Quotes from Mind, Society, and Human Action

By Richard Wagner (2010)

• As a tool of thought, the neo-Walrasian metaphysics of general equilibrium is surely indispensable for economic theory because it conveys the general interdependence among economic relationships in a society. As a description of reality, the situation is not so clear. It is possible to set forth necessary conditions for the existence of a general competitive equilibrium. What comes out of these formulations is mostly a sense that reality does not match these conditions.#
  EconomicsMethodologyEquilibrium
• The neo-Walrasian program provides a view of society as an equilibrated structure of relationships that is characterized by a set of prices that is consistent with market-clearing in light of consumer demands. You cannot get any more orderly than this. Much work in economic theory involves claims of market failure, which brings in claims that the observed degree of orderliness is not as complete as it could be. This claim of market failure, however, cannot be rendered intelligible without an ontological effort that would account for plausibility regarding the actual degree of orderliness within a society. The neo-Walrasian program makes no effort to develop such an account of plausibility.#
  EconomicsMethodologyEquilibrium
• The core of economic theory explains how complex patterns of economic organization emerge through interactions among people whose individual actions are governed by adherence to the disjunction between mine and thine that we characterize as private property.#
  Economics
• When economic theory is constructed within an analytical window that uses closed concepts to portray economic phenomena as reflections of static equilibriums, it is hard to see how U-max could be displaced because it is a construction that is perfectly suited for characterizing static relationships among variables: the value of any variable is what it is and not something else because that is where the opposing forces in play neutralize one another; the only question at issue is how to identify and account for these other forces.#
  EconomicsMethodology
• It is just as metaphorical to assert that the state does something as it is to assert that the market does something. What we denote as state activity, just as market activity, emerges out of complex patterns of interaction.#
  Politics
• What is called “vision” becomes more significant for nonprofit enterprises of all forms [including states] because vision is a vector of characteristics that is not reduced to a scalar through transferrable ownership.#
  Economics
• A restriction on alienability for one service will tend to induce a bundling of services to secure economic calculation in the absence of alienability for the controlled service.#
  Economics
• If you work with equilibrium, you cannot allow structure to be anything other than a sideshow. If you want structure to matter, you cannot work with equilibrium.#
  MethodologyEquilibrium
• Plans require some degree of inflexibility in pricing, as well as in other attributes of a plan. Information must be accumulated and processed before it can be acted upon. Accumulation and processing are activities that require the passing of time. During any such interval, prices will be inflexible for that entity. . . . The very idea of plans and an ecology of plans means that some degree of inflexibility is part of a well-working catallaxy.#
  Economics
• The incentive to settle varies inversely with the divergence of belief held by the disputants about the likely outcome of a trial.#
  Law
• Private property exists to the extent that third parties forbear from disputing an owner’s use of property.#
  Law
• Any choice involves embracing one option and rejecting some alternative. To the option chosen we normally ascribe the term value or utility, while to the option rejected we normally ascribe the term cost.#
  Praxeology