One of the first serious histories of science was written by Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) in 1600, called A defense of Tycho against Ursus, containing a history of world systems and cosmological models form the time of Pythagoras to Kepler's own time. He intended to use the historical record to help him understand what kinds of features make a theory powerful and fertile and to discredit the claims to originality by his astronomical contemporary, Ursus.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many scientists turned to the historical record to establish their own approaches. They wrote history as a way of testing, confirming, and ultimately legitimating their own scientific perspectives and as an answer to skepticism from their own professional colleagues concerning their value about what kinds of scientific theories were desirable.
So what could science learn from its past?
Narrative history tends to treat every episode, every part of the past, as unique rather than as a local instance of some larger pattern of behaviors.
One can also conceive of history of science as a collection of case studies, each or all designed to answer one or a set of general questions about how science works.
History may not only remind us of what we have, but may teach us how to improve and increase our store and afford us some indication of the most promising mode of directing our future efforts to add to its extent and completeness. (Whewell 1837)
Whig theory of history: If our intent is to use the historical record to draw morals about what makes for "good science", the historian ceases to be a disinterested observer of the past and becomes rather a partisan, and advocate for one vision of science over another.
11/22/2011
Bureaucracy Ludwig von Mises
Introduction:
The terms bureaucrat, bureaucratic, and bureaucracy are applied with an opprobrious connotation. The abusive implication of the terms in question is not limited to some countries, it is universal phenomenon. The word bureaucracy is used loosely.
So what does this word mean?
The characteristic feature of present-day policies is the trend toward a substitution of government control for free enterprise. Many people think that state control is a panacea for all ill.
The delegation of power is the main instrument of modern dictatorship.
Bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials who implement the rules, laws and functions of their institutions.
Bureaucracy, its merit and its demerits, its working and its operation, can be understood only by contrasting it with the operation of the profit motive as it functions in the capitalistic market society.
Profit Management
Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership if the means if production. Free enterprise is the characteristic feature of capitalism. The objective of every enterpriser is to make profit.
Neither the capitalists nor the entrepreneurs nor the farmers determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the customers.The profit motive is precisely the factor that forces the businessman to provide in the most efficient way those commodities the consumers want to use.
In the capitalist system all designing and planning is based on the market prices.
Neither governments nor businessmen are the guardians of customers. If a man fails in his endeavors to convince other people of the soundness of his ideas, he should blame his own disabilities.
Within a market society organized on the basis of free enterprise and private ownership of the means of production the prices of consumers' goods are faithfully and closely reflected in the price of the various factors required for their production.
The world is changing everyday and there is a need for a continuous adjustment of the production to the change of the conditions. This is where the entrepreneur comes in.
Responsiblity to the consumer is the lifeblood of business and enterprise in an unhampered market society.
The terms bureaucrat, bureaucratic, and bureaucracy are applied with an opprobrious connotation. The abusive implication of the terms in question is not limited to some countries, it is universal phenomenon. The word bureaucracy is used loosely.
So what does this word mean?
The characteristic feature of present-day policies is the trend toward a substitution of government control for free enterprise. Many people think that state control is a panacea for all ill.
The delegation of power is the main instrument of modern dictatorship.
Bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials who implement the rules, laws and functions of their institutions.
Bureaucracy, its merit and its demerits, its working and its operation, can be understood only by contrasting it with the operation of the profit motive as it functions in the capitalistic market society.
Profit Management
Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership if the means if production. Free enterprise is the characteristic feature of capitalism. The objective of every enterpriser is to make profit.
Neither the capitalists nor the entrepreneurs nor the farmers determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the customers.The profit motive is precisely the factor that forces the businessman to provide in the most efficient way those commodities the consumers want to use.
In the capitalist system all designing and planning is based on the market prices.
Neither governments nor businessmen are the guardians of customers. If a man fails in his endeavors to convince other people of the soundness of his ideas, he should blame his own disabilities.
Within a market society organized on the basis of free enterprise and private ownership of the means of production the prices of consumers' goods are faithfully and closely reflected in the price of the various factors required for their production.
The world is changing everyday and there is a need for a continuous adjustment of the production to the change of the conditions. This is where the entrepreneur comes in.
Responsiblity to the consumer is the lifeblood of business and enterprise in an unhampered market society.
Spread-the-work schemes
A fallacy: a more efficient way of doing a thing destroys jobs, and its necessary corollary that a less efficient way of doing it creates jobs. There is just a fixed amount of work to be done in the world. If we cannot add to this work by thinking up more cumbersome ways of doing it, at least we can think of devices for spreading it around among as large a number of people as possible.
Analysis of arbitrary subdivision of labor
The householder who is forced to employ two men to do the work of one has, it is true, given employment to one extra man. But he has just that much less money left over to spend on something that would employ somebody else. By doing that, the labor market is not better off but the householder is worse off because he has to spend extra money on one stuff but has to sacrifice something else he treasures.
Analysis of the proposal of shortening the working week by law
(1)A reduction in the standard working week from 40 to 30 without any change within the hourly rate of pay.
There will be no increase in production because there is no net increase in man-hours. The workers previously employed is subsidizing the workers previously unemployed.
(2)A reduction in the working week from 40 to 30 hours, hut with a sufficient increase in hourly wage rates to maintain the same weekly pay for the individual workers already employed.
The consequence is to raise the cost of production. The least efficient firms will be thrown out of the market, least efficient workers will lose the job; the rise of cost and decrease of supply makes the price rise
Analysis of arbitrary subdivision of labor
The householder who is forced to employ two men to do the work of one has, it is true, given employment to one extra man. But he has just that much less money left over to spend on something that would employ somebody else. By doing that, the labor market is not better off but the householder is worse off because he has to spend extra money on one stuff but has to sacrifice something else he treasures.
Analysis of the proposal of shortening the working week by law
(1)A reduction in the standard working week from 40 to 30 without any change within the hourly rate of pay.
There will be no increase in production because there is no net increase in man-hours. The workers previously employed is subsidizing the workers previously unemployed.
(2)A reduction in the working week from 40 to 30 hours, hut with a sufficient increase in hourly wage rates to maintain the same weekly pay for the individual workers already employed.
The consequence is to raise the cost of production. The least efficient firms will be thrown out of the market, least efficient workers will lose the job; the rise of cost and decrease of supply makes the price rise
The curse of machinary
A fallacy: Machine creates unemployment
Generalization: Technology creates unemployment
Santayana's aphorism: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. If it were indeed true that the introduction of labor saving machinery is a cause of constantly mounting unemployment and misery, we should dismiss all the technological improvement since primitive time periods. People's effort to reduce the ratio of labor and production should be condemned rather than eulogized.
The machine itself needs construction and repair.
The manufacturer has excessive profit to use.
Competition will make the cost of a product lower.
If the good is elastic, it will attract more people to buy.
People spend less money on certain product----the increase of purchasing power.
Technology shifts the composition of jobs in the short run; it may cause panic in the short time period,but in the mean time it releases people to pursue more opportunities of job and creates new kinds of jobs. So in the long run it will make everybody better off.
Generalization: Technology creates unemployment
Santayana's aphorism: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. If it were indeed true that the introduction of labor saving machinery is a cause of constantly mounting unemployment and misery, we should dismiss all the technological improvement since primitive time periods. People's effort to reduce the ratio of labor and production should be condemned rather than eulogized.
The machine itself needs construction and repair.
The manufacturer has excessive profit to use.
Competition will make the cost of a product lower.
If the good is elastic, it will attract more people to buy.
People spend less money on certain product----the increase of purchasing power.
Technology shifts the composition of jobs in the short run; it may cause panic in the short time period,but in the mean time it releases people to pursue more opportunities of job and creates new kinds of jobs. So in the long run it will make everybody better off.
Credit diverts production
The congress want to give more credit to farmers, who cannot have enough "intermediate" credit; or the interest is too high; or the complaint is that private loans are made only to rich and well-established farmers.
But this kind of action stems form two acts of shortsightedness. (1)It only looks at the matter from the standpoint of the farmers that borrow. (2)It only thinks of the first of the transaction.
All credit is debt.
Analysis of the government loan to provide capital to farmers, which enables the farmers to buy a farm, produce food, pay off his loan by what he produce, and thus make contribution to the society.
There is a decisive difference between the loans supplied by the private lenders and the loans supplied by the government.
When people risk their own funds to invest something, they have to find the best one who can contribute and pay back their money. But government lenders will take risk with other people's money that private lenders will not take with their own money. What's lent is not money, but capital. When a capital is lent to A, for example, it cannot be lent to B. (Scarcity is everywhere.)
Credit, is something that a person already has. The bank gives you loan because it's confident that you can pay back the money. In general the people selected by the government is less likely to pay back than those selected by the private lenders. When government give a farm to A, a candidate who is more capable and has more credit B will be deprived of the chance to produce more. What's seen is that A is producing, what's not seen is what B could have produce.(more efficient)
Government loan may lead to favoritism: to the making of friends or someone who makes a bribe. It will also lead to the decrease of production and the increase of waste. The private money will be invested only where repayment with interest or profit is definitely expected. Besides, private lenders have more information and knowledge in who to lend because they have the comparative advantage of doing that after the cruel market test while government lacks that kind of knowledge.
When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business. Under certain emergency circumstances there may be a plausible argument for this, the merit of which we need not examine here. But in the long run it does not sound like a pay proposition from the standpoint of the country as a whole.
But this kind of action stems form two acts of shortsightedness. (1)It only looks at the matter from the standpoint of the farmers that borrow. (2)It only thinks of the first of the transaction.
All credit is debt.
Analysis of the government loan to provide capital to farmers, which enables the farmers to buy a farm, produce food, pay off his loan by what he produce, and thus make contribution to the society.
There is a decisive difference between the loans supplied by the private lenders and the loans supplied by the government.
When people risk their own funds to invest something, they have to find the best one who can contribute and pay back their money. But government lenders will take risk with other people's money that private lenders will not take with their own money. What's lent is not money, but capital. When a capital is lent to A, for example, it cannot be lent to B. (Scarcity is everywhere.)
Credit, is something that a person already has. The bank gives you loan because it's confident that you can pay back the money. In general the people selected by the government is less likely to pay back than those selected by the private lenders. When government give a farm to A, a candidate who is more capable and has more credit B will be deprived of the chance to produce more. What's seen is that A is producing, what's not seen is what B could have produce.(more efficient)
Government loan may lead to favoritism: to the making of friends or someone who makes a bribe. It will also lead to the decrease of production and the increase of waste. The private money will be invested only where repayment with interest or profit is definitely expected. Besides, private lenders have more information and knowledge in who to lend because they have the comparative advantage of doing that after the cruel market test while government lacks that kind of knowledge.
When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business. Under certain emergency circumstances there may be a plausible argument for this, the merit of which we need not examine here. But in the long run it does not sound like a pay proposition from the standpoint of the country as a whole.
Taxes discourage production
In our modern world there is never the same percentage of taxation of income levied on every person. The taxes inevitably affect the incentive of people who are forced to pay the tax.
For example, if a company has to pay a large amount of money to government for tax while has to bear potential losses in investments, people may be deterred to start a new enterprise or the corporations may only invest in the area that is least risky. There may be fewer employers. Producers are not incentivized to make more productions or try to explore, which is risky. In the long run, customers cannot get better or cheaper goods, and the purchasing power will decrease.
Similarly, if a person's income is largely deprived of to pay the tax, employees may be discouraged. Besides, people are not incentivized to make relatively risky investments. The capital for risk-taking investments shrinks because it's taxed before it creates new capital. Capital to provide new private jobs is first prevented from coming into existence, and the part that does come into existence is then discouraged from starting new enterprises. So don't tax too much!!!
For example, if a company has to pay a large amount of money to government for tax while has to bear potential losses in investments, people may be deterred to start a new enterprise or the corporations may only invest in the area that is least risky. There may be fewer employers. Producers are not incentivized to make more productions or try to explore, which is risky. In the long run, customers cannot get better or cheaper goods, and the purchasing power will decrease.
Similarly, if a person's income is largely deprived of to pay the tax, employees may be discouraged. Besides, people are not incentivized to make relatively risky investments. The capital for risk-taking investments shrinks because it's taxed before it creates new capital. Capital to provide new private jobs is first prevented from coming into existence, and the part that does come into existence is then discouraged from starting new enterprises. So don't tax too much!!!
11/21/2011
Public works mean taxes
Everything we get, outside of the free gift of nature, must in some way be paid for.
Taxation for public housing destroys as many jobs in other lines as it creates in housing. It also results in unbuilt private homes, in unmade washing machines and fridges, and in lack of innumerable other commodities and services.
Taxation for public housing destroys as many jobs in other lines as it creates in housing. It also results in unbuilt private homes, in unmade washing machines and fridges, and in lack of innumerable other commodities and services.
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