspend specie payment, that is, refuse to meet its obligation to redeem its notes and deposits in specie. 159
6. Monetary and banking thought, II: the bullion Report and the return to gold
Ricardo advanced a plan for ending the restriction that abandoned the heart of the gold standard. Specifically, he proposed that the pound sterling be redeemable in gold bullion rather than in coin. But a gold bullion standard means that the average person cannot redeem paper money in a commodity medium of payment, and that gold redemption is confined to a handful of wealthy international financiers. 197
7. Monetary and banking thought, III: the struggle over the currency school
In essence, Peel’s Act established the currency principle. It divided the Bank of England into an issue department, issuing bank notes, and a banking department, lending and issuing demand deposits. True to the rigid currency school separation of notes and deposits, deposits would be totally free and unregulated, while notes would be limited to a ceiling of £ 14 million matched by assets of government securities (roughly the extent of existing note issue). Any further notes could only be issued on the basis of 100 per cent reserve in gold. The second main provision was to grant the Bank of England its long-sought monopoly of the note issue. This was not done immediately, but to be phased in over a period of time. Specifically: no new banks were to issue any bank notes, existing banks were to issue no further notes, and the Bank of England might contract with bankers to buy out their existing notes and replace them with the bank’s own. In this way, private bank notes were ‘grandfathered’ in, and the private (that is, joint-stock plus country) banks were neatly cartellized, und the direction of the bank, with the private banks able to keep out all further competition. 249
The flowering of the currency and banking school debates in Britain, coupled with the later burgeoning of central banking on the Continent, led to similar controversies in France and Germany in the 1850s and 1860s. Generally, the results were the same: pseudo-currency triumph in the sense that the central bank acquired a monopoly of note issue, and de facto banking school victory in elastic, fractional-reserve banking and repeated increases and declines in the supply of money. 266
8. John Stuart Mill and the reimposition of Ricardian economics
The Mills, father and son, had a fateful impact upon the history of economic thought. If James Mill played a crucial and neglected role in developing Ricardian economics and its philosophical ally, Benthamite utilitarianism, and in foisting them upon the British intellectual world, his son John was by far the most important force in reimposing Ricardian dominance two decades after it had fallen into decline. […] The two men could not have been more different in character and quality of intellect. James Mill, as we have seen, was a hard-nosed, hard-hitting, self-confident hard-core ‘cadre’ type, in intellect and action, original in carving out an architectonic system of economics, philosophy and political theory, and then supremely energetic in organizing people and institutions around him to try to put them into effect. […] After John’s famous nervous breakdown at the age of 20, the younger Mill emerged as almost the opposite to his father in temperament and quality of intellect. Instead of possessing a hard-nosed cadre intellect, John Stuart was the quintessence of soft rather than hardcore, a woolly minded man of mush in striking contrast to his steel-edged father. […] Was Mill a laissez-faire liberal? A socialist? A romantic? A classicist? A civil libertarian? A believer in state-coerced morality? The answer is yes, every time. There is endless fodder for dispute because, in his long and prolific life, Mill was all of these and none, an ever-changing kaleidoscope of alteration, transformation and contradiction. 280
Thus we have seen how [J.S.] Mill introduced into economics, and managed to make dominant, the unfortunate hypothetical methodology of positivism, as contrasted to the praxeological system of deduction from true and complete axioms advocated and employed by Say and Senior. 280
In public policy, too, the old Ricardian devotion to laissez-faire was replaced by a vague free market presumption to which Mill and his followers were always willing to make extensive exceptions, so free were they of the earlier classical and Ricardian ‘dogmatism’. Intellectually, however wrong-headed most of the Ricardianism had been, its positions were at least consistent and clear – even if the reasoning supporting those conclusions was generally tangled and incoherent. 293
9. Roots of Marxism: messianic communism
By the end of 1648, Winstanley had expanded his chiliastic doctrine to embrace egalitarian world communism, in which all goods are owned in common. His theological groundwork was the heretical, pantheistic view that God is within every man and woman, and is not a personal deity external to man. This pantheistic God has decreed ‘cooperation’, which for Winstanley meant compulsory communism rather than the market economy, whereas the antithetical creed of the Devil glorified individual selfishness. 299
10. Marx’s Vision of communism
History [in Marx’s view] is the history of suffering, of class struggle, of the exploitation of man by man. In the same way as the return of the Messiah, in Christian theology, would put an end to history and establish a new Heaven and a new Earth, so the establishment of communism would put an end to human history. And just as for post-millennial Christians, man, led by God’s prophets and saints, would establish a Kingdom of God on Earth (and, for pre-millennials, Jesus would have many human assistants in establishing such a Kingdom), so for Marx and other schools of communists, mankind, led by a vanguard of secular saints, would establish a secularized kingdom of heaven on earth. In messianic religious movements, the millennium is invariably established by a mighty, violent upheaval, an Armageddon, a great apocalyptic war between good and evil. After this titanic conflict, a millennium, a new age, of peace and harmony, a reign of justice, would be established upon the earth. Marx emphatically rejected those utopians who aimed to arrive at communism through a gradual and evolutionary process, through a steady advancement of the good. No, Marx harked back to the apocalyptics, the post-millennial coercive German and Dutch Anabaptists of the sixteenth century, to the millennial sects during the English Civil War, and to the various groups of pre-millennial Christians who foresaw a bloody Armageddon at the Last Days, before the millennium could be established. 317
Particularly important for Marx is that communism does away with the division of labour. By being free of specialization, the division of labour, and working for others (including the consumers) man as labourer is freed from all limits. Thus liberated, ‘man produces in order to realize his nature as a being with manifold creative capacities requiring free outlet in a “totality of human life-activities”’. Or, as Engels put in his Anti-Dühring, the disappearance of the division of labour will mean that productive labour will give ‘each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full’. 325
These ‘complete’ individuals would be deprived of law, family, custom, religion, and, of course, of all exchange of goods and services, i.e. they would be complete, hermetically sealed creatures each isolated from everyone else. Ironically, then, leftists who habitually though falsely denounce individualist thinkers for advocating a world of isolated ‘atomistic’, hermetically sealed individuals, themselves worship a theorist whose vision of the ideal future is precisely of such a monstrous world. 330
11. Alienation, unity and the dialectic
To Hegel, Jesus: [quote] is not God become man, but man become God. This is the key idea on which the entire edifice of Hegelianism was to be constructed: there is no absolute difference between the human nature and the divine. 352
If Hegel had pantheized and elaborated the dialectic of Christian messianics, Marx now ‘stood Hegel on his head’ by atheizing the dialectic, and resting it, not on mysticism or religion or ‘spirit’ or the absolute idea or the world-mind, but on the supposedly solid and ‘scientific’ foundation of philosophical materialism. 361
12. The Marxian system, I: historical materialism and the class struggle
As Karl Marx plunged into the economics of capitalism that would occupy the rest of his life, he found ready at hand a marvelous weapon: Ricardian economics. In contrast to J.B. Say and the French tradition, Ricardo concentrated not on market exchange and its inevitable focus on individual actors and enchangers [sic!] benefiting from exchange, but on ‘production’ followed by ‘distribution’ of income as a distinct and separate process. Ricardo’s main focus was on how this social income from production is ‘distributed’. 392
13.The Marxian system, II: the economics of capitalism and its inevitable demise
The determinant of the value of a good is not any old labour time spent on, or embodied in , its production, but only labour time that is ‘socially necessary’. […] But what is ‘socially necessary’? […] Marx defines ‘labour time socially necessary’ as ‘that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time’. […] But how is this average obtained? It is done by weights, with higher quality, unusually productive labour weighted more heavily in quantity labour-time units than is the labour of an unskilled worker. But who decides the weights? Once again, Marx’s crucial question-begging methodology comes into play. For Marx acknowledges that it is the market, its relative prices and wages, which determines the weights, i.e. which labour is more productive or higher in quality and in what degree than some other forms of labour. So market values, prices, and productivities are being used to try to explain the determinants of those same values and prices. […] Marx proceeds with his model in a Ricardian socialist manner. In contrast to Ricardo, however, land and rent are simply assimilated into ‘capital’, since man’s labour allegedly created all land anyway, and since the importance of land and feudalism allegedly disappears as capitalism proceeds on its way. Values and prices of land therefore need not be treated or explained. […] Profit, for Marx, is derived only from exploiting labour; it is the surplus value over the wages necessary for the subsistence of labour. Profits, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the amount of capital invested; for capital is only dead matter, stored or frozen labour, and can therefore no longer be ‘exploited’ to provide current profits. 411f
14. After Mill: Bastiat and the French laissez-faire tradition
Perhaps most important, in stark contrast to the Smith-Ricardo classical school’s exclusive emphasis on production, and neglect of the goal of economic endeavours – consumption, Bastiat proclaimed once again the continental emphasis on consumption as the goal and hence the determinant of economic activity. Bastiat’s own oft-repeated triad: ‘Wants, Efforts, Satisfactions’ summed it up: wants are the goal of economic activity, giving rise to efforts, and eventually yielding satisfactions. Furthermore, Bastiat noted that human wants are unlimited, and hierarchically ordered by individuals in their scales of value.446
Bastiat’s final political service has been undervalued by most historians. While generally voting in the minority in the assembly as a stalwart of individual liberty and laissez-faire, Bastiat was highly influential as vice-president (and often acting president) of the assembly’s finance committee. There he fought tirelessly for lower government spending, lower taxes, sound money, and free trade. While he fought ardently in opposition to socialist and communist schemes, Bastiat elected to sit on the Left, as proponent of laissez-faire and the republic, and as an opponent of protectionism, absolute monarchy, and a warlike foreign policy. 447
Spearheaded by the welfare-warfare state developed in Prussia, academics and politicians alike scorned the ‘old fashioned’ tenets of laissez-faire and embraced the seemingly modern and ‘progressive’ advance of statism, state planning and welfare state measures. American academics, trained in Germany, the home of the Ph.D., came back from Europe singing the praises of the ‘organic’ Big State, scorned the idea of economic law and the market economy, and advocated class ‘harmony’ through Big Government. It is scarcely a coincidence that this new modern Big Government was desperately in need of academics, scientists, journalists and other opinion-moulding intellectuals, first, to engineer the consent of the public to the new dispensation of statism, and second, to participate in staffing, regulating, and legislating for the new planned economy. 471
“Praxeology: Reply to Mr. Schuller”, American Economic Review, December 1951, pp. 943–46.
[The categories of praxeology are as follows:]
A. The Theory of the Isolated Individual (Crusoe Economics)
B. The Theory of Voluntary Interpersonal Exchange (Catallactics, or the Economics of the Market)
1. Barter
2. With Medium of Exchange
a. On the Unhampered Market
b. Effects of Violent Intervention with the Market
c. Effects of Violent Abolition of the Market (Socialism)
C. The Theory of War — Hostile Action
D. The Theory of Games (e.g., von Neumann and Morgenstern)
E. Unknown
Man, Economy, and State (eigene Übersetzung)
Monopol und Wettbewerb
Wir haben festgestellt, dass die Menschen in einer freien Marktwirtschaft bestrebt sind, diejenigen Güter zu produzieren, deren die Konsumenten am stärksten bedürfen. Einige Ökonomen bezeichnen dieses System als „Konsumentensouveränität“. Dabei ist jedoch kein Zwang beteiligt. Es handelt sich um eine völlig unabhängige Wahl des Produzenten; seine Abhängigkeit vom Konsumenten ist völlig freiwilliger Natur. Seine Wahl ist das Ergebnis seiner eigenen Entscheidung zugunsten der Nutzenmaximierung, einer Entscheidung, die er er jederzeit widerrufen kann. Wir haben bereits mehrfach betont, dass Individuen nur in dem Ausmaß nach monetärem Ertrag (die Folge von Konsumentenbedarf) streben, solange ceteris paribus gilt: daß andere Dinge gleich bleiben. Diese anderen Dinge entsprechen den individuellen, psychischen Wertungen, welche monetären Einflüssen entgegenwirken können. […] Genauer, als von „Konsumentensouveränität“ zu sprechen, wäre es, festzuhalten, dass in einem freien Markt die Souveränität des Individuums gilt: Das Individuum ist souverän über seine eigene Person und Handlungen und über seinen eigenen Besitz. Dies könnte individuelle Selbst-Souveränität genannt werden. Um monetären Ertrag zu erzielen, muss der individuelle Produzent den Bedarf der Konsumenten befriedigen, das Ausmaß hingegen, in dem er dem erwarteten monetären Ertrag gehorcht, und das Ausmaß, in dem er anderen, nicht-monetären Faktoren nachgeht, ist gänzlich eine Angelegenheit seiner eigenen, freien Entscheidung.
Der Begriff „Konsumentensouveränität“ ist ein typisches Beispiel für den Missbrauch eines Ausdrucks („Souveränität“) in der Ökonomie, der nur für den politischen Sprachgebrauch geeignet ist. Dies illustriert die Gefahren der Verwendung von Metaphern, welche aus anderen Disziplinen stammen. „Souveränität“ ist die Eigenschaft ultimativer politischer Macht; es ist die Macht die auf dem Gebrauch von Gewalt beruht. In einer völlig freien Gesellschaft ist jedes Individuum souverän über seine eigene Person und seinen eigenen Besitz, daher handelt es sich eben um diese Selbst-Souveränität, welche auf dem freien Markt herrscht. Niemand ist „souverän“ über die Handlungen eines anderen. Da die Konsumenten nicht die Macht haben, Produzenten zu verschiedenen Tätigkeiten und Arbeit zu zwingen, sind erstere nicht „souverän“ über letztere. 629f
Die Kritik an Stahleigentümern, nicht „genügend“ Stahl, oder an Kaffeebauern, nicht „genügend“ Kaffee herzustellen, impliziert auch die Existenz eines Kastensystems, wobei eine bestimmte Kaste dauerhaft dazu auserkoren ist, Stahl zu produzieren, eine andere Kaste dazu, Kaffee anzubauen, usw. Nur in einer solchen Kastengesellschaft ergibt solche Kritik einen Sinn. Jedoch ist der freie Markt das Gegenteil eines Kastensystems; in der Tat impliziert die Wahl zwischen Alternativen die Bewegungsfreiheit zwischen Alternativen, und diese Bewegungsfreiheit gilt offensichtlich auch für Unternehmer oder Investoren. 640f
Ein übliches Argument geht davon aus, dass Kartellhandlungen Absprachen mit sich bringen. Denn eine Firma kann vielleicht noch einen „Monopolpreis“ als ein Ergebnis seiner natürlichen Fähigkeiten und des Enthusiasmus seitens des Konsumenten für ein bestimmtes Produkt erzielen, aber ein Kartell von vielen Firmen verursacht angeblich „Absprachen“ und „Verschwörung“. Diese Ausdrücke sind indes schlicht Begriffe, die auf Gefühle abzielen, um eine negative Reaktion hervorzurufen. Tatsächlich geht es um Kooperation, um die Einkommen der Produzenten zu erhöhen. Doch was ist der Kern einer Kartellhandlung? Einzelne Produzenten vereinbaren, ihre Güter zu einem Pool zusammenzuführen, einer Zentralorganisation die Weisungsbefugnis über Produktion und Preispolitik für alle Eigentümer zu überlassen und dann den monetären Gewinn unter ihnen zuzuweisen. Aber ist dieser Prozess nicht dasselbe wie jede Art von Partnerschaft oder die Gründung eines einzelnen Unternehmens? Was passiert, wenn eine Partnerschaft abgeschlossen oder ein Unternehmen gegründet wird? Einzelne Personen vereinbaren, ihr Kapital zu einem Pool zusammenzuführen und einer zentralen Verwaltung zu unterstellen. Diese zentrale Führung soll dann für die Eigentümer Strategien festlegen und die monetären Gewinne unter ihnen zuweisen. In beiden Fällen passiert das Zusammenführen der Güter, das Zuteilen der Weisungsbefugnis und das Zuweisen von monetärem Gewinn nach Regeln, denen alle von Beginn an zugestimmt haben. Daher gibt es keinen wesentlichen Unterschied zwischen einem Kartell und einem einfachen Unternehmen oder einer Partnerschaft. Es könnte eingewendet werden, dass ein einfaches Unternehmen oder eine Partnerschaft sich nur auf eine Firma bezieht, wohingegen ein Kartell eine gesamte „Branche“ beinhalten kann (das heißt alle Firmen produzieren ein bestimmtes Produkt). Aber solcherlei Unterscheidungen können nicht notwendigerweise halten. Einige Firmen verweigern vielleicht den Beitritt zu einem Kartell, während auf der anderen Seite eine einzige Firma sicherlich ein „Monopolist“ für den Verkauf eines besonderen Produkts sein kann und daher eine gesamte „Branche“ umfasst. 643
Wir – und dabei kann uns die Ökonomie nicht helfen – kennen nicht die optimale Größe eines Unternehmens einer bestimmten Branche. Die optimale Größe hängt von den konkreten technologischen Bedingung der jeweiligen Situation ob, sowie von der Konsumentennachfrage im Vergleich zum gegebenen Angebot verschiedener Faktoren in dieser und in anderen Branchen. All diese komplexen Fragen fließen in die Entscheidung eines Produzenten und schließlich in die der Konsumenten ein, wie groß die Firmen in verschiedenen Produktionszweigen sein werden. In Übereinstimmung mit dem Konsumentenbedarf und den Opportunitätskosten für die verschiedenen Produktionsfaktoren werden Eigentümer von Produktionsfaktoren und Unternehmer in jenen Branchen und Firmen produzieren, in denen sie ihr monetäres Einkommen oder ihren Gewinn maximieren können (bei sonst gleichen psychischen Bedingungen). Da das Einschätzen der Zukunft die Funktion des Unternehmers ist, werden erfolgreiche Unternehmer ihre Fehler und damit auch ihre Verluste minimieren. Daher tendiert jede Lage auf dem freien Markt dazu, die jeweils beste hinsichtlich der Befriedigung des Konsumentenbedarfs zu sein (nicht-monetäre Wünsche des Produzenten sind hierbei eingeschlossen).
Weder Ökonomen noch Ingenieure können in irgendeiner Situation die richtige Größe einer Firma bestimmen. Nur Unternehmer selbst können bestimmen, welche Unternehmensgröße am effizientesten ist, und es ist anmaßend und ungerechtfertigt, wenn Ökonomen oder andere außenstehende Beobachter etwas anderes vorschreiben. In dieser und in anderen Fragen werden die Wünsche und der Bedarf der Konsumenten durch das Preissystem „telegraphiert“, und der daraus resultierende Antrieb, das monetäre Einkommen und die Gewinne zu maximieren, wird immer dazu tendieren, die optimale Allokation und Preissetzung hervorzubringen. Der externe Rat von Ökonomen ist nicht nötig. 645
Power and Market (eigene Übersetzung)
Die Grundlagen von Intervention
1. Interventionsarten
[…] Die Hauptaufgabe dieses Buches ist es, die Auswirkungen verschiedener Arten gewaltsamer Intervention in der Gesellschaft und insbesondere auf dem Markt zu analysieren. Die meisten Beispiele werden vom Staat handeln, da der Staat die einzige Institution ist, die Gewalt in reglementierter Form und in großem Umfang ausübt. Dennoch trifft unsere Analyse auf jegliche Personen oder Gruppen zu, die einen gewaltsamen Eingriff begehen. Ob dieser Eingriff „legal“ ist oder nicht, ist für uns nicht von Bedeutung, da wir eine praxeologische und keine rechtliche Analyse durchführen. […] Wir bezeichnen als Intervenierenden oder Invasor jemanden, der sich gewaltsam in freie Beziehungen in Gemeinschaften oder auf dem Markt einmischt. Der Begriff lässt sich auf alle Personen oder Gruppen anwenden, die gewaltsame Interventionen in freie Handlungen von Personen und Eigentümern initiieren.
Welche Art von Intervention kann der Invasor begehen? Allgemein könne drei Kategorien unterschieden werden. Zunächst kann der Intervenierende Einzelpersonen befehlen, bestimmte Dinge zu tun oder nicht zu tun, wobei diese Handlungen unmittelbar nur die Einzelperson oder ihren Besitz umfassen. Kurz gesagt, schränkt er die Person bezüglich des Gebrauchs ihres eigenen Besitzes ein, wobei kein Tauschhandel involviert ist. Dies kann als autistische Intervention bezeichnet werden, welche sich auf jeden bestimmten Befehl bezieht, der direkt nur die Person selbst betrifft. Zweitens kann der Intervenierende einen erzwungenen Austausch zwischen der einzelnen Person und sich selbst oder ein erzwungenes „Geschenk“ von der Person an ihn selbst durchsetzen. Drittens kann der Invasor einen Tauschhandel zwischen einem Personenpaar entweder erzwingen oder verbieten. Die erste Form kann als binäre Intervention bezeichnet werden, da eine hegemoniale Beziehung zwischen zwei Leuten (dem Intervenierenden und der Person) geschaffen wurde; die letztere kann als dreiseitige Intervention bezeichnet werden, da eine hegemoniale Beziehung zwischen dem Invasor und einem Paar von Tauschpartnern beziehungsweise verhinderten Tauschpartnern geschaffen wurde. Der Markt, so komplex er sein mag, besteht aus einer Reihe an Tauschhandlungen zwischen Personenpaaren. Egal wie umfangreich die Interventionen sein mögen, sie können auf Einzelwirkungen auf entweder Individuen oder Paare von Individuen herunter gebrochen werden.
All diese Interventionsarten sind selbstverständlich Unterkategorien der hegemonialen Beziehung – der Beziehung von Befehl und Gehorsam – im Gegensatz zur freiwilligen vertraglichen Beziehung zu beiderseitigem Vorteil.
Autistische Intervention tritt auf, wenn der Invasor eine einzelne Person zu etwas zwingt, ohne dabei im Gegenzug ein Gut oder eine Leistung zu empfangen. Stark unterschiedliche Formen der autistischen Intervention sind: Mord, Körperverletzung und erzwungene Durchsetzung oder Verbot jeglicher Grußformen, Ansprachen oder religiöser Praktiken. Selbst wenn der Staat der Intervenierende ist, der Verordnungen für alle Personen einer Gesellschaft erlässt, bleibt die Verordnung selbst eine autistische Intervention, da sozusagen die Zwangsverbindungen vom Staat zu jeder einzelnen Person strahlenförmig wegführen. Eine binäre Intervention tritt auf, wenn der Invasor eine Person zu einem Tauschhandel mit ihm selbst oder zu einem einseitigen „Geschenk“ an den Invasoren, sei es ein bestimmtes Gut oder einer bestimmte Dienstleistung, zwingt. Straßenraub und Steuern sind Beispiele binäre Interventionen, ebenso wie Wehrpflicht oder verpflichtende Geschworenentätigkeit. Ob die binäre hegemoniale Beziehung ein erzwungenes „Geschenk“ oder einen erzwungenen Tausch darstellt, macht keinen großen Unterschied. Der einzige Unterschied liegt in der Art des beteiligten Zwangs. Sklaverei ist klarerweise in aller Regel ein erzwungener Tausch, da der Sklavenbesitzer die Verpflegung des Sklaven sicherstellen muss.
Merkwürdigerweise haben Autoren der politischen Ökonomie ausschließlich die dritte Kategorie als Intervention anerkannt. Es ist verständlich, dass die Vertiefung in katallaktische Probleme dazu geführt hat, dass Ökonomen die breiteren praxeologischen Kategorien von Handlungen, die außerhalb des Bereichs monetären Tauschs liegen, zu übersehen. Dennoch sind sie Gegenstand der Praxeologie – und sollten Teil unserer Analyse sein. Es ist weit weniger zu entschuldigen, dass Ökonomen die binäre Kategorie von Interventionen vernachlässigen. Selbst viele Ökonomen, welche sich als Fürsprecher des „freien Marktes“ und Gegner der Einmischung in diesen bekennen, haben eine seltsam beschränkte Sicht von Freiheit und Intervention. Handlungen binärer Interventionen, wie etwa die Wehrpflicht und das Auferlegen von Einkommenssteuern, werden überhaupt nicht als Interventionen, nicht einmal als Einmischung in den freien Markt gesehen. Nur Beispiele dreiseitiger Interventionen, wie etwa Preiskontrollen, werden als Interventionen angesehen. Es werden sonderbare Schemata entwickelt in denen der Markt als völlig „frei“ und ungehindert angesehen wird, trotz eines gesetzlich verankerten Systems der Besteuerung. Steuern (und Wehrpflichtige) werden sogar in Geld bezahlt und treten damit in den katallaktischen, sowie in den größeren praxeologischen Zusammenhang ein. […] Handlungen binärer Intervention haben deutliche dreiseitige Auswirkungen: Eine Einkommenssteuer verändert das Muster von Tauschhandlungen zwischen Personen, was ansonsten nicht der Fall gewesen wäre. Darüber hinaus müssen alle Folgen einer Handlung betrachtet werden; es genügt beispielsweise nicht, eine „partielle Gleichgewichts“-Analyse der Besteuerung durchzuführen, und eine Steuer völlig losgelöst davon anzusehen, dass der Staat in der Folge die Steuermittel ausgibt.
2. Direkte Auswirkungen der Intervention auf den Nutzen
A. Intervention und Konflikt
[…] Auf der anderen Seite zeigt eine zwangsweise Intervention selbst an, dass die gezwungenen Personen ansonsten nicht das tun würden, was sie tun, wenn es keine Intervention gäbe. Die Person, die gezwungen wird, etwas zu sagen oder nicht zu sagen oder einen Tausch mit dem Intervenierenden oder jemand anderem durchzuführen oder nicht durchzuführen, muss seine Handlungen aufgrund von Gewaltandrohung ändern. Aufgrund der Intervention erfährt die gezwungene Person einen Nutzenverlust, da sich ihr Handeln aufgrund dieses Einflusses geändert hat. Jegliche Intervention, sei sie autistisch, binär oder dreiseitig bewirkt, dass die Subjekte an Nutzen verlieren. Bei autistischer und binärer Intervention verliert jede Person an Nutzen; bei dreiseitiger Intervention verliert wenigstens einer, manchmal beide Personen des Paars beim verhinderten Tausch an Nutzen.
Wer erfährt dagegen vorab einen Nutzengewinn? Klarerweise der Intervenierende; sonst hätte er nicht interveniert. Entweder gewinnt er handelbare Gütern auf Kosten seines Subjekts wie bei der binären Intervention oder, wie bei der autistischen und dreiseitigen Intervention, gewinnt er Wohlbefinden, indem er anderen gegenüber Vorschriften durchsetzt.
Alle Beispiele für Interventionen sind, im Gegensatz zum freien Markt, Fälle, in denen eine Gruppe an Menschen auf Kosten einer anderen gewinnt. Bei binärer Intervention sind die Gewinne „greifbar“ in der Form von handelbaren Gütern und Dienstleistungen; bei anderen Arten der Intervention sind die Gewinne nicht-handelbare Befriedigungen, und die Verluste bestehen darin, zu weniger befriedigenden (wenn nicht zu regelrecht schmerzhaften) Arten von Handlungen gezwungen zu werden.
Vor der Entwicklung ökonomischer Wissenschaft dachten die Leute über Tauschhandel und den Markt, als ob immer nur eine Partei auf Kosten der anderen profitiere. Das war die Wurzel der merkantilistischen Sicht des Marktes. Die Ökonomie hat bewiesen, dass dies ein Trugschluss ist, da auf dem Markt bei jedem Tausch beide Seiten profitieren. Daher kann es auf dem Markt so etwas wie Ausbeutung nicht geben. Hingegen stimmt die These vom Interessenkonflikt immer dann, wenn sich der Staat oder irgendeine andere Institution in den Markt einmischen. Dann gewinnt der Intervenierende nur auf Kosten der Subjekte, die an Nutzen verlieren. Auf dem Markt herrscht Harmonie. Aber sobald Interventionen in Erscheinung treten und institutionalisiert werden, wird ein Konflikt geschaffen, denn jeder kann nun darum mitstreiten, zu den Nettogewinnern und nicht zu den Nettoverlierern zu gehören – um ein Teil der intervenierenden Gruppe anstelle eines deren Opfer zu sein. […]
Jegliche staatliche Intervention hat ihre Grundlage in der binären Intervention der Besteuerung; selbst wenn der Staat nirgends sonst intervenieren würde, bliebe die Besteuerung. Da der Begriff „sozial“ nur auf jedes einzelne betrachtete Individuum angewendet werden kann, ist es klar, dass, während der Markt sozialen Nutzen maximiert, kein Werk des Staates jemals sozialen Nutzen erhöhen kann. Das Bild des freien Marktes ist in der Tat notwendigerweise eines von Harmonie und beiderseitigem Vorteil; das Bild staatlicher Intervention ist eines von Kastenkonflikten, Zwang und Ausbeutung.
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Wiener Schule der Ökonomik: Murray N. Rothbard