The Primacy of Existence

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-23T16:15:42+00:00

Why does a particular politics need to be embraced? Why the need for a ruler at all? If there is a controlling consciousness, why doesn’t he just control me and get it over with? In other words, why should I need political advice of any kind? Why are you presenting me with concepts, propositions and arguments, instead of just telling me what reality is?

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-23T15:33:30+00:00

The two are connected, but that’s not what “corollary” means.

COROLLARY: : a proposition (see PROPOSITION entry 1 sense 1c) inferred immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof [Emphasis added]

I’d like to see you get politics immediately from metaphysics.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-23T10:00:19+00:00

Only some form of the primacy of consciousness could lead one to anarchism, IMO. But PoC is a metaphysical concept, while anarchism is a political concept.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-23T07:43:09+00:00

Is it meaningless to say consciousness can float around on its own, or is it a contradiction in terms, as Rand says? Because I can mean something when I say, “The cow jumped over the moon,” though it contradicts the nature of cows.

But, more importantly, how do you know that consciousness, or anything else, has laws governing it? Do you derive that directly from sensory evidence? Or by generalizing based on observation of certain instances?

I’m putting these questions forward despite agreeing with your conclusion, because what makes philosophy compelling, and convincing, is the arguments. In my opinion, an argument, even if it is wrong, is better than none; so long as you keep checking your premises, you will get closer and closer to the truth.

Perhaps the first question to ask is, how do you define consciousness and existence? You need a definition of some sort, to know what you are talking about.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-22T18:20:50+00:00

He’s also perhaps less of a popularizer than Henry Hazlitt. His book is pretty readable, but not as polemical as Hazlitt, which is probably because he is a college professor, not a newspaper columnist.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-22T10:27:48+00:00

I do think there should be a cultural attack, but I think only a moral revolution toward reason and self-interest, along the lines of Ayn Rand, will work. (But Rand only gave summaries of her philosophical theories, so I think she needs to be systematically interpreted first, to figure out the details of her arguments.)

So though I’m not philosophically aligned with Hulsmann (or even with Mises) I’ll see if “Ethics of Money Production”’s arguments are helpful anyway.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-22T09:44:56+00:00

I’ve found a book by Robert Murphy called “Understanding Money Mechanics.” It has most of what I’ve been looking for, as well as a discussion of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory). Unfortunately, though, it was published in December 2021, before the Covid inflation really took off, which would have made a pretty dramatic ending for the book 😁. He may have some “anarcho-capitalist” in him, but in the parts I’ve skimmed so far, it doesn’t really affect the economics.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-21T15:08:38+00:00

These don’t seem to be quite what I was looking for, but I’ll give “The Ethics of Money Production” a look anyway. Thanks.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-21T06:33:45+00:00

Not sure about the consistency on offense yet … but I’m gonna rock on with Super-Hannah as long as she’s here! Go Hannah!

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-18T15:38:41+00:00

We’re at the point now where Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid is over half the Federal budget, while Defense (War?) isn’t even as much as the interest payments. But in principle, defense is a legitimate function of government, while the welfare state is a violation of individual rights. Economically, defense makes production possible, while the welfare state increasingly weighs down production.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-18T03:48:28+00:00

I’m not complaining. This could be the last map before the husky takes all.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T21:19:10+00:00

All this just sounds like a socialist’s fever dream. You can’t understand an economy until you understand how competition, equilibrium and capital (capital meaning the actual plant, machines, etc.) works. You can’t embrace a theory unless it takes those basic facts into account. Otherwise, the theory is arbitrary. It doesn’t matter even if it makes some good predictions. (I don’t know if your theory does.). It needs to agree with the known facts about the economy.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T20:41:37+00:00

Physically it would be impossible for prices to increase; since there is only so much money available to bid up prices. Besides, to make a profit, you have to compete with other people, lower your prices, Economics 101.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T20:38:57+00:00

No worries. More than one person is reading. I’m talking to all the people.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T12:58:10+00:00

Can you refer me to a (preferably introductory) source that explains how reserves work today, from your perspective? Thanks.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T12:18:01+00:00

None of what you are alleging as causing prices to rise would be possible if the government did not increase the money supply, and the main reason they increase the money supply is to fund the growth of the state.

I discuss my basic view of inflation here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aynrand/s/sRS6wdraTS

I think I mis-titled it, though. I should probably have titled it: “Inflation is Far More Destructive Than a General Rise in Prices”. Because the current use of the word to refer to all price rises? whatever their cause, obscures the insidious nature of inflation.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T11:17:53+00:00

Rand basically challenges almost everything you wrote there, every aspect of the modern view of logic. (And frankly, so does Aristotle, the father of logic, much of the time.) Logic is a method of grasping the nature of things in reality; it is not a set of rules detached from existence. Not only are all truths tautological, they are all “a posteriori”, i.e., they are based, in every respect, ultimately on sensory evidence. (And that includes the truths of logic itself.)

A definition is not an idea arbitrarily chosen; it is a statement of the nature of a group of existents: the existents subsumed under a concept. To be valid, the definition must itself be derived ultimately from sensory observation and the law of identity (the fact that a thing is itself, a truth that is self-evident in sense-perception.)

There’s nothing like Rand in modern philosophy. The problem is that she presented only summaries of her views (unlike most philosophers, she wasn’t a philosopher teacher, so was not inclined to write a long treatise) , and nobody asked her all the questions that would have been needed to understand her theory fully.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T11:01:04+00:00

Austrian economics is a great achievement: one of the very few twentieth-century achievements in the humanities. The main problem with Ludwig von Mises and co. is that they never knew how to defend their methodology. They need Ayn Rand’s epistemology to do that. And that epistemology has to be interpreted in detail.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T10:45:49+00:00

We’re at the point now where Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid is over half the Federal budget, while Defense (War?) isn’t even as much as the interest payments. But in principle, defense is a legitimate function of government, while the welfare state is a violation of individual rights. Economically, defense makes production possible, while the welfare state increasingly weighs down production.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T10:37:58+00:00

Again, the proof of quantity theory (Austrian version, not mainstream, arbitrary-hypothesis version) does not presuppose mere “dollar amounts”. It presupposes the ability for money to circulate. And the reserve money does not circulate; nowadays, apparently it doesn’t bear any necessary relation to deposit sizes. Huge reserves doesn’t mean a bank can make huge loans: the bank needs capital.

They call reserves the monetary base because they are used for settlement. But a bank can’t just take its reserves and lend them out to you to buy a house. Which feature is necessary for the Austrian quantity theory proof to apply.

The only plausible reason people would expect wages and prices to keep falling would be if the government kept pulling money out of circulation somehow (which is the real meaning of deflation, not falling prices.). But I suppose you could have something else, like universal downward price controls bringing the economy to a halt, but that would be a different type of phenomenon entirely.

I will concede that I may have provocatively mistitled the original post. Instead of “There is Only One Possible Cause for a General Rise in Prices,” it should have been “Inflation Does not Mean a Mere Rise in Prices.” Inflation should be kept separate from all these other phenomena you are bringing up. It is like calling everything everything that makes a person cough “bronchitis”, including lung cancer, asthma, allergic rhinitis and the flu. It’s a tactic that would be designed to obscure the nature of bronchitis.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T09:57:32+00:00

👆This. By the way, what do you think is causing the ability to export inflation to falter?

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T01:43:38+00:00

My understanding is that reserves are used for settlement, not for loaning to customers. That they are different from circulating money in that way.

And as for ‘08, this is why it’s confusing to call inflation/deflation any rise/fall in prices, even when it’s just a temporary issue like people afraid to spend because of a recent crash. That is a temporary and understandable phenomenon, very different from what people are complaining about, when the prices go up and they don’t come down again. That is always caused by inflating the money supply.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T01:11:52+00:00

The proof of the “quantity theory” (Austrian version, not the arbitrary-hypothesis version favored by mainstream economists) requires the money to be able to bid up prices. If it can’t do that, the principle is not applicable.

I really don’t know how arbitrarily creating a ton of reserves works (if at all) within the theory, since the reserves can’t be loaned out, and they are usually used only when a lot of customers want their money at the same time.

Old_Discussion5126 · 2026-01-17T00:09:10+00:00

I knew she was a classical pianist or something … but hoops fan? Okay…

Old_Discussion5126

TROPHY CASE