I just heard that the great Yuri Maltsev has passed away this week–a huge loss for the world of liberty. Yuri was among the last to defect from the ailing Soviet Union, and the stories he told about doing research under the Iron Curtain are poignant reminders of the strangling effect that socialism and all forms of totalitarianism have on not just the economy, but free thought itself.
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The Pitfalls of Cardinal Utility
A recent article by David Gordon [1] discussing What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill on utilitarian ethics got me thinking about the absurdity of cardinal utility theory. Even from a layman’s perspective, the strangeness of cardinal utility seems like a good reason to believe there is something seriously wrong with its premises. It leads to ideas such as a dictator made so happy by enslaving others that he outweighs all negatives, as well as other bizarre conclusions, including the “sadistic conclusion [2],” and the “repugnant conclusion [3],” which both involve optimizing utility in groups. However, academics persist at papering over these conclusions and justifying all kinds of horrifying policies. This suggests some kind of perverse desire that I don’t fully understand. I suppose the title “Professor of Ethical Philosophy” is more attractive than “Professor of Genocide Planning,” but aside from that I don’t see the appeal.
It’s just a little article on the history of money, but I managed to get something published on the Mises Wire!
The article is “The Rise and Fall of Good Money: A Tale of the Market and the State.”
It was originally a part of a longer essay I wrote that had to be split up to fit into the Mises Wire length requirements. I’ll put up the other two parts in separate posts:
What Makes Good Money? A Misesian Perspective
This piece goes through the first half of Mises’s Theory of Money and Credit and pulls out the qualities Mises thought were necessary for things to serve well as money.
Why Cryptocurrency Is (Still) Interesting
This one looks at cryptocurrency from the same Misesian standards and evaluates it as a potential money. Then it discusses the upcoming shift that state monetary systems are making towards Central Bank Digital Currencies and evaluates that as well.
Cryptocurrency is a contentious topic even among die-hard anarchists. Fans of gold argue that a return to the gold standard is key. Others argue that crypto has no commodity value and is therefore worthless. Crypto enthusiasts argue about which particular coin or coins are best, and even adherents to a single coin’s philosophy disagree about how its transactions should be handled.
Why did the market choose gold as an international standard for money? In his classic book The Theory of Money and Credit, Ludwig von Mises developed a beautiful and comprehensive philosophy of what money is and how it comes about, starting from barter and working all the way through the international gold standard. One of the valuable insights from the book is Mises’s concept of what characteristics are vital to the money function. He focused on five aspects in particular, and understanding them is still valuable today, even in a world of pure fiat money.
I recently read Per Bylund’s short and sweet little introduction to economics. It’s a small book at 132 pages and a fairly light read. It is available for free online at the Mises Institute and hard copies are inexpensive, or even free at some official Mises events.
The book provides a solid introduction to economic theory with a special focus on distinctly Austrian concepts, such as entrepreneurship. It is generally clear and succinct, and manages to make a variety of excellent points on a variety of topics.
A few highlights include:
The minimum wage is one of the dumbest, most short-sighted policies there is. It is worse than other price controls because human labor is almost universally required for the production of all goods.
Yet so many people have weird ideas about wages and how they are determined that the vast majority of people think there is nothing wrong with this highly destructive policy.
Available on Odysee and Bitchute.
Update: Now also available on YouTube.