Ludwig von Mises

A Review

One thing must be said before we begin writing this chapter on Mises’ “Human Action”: That he is a great thinker with a profound comprehension of how the Free Market can work the best in the mutual interest of all people: When governments mingle as little as possible inside its workings, especially when governmental officials in charge of prosecuting corruption and unjust competition have little knowledge on market theory, as academic as this premise may sound. Once officials have no background even in employment but only in academia—in this case within the humanities at worst, even STEM sciences would not help becoming a more proficient official; at best it would be to hail from the eco-nomics, whilst governance or public administration would create an arrogant nescient who shows off audacity in power—, they are prone to maraud in the uncharted fields of the market, wreaking a futile debris in an ill-fated attempt to improve conditions for the employees. Such is the tale of the eager official who only wanted to help, according to the populist Capitalist. But more on that later.

 There is only one problem with Mises, open that we will see occasionally when reviewing his opus magnum: That many of his theories concerning policies and observations on governance are short-sighted. There is no doubt about his capability in disseminating market theories and how a Capitalist society could blossom healthily, according to him. But when it comes to the bipolarity of state and the market, outside of any fundamental secularity, we observe a lot of dan-gerous short-sightedness on his behalf. Without mentioning any quotes yet, there would be the mentality concerning the axiom of Demand and Offer which stands as the core principle of the free market: wherever there is demand for a product or service, at least one venturous entrepreneur will eventually move ahead and start a business to satisfy this demand. Once demand increases, more businesses will join in to satisfy the additional demand, resulting in competition that will select out the underwhelming performers for sake of merit. So much for the theory. There is only one problem, and it can be detected with all thinkers and academics in the field of economics: That the world is far more complex nowadays, we do not live in a world that rests in a state of an a priori dashboard open for everyone. We have multinational corporations of great size, such as Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook, to only name a few. Their gargantuan size makes it nearly impossible for start-up businesses to prosper in the shadow of those figurative sequoias. Moreover, many start-ups with innovative ideas already work towards being swallowed by the giants so that the founders can make a fortune at an early stage. Their concepts won’t be gone, that’s assured, but they will end up under the giant’s wide-ranging umbrella, only increasing their already-enormous size. 

That is not to say that the natural processes of the market—the establishment of healthy independent businesses, the decay of obsolete businesses and those that were defeated by stronger competitors through a fair match—were entirely defunct thanks to oligopolies in the tech market. What we must not do is to relativize the problem as if it didn’t exist or were not as big as it finally is. The market of social networks and online retail are significant branches that will dictate the market over the next few decades, to speak only of the barely visible phase. 

Such considerations may be too great demands for a man who wrote his greatest works in the wake of the Great Depression, far before the businesses that became to dominate the markets nowadays. Still, there are objections we can raise, although they must necessarily be of a fundamental nature, given the historic examples referred to, and the encounters that had to have happened in order to draw certain conclusions. Historians and those who are generally more erudite in (economic) history may contradict me and mention encounters com-parable to those we have lived through in the past three to five decades—The Reunification of Germany in 1990, the Financial Crisis from 2008 to 2009, the splashing of the Dot-Com bubble, the Wirecard Scandal that was belated by five years, given the “Financial Times” investigative series, etc.—and could therefore conclude for their own that Mises could have spoken akin to me, if he had any interest in scolding the market economy for its misbehaviour and its audacious premises, such as the natural inequity and the preference of the majority to the minority, even the inviolability of people who are meritorious in the satisfaction of consumers’ demands, even in spite of their racist characteristics or their sexism. But we will come back to this later, with Friedman at the latest. 

Whether Mises was historically able to draw certain conclusions shall be up to the reader, but in this text, it will be handled with care, with due respect in terms of the book’s age. 

While I have read two more books of his—“Liberalism” and “Bureaucracy”—those text might occasionally be hinted at, but will not become a fixed part of this review, for two reasons: (1) One book has to suffice for one review, or otherwise, insufficient reviews of three books in one will be the consequence, dissatisfying us all; and (2) the other two books who are only partially considered in this review are in German, so that quotes had to be avoided or else, knowledge in the German language had to be presumed, which is not always the case. Outside of these books of his, we will briefly refer to an essay by German-American economist Hans Herrmann Hoppe and his “Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy”. (Will be cited properly when cited in text) We will need this collection of essays when speaking about a concept Mises has pioneered: Praxeology, the catallactic of human action and the economy. As Mises spoke rather vaguely about it, it will be better to refer to what we may consider sec-ondary literature. An equally brief working paper from the Duke University too shall function as a critique of praxeology. 
So, without further ado, we shall now head right into it[1]. 

We are not going through all of my notes and all of the quotes bound to them, but only through the lodestar quotes that mark what we are interested in the most: His concept of Liberalism, and what it entails, according to him. The fact that decades after his death, he still functions as a pioneer and spiritus rector in Liberalism, to some even in Libertarianism, speaks in his favour and in our necessity to read about him. 

Coming back to the problem of demand and offer, we shall already pick a quote from him that deals with marginal utility and the readiness of consumers to pay a certain price for certain goods, may they be vital to their lives or just luxury goods. At one point, he writes the following sentence: 

The law of returns is not limited to the use of complementary factors of production on land. The endeavors to refute or to demonstrate its validity by historical and experimental investigations of agricultural production are needless as they are vain. He who wants to reject the law would have to explain why people are ready to pay prices for land. 

His definition of the marginal utility is still up to date, and in case one should not be familiar with it, there is a useful quote from “SpringerLink”: ‘Marginal utility is the additional utility that results from the consumption of an extra unit of a good or service[2].’  There is nothing wrong about this approach to production, it even makes good sense and is one of the manifest branches of what Mises describes later as economic calculation. In the end, Capitalism was able to persist all malignant outside forces through its rational approach to the manage-ment of scarce resources, although the aged construction we inhabit has started to crumble and needs to be renovated sooner or later: Throughout the world, powerful individuals begin to redirect resources in their favour and against the merit of economic thinking. The proverbial discrepancy of wealth on the one hand in shape of lavish charity events to support the opposite of this decadence—the starving children in Africa or South-East Asia, for example—stands sternly as an example of this urgent need for maintenance operations. As has been mentioned many times beforehand, Capitalism is not inherently evil or exploitative against the weak, but in its status-quo condition, it has turned egregiously against those it is supposed to support. Not all issues can be pointed to-wards the state’s malevolent intervention, the critics’ laziness and desire for free stuff, or a fundamental miscomprehension of Capitalist or basic economics, and it would not only be presumptuous but also ignorant about the misled condi-tions that leave so many people behind, including those who do work hard but only feel the brunt out of this extra work they have to invest in only to survive, rather than rise and shine in their life. 

Now, what is to say about the above-selected quote? What Mises wants us to know is that the people’s acceptance of the trading conditions affirm their righteousness above all alternatives, such as the planned economy in a Socialist one-party state. Such were thus also the case with the purchase of land to cultivate it or cover it with buildings. There is a large argument going on between left-leaning people whether the concept of buyable land should be abolished, in order to make it easier for governments and private people to create apartments and other shapes of living space in a world in which rents are skyrocketing not only in the urbanised areas but also in mid-scale cities and towns in which living should be affordable not only in council flats but also in private housing built by one’s own. One of the main arguments surrounding the draft initiative is that too much land is already purchased by speculators who try to gouge the price of the piece of land they bought, and egoist constructors who use their land to build prohibitively expensive luxury flats for an aristocratic clientele. No reasonable person would approve to install a governmental department to tell constructors what they had to build, as this would lead us down the road to serfdom, out of purely emotional affects, which conversely does not mean that what is happening with regards to the counterproductive erection of specious apartments and penthouses. While there may be demand for such deluxe accommodations, the prospective buyers remain in the estimated minority, whereas there were far more prospective renters or buyers of affordable housing. The only problem: Every apartment can be sold only once and rented in either regular or irregular periods of time, depending on how long a renter stayed in the apartment or house. The former option means a one-time sum, the latter a regular sum of income derived from the buyer or renter. Now, where lied the difference between the luxury and the moderate apartment or house? Simply in the sum of money derived therefrom, irrespective of the option chosen by the constructor. Regardless of the option, there lies more money with the more expensive model than with the mass solution to the provision of housing. And in the end, and also with Mises’ approval, profits can justify actions as they keep a successful model running through public persuasion. 

It is said in Capitalist theory that if an offer didn’t suit one’s expectations, one should abstain from buying it in order to manipulate the offer into a more favourable direction. If the public disliked the offer collectively, the theory goes, the offeror would eventually alter the product to be more to the consumers’ liking. Could this be projected onto the housing market as well? Hardly. And why? Because the aforementioned prospective buyers for pompous condos downtown are in the minority by absolute numbers, but in the majority when it comes to their purchasing power. The infamous, proverbial one percent who assemble more than half of the world’s wealth under their hands. And while they enjoy the population’s disgust, servicemen (and -women) and producers of any métier are ready to serve their debauched taste. ‘There will be no equality in public housing and for people across all classes until the majority of the people will be heard’ could be the cry of the people who demand a planned housing economy, and while their cry would exclaim short-sightedness, they unearthed a profound problem: The problem that a minority currently dominates urban development, as rents indeed soar unnaturally, or at least disproportionate to wages and salaries[3] .

If we should think about the view that refusal shall send signals to servicemen (or –women) and producers on what the consumer wishes to be offered and what not, and project it onto Mises’ idea that the purchase of land was approved by the public because it did not see any major opposition, he lacks the understanding that we live in a  pluralist society of great size—the size of the world’s population was of concern for him as well, although he saw the market as an apparent regulator hereby as well—in which there are more than one or two major opinions held by the public. There can be various opinions on the legality of land purchases as well as such that generally approve of its legality but demand some amendments to this right that someday became a law. Many writers partially addressed this issue in shape of a critique on Democracy, when they wrote that it insufficiently reflected the multifariousness of the eligible populace, up to the worst state of electoral outcome: A 50-50 split between the two eligible parties, such as is the case in the United States, where people of different shades of respectively Blue and Red have to assemble in their respective field, even though they might hardly agree with their colleagues. Democratic Socialists are an example of people who would have been better off with a party of their own rather than refusing to assimilate with a party they came in second, after the moderate Democrats who occupy the Democratic National Committee (DNC). But we drift away from the actual topic. The point is, that to say that because there was no majority against the continuation of land purchase but for the abolition of this practice, it stood justified, and therefore, the whole affair was laid ad acta. What is forgotten in such dismissals of draft proposals uttered only orally and via the vox populi, is that there are millions of people on nearly every side of opinion, and many of those sides are suppressed indirectly by not becoming part of the leading opinion, represented by either one party—in the case of the US from 2021 to 2024, where the White House and both chambers of Congress are mainly occupied by the Democratic party, although there is a chance for slight alternations in 2023, when midterm elections could switch some seats in either chamber—or a governmental coalition, as may be seen after the 2021 General Election in Germany in autumn, as no party is prospected to achieve an absolute majority. We could have a majority coalition of, say, 65 percent of all votes, and it would still exclude 35 percent of all votes, more than a third. 75 percent, the absolute majority, would still exclude a quarter of all votes. A coalition of half of all votes, a catch-22 situation, or even less, which would equal a minority government, an abridgement to grasp an impromptu govern-ment out of thin air to not end up without a government after all as fundamental disagreements made the creation of any government impossible, would come close to a slap in the face of any voter who partook in a vital Democratic process and stood as an example of the Democratic process’ occasional dysfunction and an exposure of the people’s occasional incapability to negotiating wider-ranging compromises that finally shaped a mutual household for the next four (or more) years. 

What Mises failed to see is the pluralism in society. It is not just black or white, an approval or disapproval of the question on whether there should be private people who could purchase land and claim it their property. There are multiple rights linked to such a significant right, and it could reach as high as to whether one could claim resources located in this land, such as natural gas or oil. The right to own and purchase land could be broken down to such elementary rights as the right to own property in general, about which we are yet to speak with references to Bastiat and Proudhon. So far, there has not been any time yet, nor any prompt to introduce this issue. We will come back to this later. Still, these words stand self-evident: That our society, wherever one looks, is essentially pluralist, not only in terms of ethnicities—an issue the man born in Austria-Hungary, a multinational state itself, who later moved to the equally multinational United States—, but also in terms of political beliefs, shows that there is neither unanimous approval, nor unanimous disapproval, but a wild blend of opinions leading towards a heterogeneous mass that cannot be properly represented with a single method to go by, either on or off. It would undermine the plurality of the status quo. Mises could have done better at this. 

The next quote we will emphasise will be an easier pick and one that is more likely to create unanimous agreement. The following it shall be: 

“But it is a far cry from acknowledgment of this fact to the belief that racial inheritance or class affiliation ultimately determines judgments of value and the choice of ends. The fun-damental discrepancies in world view and patterns of behavior do not correspond to differences in race, nationality, or class affiliation.” (Mises 2010, page 124) 

This is a clear rebuke against the Marxian philosophy, about which he will later remark that Marx, in his magnum opus “Das Kapital”, was unable to finalise his theory on what finally distinguished a man of a certain class from the man of a certain stratum. But this will be of less concern for us, as this is not a review of Mises’ critique of Marx’ theory, but a critique on Mises’ theory. What Mises wrote here is that there are factually no classes, nor any sociological strata from which to distinguish the people, the working-class people in particular. The people themselves are considered individuals who make up themselves through their own actions and decisions, and felled those decisions almost isolatedly, or so we can conclude from his writing, not only in this section, but throughout his text, when he emphasises the individuality of people. Again, this bursts of short-sightedness in his analysis: If we picked up the issue of nutrition, we could already see predetermined decisions derived from a low budget, something that is common with working-class people who profess in craftsmanship, caretaking services or, at worst, odd jobs, although this is a feature we see more often with developing countries. Those people, with a small budget, have to consequently rely on affordable nutrition, which oftentimes ends up with junk food rather than vegetables and fruits, and cheaply manufactured food rather than whole-foods. Excellent nutrition comes with a price tag not everyone can afford, and so it comes as no surprise that people of poorly paid professions are more often affected by health problems that derive from malnutrition, although lower education too could (have) contribute(d) to this nuisance[4]. And when we talk about the poorest people in society, we do not even talk about excellent nutrition but such nutrition that helps people dragging themselves out of the hardship they have ended up in for any reason. This not only addresses the adults who are usually supposed to get themselves out of the dole or their children, but the generality of present and future lower-class inhabitants, migrants recent drop-outs such as have been seen many times in documentaries about Los Angeles’ Skid Row district. It is a debunked belief that those who live on the streets have always been there, either as unemployed people who never sought a job or who have been born and grown up as children to such homeless—many of them used to live as high rollers in financial business, or as ordinary everymen who were eventually laid off by their former bosses and failed to reintegrate through another job. Such fates have been met, for example, during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 and 2009[5]. And while the links of articles presented in the footnote do not settle the case for former big brass of the financial business or any-thing comparable in terms of responsibility and paycheques, it shows that those who do live there are not exclusively thugs, drop-outs, vagabonds and tramps who are too lazy or too apathetic to build a life of their own, and demand society to pay the price therefore. Mises for sure did not utter any such words, or was even close to condemning the poor for being poor, but he preached the mantra of the man who has to take life into his own hands if he wanted to become someone. It, according to him, depended all on himself to pursue happiness in life. What he said is that no-one naturally owes anyone anything, i.e. outside of mutual agreements free individuals voluntarily agreed upon. So it can be read in this following quote: 

It is true, wage earners are imbued with the idea that wages must be at least high enough to enable them to maintain a standard of living adequate to their station in the hierarchical gradation of society. Every single worker has his particular opinion about the claims he is entitled to raise on account of “status,” “rank,” “tradition,” and “custom” in the same way as he has his particular opinion about his own efficiency and his own achievements. But such pretensions and self-complacent assumptions are without any relevance for the de-termination of wage rates. 

What Mises coined hereby was more or less what nearly everyone who once conversed with a right-winged Liberal populist has heard at least once: That your employer does not owe you anything outside of a workplace and your monthly salary, and everything else that is assured to you through legislature. (E.g. the OSHA regulations on your workplace, protection against dismissal, etc.) Aside of this everything else one can demand qualifies as a premium no employer is obliged to provide. As Mises also notes, there is also no obligation that a salary or wage must assure a healthy living standard, or any living standard at all: The apparent wage or salary is adjusted entirely by the market, and according to right-winged Liberal theory, it also emits the best condition achievable by any mechanism, whereas the state would miscalculate it all the time, at the expense of resources available. There should be no question about the virtue of the market’s adjustments, it has eclipsed the state government in various shapes at many times in history. Period. Regardless of that, the market cannot function as an autonomous organic system that serves only itself, and alas, no-one says so. How, then, can it be accepted that wages or salaries do not serve their primary purpose of guaranteeing their earners a valuable income? To say that those who are dissatisfied with their jobs should seek other jobs that would pay them more, ignores the fact that those jobs still need to be exercised, even though the logical behind it is clear and has been disseminated beforehand: That the employers would raise the wage or salary in consequence to a long-term vacancy. An automatic adjustment through mechanisms inside the market were thus contradicted by its own means, as it is not a system comparable to stock market prices for bonds, where values are altered as swiftly as oil prices at petrol stations[6]. They can be manipulated independent of any exterior evaluation on behalf of the human resources manager or a company’s boss him- or herself: The company will decide on its own account whether (1) an employee deserved a pay raise, and (2) if the company can stem a pay raise at the moment. What sounds so unspectacular would theoretically contradict Mises’ assessment that the market apparently manipulated the payment that represented a profession, or a job. If Mises, on the other hand, spoke about individual companies when he spoke about the market, then he would be right, but his language then had to be considered ambiguous, leading directly towards misunderstandings. Outside of such pettiness, we still had to emphasise that once the market fails to provide to the people and could only respond bluntly with one-liners such as “Look for another job if you are dissatisfied with your old one! You have that freedom”, there is good reason for people to fall from grace with it—such behaviour was previously introduced by the disgraced Marie Antoinette, who is unto this day misquoted with “(Ben,) Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (translated with “Let them eat cake, although brioche is a pastry), a common idiom of her time, without any evidence that she coined that phrase with reference to the starving French populace growing gradually tired of the aristocracy. Disaffection like this will eventually result in nausea, as it happened with the French Revolution, succeeding an era of bottom-up exploitation and disinterest in the people’s grief. The market itself does of course not exploit anybody, companies do—the online retail giant Amazon Inc. that undermines regulations from taxes to work safety; Rio Tinto, the mining company that has got a history of environmental destruction, only to excavate rare earths and gold, między innymi[7]; Blackrock, which exploits warfare through its deployment of soldiers in the Middle East and Africa to gain revenue therefrom. Such would be examples of what the market lacks, but needs in order to remain functional and useful for the people who are involuntarily introduced[8]. Market apologists, thinkers and sympathisers would deny such allegations with arguments that everything was served well within the realms of demand and offer, and that the market did its—the utmost—best through focusing on the consumers’ demand. Mises did point out that the majority was pre-ferred to the minority, and that an inclusion of the—every—minority interest led to a waste of finite resources, which is true. But we do not speak about minority dissatisfaction but about nuisances that stymie long-term deterioration for the lower-class people. One of the symptoms we could refer to would be malnutrition and the apparent offers we see in the US, as Germany fares comparably better: No-one, we shall reemphasise, is interested in telling anybody what to eat or what not to eat; this is up to the people themselves. What we should care about, nonetheless, is the creation of equal conditions for everyone, so that the much vaunted independence in individual decision-making can be ascertained without suppressive oversight on behalf of independent or governmental watchdogs. Independence and self-reliance at a total degree can only be inaugurated when the necessary premises are ensured for every individual of every background—Friedman, to whom we will come back in a later sequence, has stated a heavy example that is hard to remove unless one placed a powerful governmental agency before it in order to inhibit race-related malpractices—; otherwise, what would be instated would be nothing less than a novel model of segregation: This time, unlike in Apartheid South Africa or the US’ Jim Crow South, it would not be about racial and ethnic minorities, but about the exclusion of poverty-stricken people. More or less, this is already happening, although we now have governmentally subsidised welfare programmes that prevent people in poverty from sticking to the floor of financial suicide. Programmes such as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (SNAP) in the US or the “Arbeitslosengeld II”, also known as “Hartz IV”. Without such programmes, many people would likely end up on the dole without any chance to get up on their own feet by themselves. Personal autonomy is an important lesson to learn for every single individual, indubitably, and no-one should be unjustifiably encumbered with other people’s personal burdens, but there can be no self-reliance when there are no means to exercise one’s life’s duties and cannot be earned anyhow. What is usually recommended together with the argument of seeking a different, better-paid job, is to undergo another job training to then find a new, better-paid job this way: Through a wholly different job. Theoretically, this is a good option, but it presumes that there were other jobs that one could seek that matched their qualifications, their soft skills. As with the entrepreneur, not everyone is predisposed to become everything: Some people are made to found their own businesses and make money at their risk, with all the responsibilities that are linked to it. Yes, we did speak about personal responsibility beforehand (viz. “More Points on Responsibility in Capitalism”, page 23 cf.), and we know that life cannot always be a one-way road in which one will have a linear career, from nursery school across the regular schools, maybe to go studying at a uni-versity or college, and eventually find a job one will pursue for the rest of one’s life; found a family, build a home, retire, and die, after a life of fulfilment, almost schematic. To many people, this may be a dream, but expectations of flexibility could strike through it, and comments such as these, that companies are obliged to nothing but employees had to settle with occasional alternations in order to not be overrun by the market that is always right, regardless of what it does, and that failure nearly always lies with the people, not the market, is an almost sec-tarian point of view, and so, there are two things we shall pre-emptively draw as missing attitudes on behalf of the market: 

(1) Confession to personal failures – The market is not an infallible, omniscient or almighty instrument, and so, even its apologists, sympathisers and thinkers will have to realise that even the market fails, from time to time. It has to realise that some of its binary mechanisms—demand and offer, for example—are at worst dysfunctional and at best in contradiction of the second point we shall list hereunder. It has to realise that occasionally, reforms and restructurings are necessary in order to maintain the market’s actuality. No-one of a reasonable mind would contradict that the market is the best construct we can have when it comes to the management of resources and production of vital as well as luxury goods. But no machine that was once considered perfect could run smoothly without maintenance operations and upgrades in accordance with the state of knowledge and innovations. The second missing point helps implementing those realisations, once the market and its fellows confess to their failure: 

(2) Prudence & Brio: The market lacks prudence insofar as that it usually switches into the defence when people start questioning its merit and even go as far as to think about increasing governmental intervention into production by independent companies. Moreover, instead of addressing the issues people have and find related with the market’s (mis)behaviour, what is usually responded with are the mantras that we spoke about beforehand, and calls to change one’s life in accordance with the market, such as reducing one’s purchasing behaviour or coordinating one’s life with one’s income, rather than demanding the market to be altered in one’s favour. What is presumed with such advice and allegations is the aforementioned infallibility of the market, and that the only entities that could be wrong where the consumers, the workers, the mortals. Again, the capability to confessing failure is lost with the market, thus needs to be installed. Its all-natural growth from a gathering of independent vendors and venturing entrepreneurs who eventually became magnates and tycoons—one must only think about names like John Paul Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sheldon Adelson or Bill Gates, the penultimate even grew up in lower-class conditions, when his father hardly earned a pittance but still donated to charities to help those who are worse off than him, as he stated[9]—led towards a lack of control mechanisms for (nearly) anti-competitive, multi-national concerns such as the repeatedly mentioned Amazon, Alphabet [Google] and Facebook. Prudence was mentioned in a first, but it is closely linked to its successor, the brio, a seemingly colloquial term, although the “Oxford English Dictionary” doesn’t list it as such (only as a mass noun of Italian origin), as the former stands as a prerequisite to the former: Without vivacity, without the state of an organism, the former cannot be born. Many times beforehand, it has been mentioned that the market was not a conscious, organic being, but rather a metaphor, a shell that accommodated traders and consumers alike, and mostly it has been mentioned as a nuisance to the market, as it kept it away from performing more meritoriously than it did now: It stood wholly in the entrepreneurs’ mercy, and so do the consumers, in consequence. 

What does stop the market from reforming itself to such a propitious change? To answer this question, we have to first ask ourselves how change would be enforced—if it doesn’t already come by itself, which is the case for now. Economists as well as functionaries in think tanks or even governmental positions—one may think of someone like Müller-Armack, an adviser to former German Minister of the Economy, Ludwig Erhard—could conduct studies and write books or treatises on such reforms to promote them through additional information on the instatement of such reforms, in order to contribute to a smooth transition into a novel state of the market. What happens instead of these efforts in influencing a debate, denialism takes place, as far as to deny the malevolence of monopolies to the competition on the market[10]. Cynics would argue that there are no longer any masterminds in economics and the Free-Market Philosophy, but elder men who cope with the irrefutable, immobile reality and instead exercise arguments on why the current world is the best of all worlds we could think of. Instead of parcels of erudite Hayeks, Rothbards and Mises, we found hordes of Leibniz’, and no Voltaire to influentially prove them wrong. One could be glad that Mises no longer had to see what happened to the discipline he championed. 

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

What about the brio that was mentioned beforehand? Briefly it was mentioned what had to be understood under this Italian loanword in this context: The market had to become an organism, a conscious being inhabited by multiple hosts that are the entrepreneurs. But wouldn’t this lead towards a development from the invisible hand to a rogue crony that would abandon all virtues once embedded inside, and grow to become what many fringe left-wingers condemned it as? To answer this question, and go further astray from the actual book review planned hereby, we first had to understand what would change once we breathed life into this shell. And there is good reason that prudence was linked to it: A conscious market would no longer function solely under the aforementioned binary mechanism of demand and offer, and only serve the customers according to their wishes[11]. As has been written in the epithet of this footnote, what the market needs is an understanding of ethics, and a (perceived) obligation to exercise its tasks in concordance with it. Prudence finally means this, but a lot more besides this: It has to act with far sight, not only in terms of revenue, but also in terms of factors such as environmental well-being, a topic many left-wingers have captured for themselves, never growing tired of accusing right-wingers of working actively against it, as it would starkly injure the objective of high revenue to outcompete rivals. More or less, they are right: The maintenance of environmental well-being mostly means abnegation from occasional profits as it would bear negative long-term consequences for the environment. To again refer to a giant, Nestlé and Unilever had to abstain from many of their suppliers’ palm oil as it is harvested under egregious conditions, in terms of the environment as well as human rights[12]. Would they? There is little chance, but they know that the rainforest deforested to cultivate the palm oil plants already takes its toll in shape of the climate change. If the market acted more prudent, i.e. if the bosses and entrepreneurs had acted more wisely, they would have abandoned the palm oil plants by the thousands, leading subsequently to a respective abandonment of the plants, so that the rainforest that once stood there could be reforested. But the market acted imprudently short-sighted, and instead stuck with the quick revenue, behaving like a junkie who is in for the next shot on greasy train station lavatories rather than seeking help for his lethal addiction, and gain kicks from less deteriorative injections (such as loving). But couldn’t we expect the market to behave more logical than a homeless guy with a syringe? Normally, yes, we could, and the market does too; and if it wants to withstand the growing impatience of the customers and workers, it will finally have to bow to evolutionary standards, and develop further, away from its olden standards, and onwards to the new age, the enlightened age, just without the upper-case Enlightenment[13]. 

In the last two sentences of the second bullet point, we more or less already summed up what has to become the concept for the next great market reform, after the first one which we can set at the advent of creditors, when the Medici family opened its first bank to lend money. Some might think that mercantilism was the latest cardinal economic theory, as it is mostly related to nationalist and protectionist stances with regards to foreign trade, as theories like laissez-faire (or Manchester) Capitalism or Libertarianism never came to be trialled in a field study—when they had become a national policy across a legislative period[14]—, but with regards to philosophical theories, the likes of the aforementioned men and women, those who have been listed prior to the first review, those have been the last important contributors to economics. Still, none of them, as we shall see in the later reviews, have realised how important it is that the market must be humanised to some extent. As for how much it has to come to life, this stood up for discussion, but the previous two bullet points should be an essential foundation for a vivification of the market. More than the former, the latter is of import to master the century cries that haunt the planet, or have been haunting the planet for decades: An exploitative Capitalism that abandoned its original ideals; monopolies that disable competition to a great ex-tent; climate change, which many companies do not feel (sufficiently) responsi-ble to act against, viz. the likes of Nestlé, Rio Tinto, Vattenfall and Exxon Mobile, etc., to name only a few, some of which we have spoken about beforehand.; the surge of authoritarian rulers all across the world, or the manifestation of such who have never been preceded by Democratic rulers. We could continue for some time and also refer to the United Nation’s agenda on the millennium objectives, which also included the eradication of world hunger, the alphabetisation of children across the globe, etc. The market is capable of addressing many of these issues, it could even fare much better than the bureaucratic nation-states that rule us to the best of their abilities. (Which is not unusually poor in perfor-mance), if only it collectively took over this responsibility, which, in spite of growing acknowledgement, so far has happened too little. We do see electric vehicles being developed faster than ever before, even though slight arrogance shines through these efforts when every automaker creates its own plug to charge only at exclusively available stations (although this is a minor issue that has been fixed early, so that it didn’t start off as an issue of greater size; in the wake of greater cognizance of animal wellbeing, food producers jumped on the trend bandwagon and developed a vast allotment of vegetarian and vegan products for the herbivorous palate. Once the market is able to profit from de-sires, he is quick to act upon nuisances, but when it comes to sacrificing itself, as there is no other way to solve a problem, he is reticent. The answer on why this is so is obvious: The market is essentially egoist, and as we will learn with Ayn Rand, egoism is good. Instead of practising Christian selflessness, we should uphold “The Virtue of Selfishness”. If one wanted to commit oneself to a higher good without any returns expected or received, one will be free to do so: But on a platform that devours the selfless and the incapable, it is an offer as cynical and laughable as the advice to seek a different job if the currently held does not pay enough to pay the rents; the correction that one was free to pursue happi-ness by one’s own means, even if that meant to abandon the free market for a life outside of the society that is centred upon it. It is spoken aplenty about the choice and about freedom where both are mitigated to straightened lines. And where the greatest minds speak of simplistic terms, existent complexity has never been addressed. 

To finally return to the review we planned to speak about, we shall grasp our next quote from the notebook: It addresses the concept of catallactic competition, a concept close to praxeology (and originally established by renown English economist David Ricardo), as it explains to us the basic concepts of the free market, and how human beings are a main protagonist in it, either as the producer in the factory and the office, but also as the consumer who makes choices in the grocery shelf of his/her local supermarket. We are going to be confronted with well-known phrases and benchmarks: 

Catallactic competition must not be confused with prize fights and beauty contests. The purpose of such fights and contests is to discover who is the best boxer or the prettiest girl. The social function of catallactic function is, to be sure, not to establish who is the smartest boy and to reward the winner by a title and medals. Its function is to safeguard the best satisfaction of the consumers which they can attain under the given state of economic data. 

Again, nothing out of the unobvious, this could be considered another fun-damental principle of market theory: Provide to your customer the best product to the best conditions possible, and he or she will reward you with regular purchases. It is not about having the best products of all co-competitors, but to have products that are in the buyers’ interest. That’s why there are still luxury products next to goods for the everyman: Because not everyone wants to pur-chase cutting-edge technology where an ordinary option suffices. (In the end, not everyone can make use of a twenty-inch TV screen when the living room just does not allow its proper placement in front of the sofa, even though this TV screen may be la dernière crie on the technology market). 

Is there anything else to say about this quote? Only that it is another auton-omous mechanism that fulfils itself unless an exterior power intervenes in the market so that the catallactic competition is being corrupted. With comprehension of my prior postulate, it may be useful for the ubiquitous procedures on the market, but it can hardly stand as a sole pillar stemming the whole of the market, and all its remnants in social life. It has the market look like a half-baked machinery, like a trainee sent to work without supervision without having fin-ished his professional training, and now sitting confused at his desk and wondering what he was supposed to do with the task given to him. 

After this quick rebuke, let’s move on to a mere surprise on behalf of Mises. One of his multiple references to Socialism and why it cannot work, why it is inferior to Capitalism: 

Men can have both socialist cooperation under the division of labor and rational employment of the factors of production. They are free to adopt socialism without abandoning economy in the choice of means. Socialism does not enjoin the renunciation of rationality in the employment of the factors of production. It is a variety of rational social action.  (Page 735) (Emphasis mine)

To some, this might come as a surprise, that Mises did not only speak conde-scendingly about the authoritarian ideology that placed people under the Damoclesian sword of a one-state party without an opposition or the toleration of outspoken dissent, let alone a free press. This quote came after a prolonged theorisation on how Socialism was effectively unable to function across a longer period of time because it did not feature an own concept of economic calculation, but as he states, Socialism may not even be obliged to create a concept of its own but could well apply a predecessor’s model. We may in turn assume that there are few calculation models outside of the ones established respectively by mathematical economists (as Mises used to call John Maynard Keynes), and all others, of whom I was not told any categorisation as Mises brought up for his colleague. Socialists could of course not develop a calculation system of their own as they would not acknowledge any necessity for such one. Their intention is completely converse to the Capitalist’s: Instead of implementing a free market for free flow of goods, innovations and products, the Socialists are interested in an absolutist state and its erection of an armada of coordinated factories and services that will provide the people with everything they need and wish for. The responsible cabinet or department could logically employ professional economists who did the math for the government, so that the ruling party could fell the right decisions. There is a reason why absolutist rulers have been abolished, and impossibility of omniscience is one of them. 

The problem that led towards the matter-of-fact that there has never been any functional actual Socialist state: Most of the leaders, if not all, despised the free market as a Capitalist pariah. Their whole intent with the creation of a Socialist state was to keep out any Capitalist means or good. That’s why in the “German Democratic Republic” (GDR), Western music and cars, for example, were prohibited, and nothing was permitted to be introduced to the GDR when it derived from the Federal Republic of Germany, or any other Western, non-Socialist state. (Needless to say, Erich Honecker drove a Western car, a Wart-burg) Everything from Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” onwards thitherto has been demeaned as putting profits over people, so that the people were consequently better off without it, with a government that put them and their interests first, and did away with the inhumanely cold reckoning of the accountant and the Capitalist in general. Few of them with hatred written upon their banners would usurp the incumbent society to reverse it into a Socialist one-party state that equipped the predecessor’s economic system with specific adjustments. As edifying as it may be to not go full Socialist but instead for a healthy mixture of Capitalism and Socialism, there is just no chance ahead that something like this were going to happen. And for the better, even: States, in their natal faults, would usually sit upon a boiling pot of various minorities’ disliking and outright despise, so that it were only a matter of time when this pot was about to im-plode, although not always in such radical shape as has happened on January 06, 2021, with masses of outraged, extremist right-wingers and, more importantly, sympathisers of POTUS pro tempiore, Donald J. Trump, storming the Capitol in Washington DC to chase Senators and VPOTUS pro tempiore Mike Pence, to either murder or torture the former and hang the latter. But revolutions, or orchestrated instalments, that finally ended up with a Socialist state didn’t survive through freedom but through stubborn prohibitions of dissent and Capitalist thinking, and through widespread prosecution of those who violated those restrictions, and so, the boiling pot was widening until it reached its utmost capacities; thereafter, upwards was the only remaining direction possible, and so, the dissenters and professional violators heaved against the obstructer, the great fiend above. A state that can only survive through forbiddances and suppression of the people, either through an iron fist or continuous nudges in the right direction cannot survive for too long, unless it manipulates the people around the clock, subliminally, through what Germans use to call Zuckerbrot und Peitsche (The Carrot and The Stick): Give the people something to emit dopamine, and punish them for wrongdoing; but don’t forget to redeem some sugary bread when they obey. Humans are thus treated like dogs, with a two-way comprehension of how to behave, how to follow orders. They are easily controlled through their reward centre, as few of them intuitively think in long terms. Socialists don’t, either, but declare this poor characteristic an advantage rather than a nuisance, and praise themselves of being the poorest in this missing link: Economic calculation, and proper economic regulation[15]. Downfalls also trigger immediate contradictions on what caused them: Venezuela, for many Socialists who believed Maduro to be a true Bolivariano, it was not his mismanagement and authoritarian megalomania, but US banana-war-like intervention and manipulation of the crude oil market in order to lower the revenue of Venezuela’s largest market[16]. (Venezuela is the nation with the second-greatest oil reservoirs, shy after the Saudi Arabia). But did the Soviet Union actually give the people anything back for their obedience even in the worst times? We all remember that many resources for quotidian life, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) served as the most delusional example, as there are still elders who lived through the more than forty years, when people were detain in surreptitious cloak-and-dagger actions, because they said something bad about the politburo in East Berlin. Neighbours were eavesdropping their comrades’ names to the “Staatssicherheit” (Stasi; translates to Federal Security) when they expressed dissent or hatred, and when they travelled abroad, they were not allowed to take with them all too much, at best a single bag. There was nothing they were allowed to bring with them, even though it might not be available in their Socialist Dystopia. Only Russia was worse, where dissenters were detained in the infamous kulaks, about which Solzhenizyn wrote his equally famous true-crime report. And although all of these facts do have got nothing to do with the issue of economic calculations, we must consider them as at least affiliated to the question of whether it could work at all: In order to make use of economic calculation, purchases need to be triggered, people need to enjoy incentives to spend their money on goods, at best from local production to raise the GDP. One such incentive could be a broad allotment of luxury products, or a great variety within specific, or even key products. (As key products, we could consider the essential products, in the niches of hygiene and nutrition. Instead of the same sort of bread, there could be various products as we see them in bakeries of first-world Capitalist nations, particularly in Germany) When people are not given a choice but only go to hops to take away their homogenous tote of water, milk and bread, all rationalised because the production was hardly able to keep up with demand, and was not able at all to provide some degree of luxury, people will have no incentive to purchase at all, because they knew that they had to save money to make ends meet. One immediately recognises another incentive that could trigger purchases: To have a good income that allowed purchases above the essential needs. Now, we all know that left-wingers are prone to criticise the maxim of con-sumption: That in Capitalism, consumption is not only the accelerator of well-being, but consequentially everyone’s liability! In the same breath, left-wingers also tend to criticise the focus on the GDP, although they are not alone with this condescension[17]. To think that the GDP could measure social well-being is delusional indeed, as it only shows the quotient of imports and exports, regardless of how this affects the people, that is how much the people earn, as com-pared to the average rise of wages. (Simply, inflation) It is a complete distortion about what the economy is supposed to achieve: It shows how much economists who believe in the GDP as the most precise ruler to measure societal as well as economic well-being. It does not measure either. A market cannot live without its consumers and workers, and they conversely cannot live without a proper wage. When the wages and salaries are too low, the companies they work for suffer too, a matter-of-fact that has been proven in studies too[18]. But why is the GDP of no valuable information for us? Because it is a measurement inter-esting only for states, to measure the economic outcome within their borders. An economist does not care too much for the state’s well-being, but only for the market’s. Due to the globalisation of the market within the world, a national GDP becomes more and more futile for those who are not affiliated to a state and its exclusive benefits. That is: If one is not in a stately position, such as an employment, it is unimportant to know how high the GDP is, how well or poorly it does, and how it could be either maintained in its current position to plateau it—economic cycles, or waves, usually turn down eventually, so that they can rise again—or to trigger it upwards again when it has reached a low tide again. Single companies, even multinational concerns, do not bother to think about how their actions, their expatriations and outsourcing could affect the gross national gross domestic product, and why should they? Unless they work for the state, as a nationalised company or operator in a joint venture with a national company, they do not have even the slightest interest in minding it in their business plan. Only the state needs to be concerned about it, and occasionally, one could argue that deregulation and decentralisation are the magic potion to invigorate the market’s powers, and consequentially the GDP. 

Now, to abrupt nonchalantly, we should return to the actual issue: The accusation that in Capitalism, people are coerced into consumption. As we have stepped right into a pandemic that led towards a unanimous mantra of keeping people at home and away from mass gatherings as small as a market aisle, more and more people have realised that they could live happily with less, and that they realised that the usual urge to consume for the market’s well-being’s sake was delusional and disadvantageous to their own well-being. Mises never promoted consumption explicitly; instead, he stated that it is the market’s priority to satisfy consumers in their desires, through the cheapest possible products they wished for. And ultimately, it would contradict the market’s principle of volun-tariness if people were subliminally compelled into consumption, leaving them no option to not. But is this even the case? Or is this nothing but a strawman to attack Capitalism again[19]?

At first, we should consider a world in which consumption would be halted entirely, to an indefinite period of time. Expectedly, Capitalism would slump down, as all production would run against a wall of warehouses from which they could not depart as there were no demand for all those products. All producers stopped production and all services ceased their runs as there too were no demand for them. One by one, all companies had to lay off their employees as they had no work, and consequently, all consumers could no longer consume. Why should they? They already stopped to consume before they were laid off, and so, outside of their rent and maintenance costs, they had some more time to spend all their savings before they finally ran dry. How such a world would finally end, if it ever ended, we cannot know, as we couldn’t imagine a world without consumption in the first place. Humans must consume not to serve a higher purpose, but because they have to satisfy their own demands, their basic needs of eating and drinking, and perhaps a little luxury if they didn’t live the Stoic life of living off only the most essential needs, and otherwise in a non-materialistic habit. Capitalism thereby relies on a tendency that has prevailed since the Middle Ages and has been made use of since the Industrial Revolution. Stoics, while having existed throughout human existence, from the self-deprecating Diogenes of Sinope, to monks like the famous Trappist Thomas Merton. But those were rarities, oftentimes with a religious background as is the case with Merton, as well as lesser-known monks who chose hermitage in order to not be challenged in their piety. Buddhist monks too live in remote monaster-ies, training their spirit and conscious to reach what might be colloquially described as an astral mind. Their goal is to someday reach Nirvana, even more devoted monks try to reach Zen, although I own too little knowledge of the Buddhist philosophy, and this exercise is not dedicated to philosophical or religious schools of thought, but the question on whether we are urged to consume as much as we can, against our own interests. And generally, people consume vol-untarily, no-one orders them to do so, because there is no need to. One day or the other, people will have to add to their food bank, their home pharmacy, their bathroom. And eventually, they will also have to clean their apartment or home, so that they will need products for this as well. Weekly grocery courses are a regular task. Still, many critics and haters of Capitalism believe that people are coerced in their consumption, outside of the calls by politicians that to pur-chase goods was a “patriotic duty”. (verbatim German Trade Minister Peter Altmaier of the centre-right CDU) His context was different as the situation al-together is extraordinary. There is a difference between keeping stationary retailers and shopping malls alive—something only a nation-state can feel con-strained to do—and trying to gouge sales, at worst through stately promotion—something that would be indescribably self-satirising, a state beyond the banana republic. Advertisements could be considered an urge as well, although we then had to wonder how else products could be promoted, when advertising was considered a malpractice on behalf of private companies, and at best should be prohibited, although no-one so far suggested any such policy, or something that came close to it. 

Aside of this, advertisements should be kept legal, indubitably, the only actual malpractice that should be forbidden, if we considered any policy comparable to this, is the misinformation, i.e. the promotion under false statements or offers, such as the advertising of dietary supplements as, for example, functioning evidentially well as replacements for fruits or vegetables in terms of supplying the required amount of vitamins for an adult human being. Normally, this is not the case, as their product category already states: Pills and dragées that transport vitamins in the body are supplements by name, they are not ersatz containers for nutritive substances. To speak otherwise is manipulation at first, and could become a crime when such proactive manipulation was legally prohibited. At the moment, no such law is planned, and it is questionable whether it had any merit in terms of preventing population of people upon false narratives that could at worst have life-threatening consequences, but at least consequences detrimental to the manipulated people’s health. Liberals and Libertarians alike would argue in favour of the advertising companies, with reference to self-reliance and that adult human beings should be capable of both checking advertisements’ truth-fulness and debunking false statements themselves. They weren’t wrong to say so: The only problem that exists within this complex is that with many products that could threaten customers’ health to an alarming degree are also linked to subjects one might not likely be able to comprehend as an amateur. Dietary supplements are not produced organically but in laboratories, conceptualised by experienced scientists with advanced knowledge in their apparent discipline. An accountant or a warehouse worker could likely not figure out whether a state-ment in a TV ad was true, false, or mixed. Of course, there are many journalists and equally experienced scientists who switched jobs from the laboratory to consumer protection, speaking colloquially. Organisations like “Foodwatch” (a non-profit) in Germany or governmental consumer protection agencies in coun-tries like Germany, the United States or the United Kingdom pioneered in ex-posing falsehoods in packaging, conscious misinformation and anti-competitive market manipulation, so that malevolent advertising for egoistic purposes would fall within their purview. They could—and do!—employ professionals of these fields in order to evaluate the statements’ truthfulness; right-winged Liberals might think critical of such agencies, populists amongst them—within the fringe realms of Libertarians and cynics (more expletive terms would rather match the heralds of the anti-government populists: Suada-spitting loudmouths who consider their hateful language and partisan proclamations levelled critique), they are certainly in unanimous opposition to such agencies, beside the state in general. But the point in their existence, their very raison d’être, is within the erroneousness of leaving it to the people to figure out for themselves whether a product cannot naturally catch up with its own promises when the prerequisite for such assessments is outside of any collective possibility; a premise that is assembled under such examples of dietary supplements and their inorganic, chemical background. If it were for every ordinary person to comprehend the ingredients of such concomitants, we could consequentially argue that studies extending up to six years are overblown as the subject itself was not that wide-ranging, after all, and artificially augmented by doctorates and medical professionals in order to hoist their prestige before the populace, i.e. in part the patients they serve in hospitals and emergency rooms. But this is not the case—we all are well aware of the advanced professionalism required to not only diagnose patients, but to also perform surgeries that cure inner defects and illnesses. (Injuries are meant by this, but we all know that viral infects too can cause severe damages in organs, or bones, muscles and the nervous system) And so, even the comparably minor task of understanding what is contained in a supplement or what are the concrete side-effects as elaborated in the package insert should not be fully encumbered upon the patients’ or, generally, consumers’ backs as it could break them. Hence, commercials on medical products, available only on prescription or not, always mention in the end that in case of doubts, questions or interest in additional information, pharmacists or doctors should be consulted. Whether the producers or distributors would keep the advisory or not should not be of interest now, although the question is indeed of import in the superordinate allegation that without a regulating state, many regulations would be abandoned as they were experienced solely as a burden without any surplus for either entity, the producers or the consumers[20] . Some might argue that it has already cemented in the public knowledge that pharmacists and doctors could (likely) consult comprehensively on the side-effects of certain medications, even though brief news reports occasionally proved otherwise. (At least in German public broad-casting; of broadcasters or print/online journalists I cannot speak as I either don’t know or lack access or interest in the particular medium. (which is the case for televised broadcasting)) 

Coming back to the actual topic after some mid-level meandering—we will eventually return to a quote by Ludwig von Mises—, we still didn’t answer whether humans in the Capitalist society are urged into rampant consumption to serve the companies that have to make profits. So far, we admitted that there is no desperate need for such coercive measurements, as even luxury products are gratefully purchased by a categorically wealthier middle class. (That is, wealthier than many of their forefathers as early as the last century, the 20th century) Even ludicrously expensive products like iPhones by Apple (AAPL) or Tesla automobiles (TSLA) are purchased comparably often by denizens of Western European or US-American companies, some of which might even oppose the very system that has made those products possible[21]. Exorbitant wealth is known to expose the worst attitudes of ourselves, some of which we may work ardently to sup-press them inside of us, like Grover Norquist trying to press fiscal debt in his bathtub until he can drown it finally. But this is a different story, one which we might not address in this text anymore. What ae are talking about is the question of how far subliminal urges towards further consumption actually reaches, and whether it is true that we are all being indirectly coerced into buying more than we actually want. Previously we spoke about supermarkets that design their sales room strategically, to urge their customers to buy things they even did not have on their groceries list. This tactic is well known and far from illegal, but it could deliver an unwelcome argument against Capitalism and its principle to satisfy the people’s need for goods. What good does it do to overburden the people with unnecessary goods they didn’t ask for in the first place? When it comes to publicly financed services, few of Capitalism’s proponents are grateful for the cheap entrance at swimming pools, theatres or cinemas, and for affordable public transport, only because it is easy to refer to individual responsibility during the weekly shopping and the advantages of financing such public institutions through corporate revenue models, i.e. to shift them onto the free market and let the consumers decide whether the preservation of culture and pastimes are worth it. As simple as the solution to the lowering of taxes seems, as risky it could become due to the high import of culture as such. Still, we will keep this issue for a later chapter to now focus on the prime question in this complex, before we will finally return to Mises. 

The problem we have with the supermarkets in particular is that they fulfil an essential task in society: The provision of affordable nutrition to everyone. Socialists would of course centralise those supermarkets because of their essential standing point, but in a Capitalist, or generally every non-centralising society would leave it to the market to do the job, and for a good reason: So far, the market has done a decent job, although there are still many loopholes to be filled: The assurance that slaughter animals did not suffer during their Via Dolorosa; that products are easily identifiable as healthy or unhealthy; that fruits and vegetables remain fresh when up for sale, and that products that have qualitatively expired—which happens early with fresh products, not only in the fruit section but also with pastries[22], fresh meat and fish—, are sorted out. All of those things were generally well, so that customers are occasionally more upset about sexist advertisements or the rare cases of product recalls. Needless to say that some of those points are also not in the supermarkets’ but the farmers’ producers’ purview, for example when it comes to the cattle’s’ well-being during the journey to the abattoir, or food safety and the notification about tainted products. (Certainly everyone has once heard about traces of natural gas in yogurts, or swarf in cheese) Such oversight, united in one bloated bureaucratic body, separated into subordinate chapters, but nonetheless more static than the efficient corporate body. Yet, when it comes to the efficient supply of goods to the people, both fail in different directions: while the entrepreneur is more interested in selling more than the people need, the public official would likely fail to satisfy all customers, as Socialist states usually suffer under their terrific mismanagement. Some blame overregulation, although without mentioning which regulations in particular decelerate a rapider procedure of goods and/or services. Still it can be agreed that states would likely underperform in the objective to supply goods of any kind properly to the people. During the year of 2021, only Israel managed to supply sufficient vaccines to its people to make headway in mass vaccination efforts to safely restore all civic liberties. How did it manage to do so? Mostly because it tracked all of its citizens and created an infrastructure to register all of those eligible for vaccines; loose data security laws additionally assured the maintenance of all limitations during lockdown seasons. Even the mass event of a deceased rabbi’s funeral was unable to hoist Covid-19 cases in Jerusalem[23]. The government willingly offered to transmit data from vaccinated individuals to pharmacological developers to track their status after successful vaccination. Other nations would certainly have raised an eyebrow on such enquiries, but for Israel, which has knowingly implemented such weak data security laws in order to assure everyone’s safety in case of sudden missile impacts from the Gaza Strip or enemies like Iran, this was hardly something outrageous. It’s the price paid for settlements in the Holy Land, but in this case, as a first in his-tory, it paid out. The Israeli government can function smoothly because its citizens are as open in terms of data as Westerners were when they wanted to use services like PayPal, Facebook, or Netflix: As long as something enjoyable is offered in return and is not part of a complementary agreement that is forced upon oneself, people are ready to be more revealing with their personal data, while returning to the internet to holler about the data’s endless hunger for data. (Of course there is no empirical data about overlaps in this scheme; that there are people who consciously enter their data for companies that are reportedly known to sell their data to third parties, even without their consent, and who would also complain about this same practice. It is hereby presumed until further notice contradicts this sentiment) Stately benefits have become rather regular and many people consider their monthly tax payments a sufficient, tolerable prerequisite for many public institutions, but aside of this, they would like to keep their discreet distance to it in terms of private data like their shopping preferences or their browsing history, perhaps even their Facebook posts, although they are public to anybody, just as are one’s tweets or photos on Instagram. It is because of this that people can also filter all tweets from around the world, of any time without facing any repercussions therefrom. Such notes can be interesting when speaking about what it means when it is revealed that giants like Face-book sell personal data to third parties without the users’ consent, and without any notification about this malpractice in the end-user license agreement. (EULA) One has to wonder what data is sold in particular: Is it one’s password, residual address, marital state? It is most likely data to localise one, so the name and residual address, but in combination with one’s posting behaviour and what can be extracted therefrom, so that advertisements can be specified in such a way as that one will see ads that were allegedly more to one’s liking, in accordance with one’s online characteristics. Data protection laws bar companies like Facebook from doing this unless the users were asked whether they allowed this abuse; without a state, this would consequently be non-existent. It is not even assured whether people were asked about the usage of their data when admitting interest in joining their platform. Journalists may still be able to investigate such proceedings in the backdoor room, but considering that this was not met with open threats against the investigators, including harm inflicted from sympathisers with the entity investigated, one could wonder whether this would reach all people equally, so that everyone will be comprehensively informed about such actions that could probably go against their interests. It’s the symptom of a question too few Libertarians ask themselves when they promote the dissolution of the state at all costs: Which policies that exist because of states mandating certain behaviour would still be in place without this stately mandate? While there is little hope or fear that the gradual or immediate dissolution of the state would lead to a simultaneous emergence of an alternate world, one that previ-ously only existed in the minds of people, something tangibly different form the status quo, there is good reason to wonder what remains from the statist world. Larger companies would consult empiricists to evaluate what the consuming populace liked about the state-mandated policies, and what they would be lucky to no longer see once it is not forced onto the companies. While profit maximisation will always be the benchmark for companies of any kind, as profits save their maintenance, it would never serve them well to contradict the consumers’ interest due to hard-headedness. And the majority of consumers points towards the preferable direction, while the minority will have to give it in to them or look for a more satisfactory distributor of the niche in which they were failed by the former. 

The verdict thus must be: Yes, consumers are coerced into purchasing more than they need and they planned to purchase, simply because of the motif of profits. Competition forces them to set traps against their customers as they need to garner as much surpluses as they can in order to be prepared for less fruitful times. Generosity, while likely welcomed by all customers alike as no-one likes to be tricked into higher payments as compared to lower ones, would likely be suffocated underneath the paunch of the fat cats that exploited the manipulability of their customers. It’s the demise of the naïve benefactor who, unlike in reality, beat the greedy banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. As often as it is said that life isn’t fair, people complain about this matter-of-fact, expressing in juvenile zest for action that this nuisance could not be maintained as if it were unchangeable. What those do-gooders often oversee is that while there may be public interest for a switch from this natural injustice, what it required was the concerted action with all people simultaneously, not just a speck of people who were intrinsically motivated to turn the world around for good, even if it came with a measurable expense on luxuries and conveniences. Yet, unless this unan-imous enactment on those changes, none of them are going to persist in the long term. And this does not come as a note of resignation as is read in the underlines of the aforementioned “It is what it is”—it is a matter-of-fact as well. Simple majorities only work in Democracies because their sufficiency is manifested in the rule of law that functions as the bedrock of the Democratic con-struct that is built thereupon. The fundamental rule of law spot in nature is dif-ferent therefrom: It says that all actions convey reactions, and it is up to the being that acts to foresee which reactions will logically follow subsequently. Nature, as a figurative sandbox, is nothing constructed on human premises, on inorganic premises created through socio-evolutionary premises—it is like a blank drawing table waiting to be utilised for more advanced systems to be imposed onto it, or upon it. What economists have derived from this bromide is correct, but their usual assessments never rise above them, they unfortunately remain on this basic level, and try to explain everything therefrom, as if everything could be fully explained from a priori stances and a status quo that almost equals the primitive state of the Garden Eden. How many times did readers come across an example that was about two privateers who wished to trade goods as ordinary as a sack of rice and a buggy? Adam Smith has persisted not only through his pioneering laissez-faire theories but also through his observations on trading policies and how they materialised in tariffs for buckets of wheat and the likes. It is purity incarnate, but bears little help for our modern-day questions. Luckily, this goes only for the authors of treatises, and not for the academic economists who confront actual issues, more detailed questions and complexions. Unfortunately, no-one speaks about such papers as authored by Mises; instead, we are caught with arguing his books that take the same line as his predecessors of olden days. 

To finally, and now seriously, return to Mises, we shall immediately and without further ado bring in a quote that resembles Friedman to all extents, but this does not need to surprise us at all, as both share superimposable ideas. Now, this is the quote I am talking about: 

An employer or an employee entrusted with the management of a department of an enter-prise is free to discriminate in hiring workers, to fire them arbitrarily or to cut down their wages before the market rate. But in indulging in such arbitrary acts jeopardizes the profitability of his enterprise or his department and thereby impairs his own income and his position in the economic system. 

I said that this resembles Friedman as he, as can be read above, is known to have said that an entrepreneur was free to turn down applications from African-American applicants, or fire them, simply because the owner was a racist. As it were his business, he were free to hire and fire whoever he or she wanted. And while this is true indeed—only Socialists would consider telling bosses who to hire and who to fire—, it deeply normalises racism as such, as a proper opinion like any other. But racism isn’t an opinion, it’s a crime. Not a thought crime, of course, but the boss who turns down a well-qualified man or woman of colour—the broadening is necessary as, even though the “Jim Crow South” Milton Friedman may have recognised in the news, but not in person as he was a Jew, not a man of colour, and lived in New England, not in the Deep South—went far beyond just thinking that people of colour were savages, he told them that their alleged inhumanness disqualified them from working in his shop, factory or construction sites[24]. Of course they are free to decide who to hire and who to avoid, and in the end, it cannot be told whether the decision was motived by ideological beliefs or the question of who fits better into a position, just as we are usually confronted with the same question when it comes to the peculiar im-balance of men and women in boards of advisory and executive suites. Some say that too few women aspire to climb this high on the career ladder, some say that women voluntarily choose to take care of the household and the upbringing of children rather than running for executive offices; some say that too few women are heading for socially oriented jobs like nursery nurses, hairdressers, or teachers; the third group accuses institutionalised misogyny that barred women from mounting the managerial positions. So far, misogyny is not considered a crime as racism is, but awareness is growing that the latter reason might bear some significance. We are not going to dive into this question but only note that it is a crucial issue that cannot be amended without state-led oversight. Does oversight solve the issue? In theory, it does, but in practice, and given the state’s long history of bureaucratic balls-and-chains that stop it from making progress, there is little hope that it works. Minimum wages and their compliance too are enforced through oversight on behalf of the Ministry of Finances and the Customs Department in Germany, the latter sporadically examines the shops that fall under the law, while the former examines the companies’ accounts[25]. Companies might be burdened twice: Firstly through the artificially increased wage (although we could wonder whether underpayments happened before the state forced a minimum wage upon the businesses), and secondly through the increased bureaucratic burden, although we also had to consider he question how this extra burden in terms of documentation for the Exchequers would look in practice, whether it cost additional employees or money due to extra hours worked in order to catch up with the legal requirements, etc. To argue generally and vaguely about the state’s ball-and-chains referred to beforehand is populist and does not argue, in the end; it ended up as a strawman for one’s own cause. 

Finally, and in the end, as argued in the footnote to this topic, the minimum wage displays a catch-22 between the hordes of day labourers who worked full time but hardly made ends meet, missing the state of poverty only narrowly, and the opposite hordes of unemployed people who were not employed because the businesses did not find an economic reason to employ them, thanks to the min-imum wage to be paid to those who were already in fixed positions. Total employment is a myth, it is unachievable, ‘tis we know—the question therefore is: What can be achieved then, what is worth being achieved? Should as many people as possible be employed, but for lower wages than could be installed, by force at worst? Or should as few people as justifiable be employed, but for wages that maintained the good life? An employment as such, if we wanted to be sardonic, bore the opportunity to add concomitant incomes that would thus pay the rent, food, etc. That is, if the government wouldn’t tax the second source of income away, morphing it worthless to pursue in the future. Our social mind would of course decry such recommendations, comparable to the infamous Twitter faux pas by the investment bank “JP Morgan Chase”, where an imagi-nary low-income worker was recommended to cut down in costs such as coffee, eating out, etc. The setting was much more demeaning than it reads. Subsequent to the deletion of this tweet—which didn’t matter as the internet doesn’t forget, and users were quick to save the link in the “Internet Archive” and screenshots of the tweet—Congresswomen subpoenaed CEO Jamie Dimon to hear from him how such wages were justifiable[26]. The core problem: Even some of their employees lived off piteous wages. Such large banking houses could hardly argue that their turnover was too small to pay all their employees enough to live modest lives. Unlike a start-up or an unprofitable company like “Tesla”, which still lies in the red even years after its establishment, its popularity and stock value, (Elon Musk is known to possess little money on his bank account but to be a factual billionaire thanks to his “Tesla” stock ownership) “JP Morgan Chase” is a highly profitable concern with thousands of employees and billions in annual revenue, thus being able to raise wages without risking its notable position in the business world; its reputation could only increase. There is only one problem to the theory: Greed. Disgraceful greed for more money at the expense of those who create it on the frontlines; the low-level bankers, the secretaries and who else receives less than a black-tie employee. The only ones who were unlikely to condemn those conditions, where extreme wealth and questionably low incomes were gathered under the same roof were the right-wingers who called for greater independence and self-reliance on both sides, the individual people as well as the companies, also because they did not fit the comprehension of justice in the classically left-winged, Samaritan sense, that those who need shall be given, and that those who can give shall give. (We could refer to the obituary in memoriam Sheldon Adelson, in which Adelson himself reminisced that his father, a stereo-typical proletarian, still gave to charity organisations from his small income and although he could barely feed his family, simply because he believed that there were still people who were worse off and in direr need of whatever they could get; how ironic it seems that one of his sons should later become a casino magnate, a business that like no other lived off one of the financially most destructive addictions) Rand coined this the mooching of the fair-share vultures, and while not even those who think alike enjoy her novels—I for myself was occasionally appalled about her brute language, which was even more obvious in her non-fiction writing, but we will come back to that later—many convey this thinking by calling for the abolition of the welfare state and regulations that protect workers great and small from HR managers’ and business owners’ capriciousness. We could distinguish the two approaches between left-wingers and right-wingers on the basis of the famous Lao Tzu quote: “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime”, although we faced some restrictions to this pattern[27]: First of all, right-winged liberalism is not centred around the idea that all people should be taught in order to increase their independence—this would come closer to the Anarchist trinity of “Educating, Agitating, Organising”[28]. Right-winged Liberals would more likely tell the people that as their luck lied in their own hands, they could teach themselves whatever they required in order to build an existence of their own, one they could consider worthwhile. Whilst it is not gazed upon with demeanour or condescension when one partook in helping someone up voluntarily, or teaching him techniques in hunting and gathering, or in emotional intelligence and how it can be applied during negotiations, it is not a core principle manifested in the philosophy that backs this ideological premise. At best, according to the idea, everyone individually pursues one’s happiness through personal efforts and with as little help from outside as possible, which peaks in nothing at all. Hence, the minimum wage is nothing but exterior support, and should thus be abolished, apparently; it would liken an enforced drainage of corporate success, it could lower the workers’ interest in improving their performance to accomplish a pay raise, and would consequently weaken the company that was told to pay a minimum wage. All of those premises, if they can be affirmed as correct, are questionable, even downright wrong, as pay raises are not determined to happen as a gratification for an extraordinary performance, and, as we mentioned beforehand, there is no true choice as the whole market system lacks an actual alternative to work—the opportunity to opt out of the job market is nothing but a strawman, hiding the inevitable road into poverty, as the market has built up a monopoly over the people and their choices to establish an independent existence whereby happiness can be pursued; it’s either work or be busted—must be enjoyed with great caution and equally great scepticism: Unless one entered them with prior support, they can only appear weakly argued, and with allotted acceptance of its premises, as they can hardly convince one by themselves. And with this verdict, we shall enter one more quote by Mises before we shall offer a short exploration into Praxeology, before we thus visit our third author, which will be the abundantly referred Ms. Ayn Rand, a prolific author and controversial figure of the Libertarian movement. 

Briskly and unexpectedly, Ludwig von Mises preceded the later “Beatle” John Lennon in his dreamy speech, although von Mises never established a pop music genre, nor did he get a bowl haircut. What they have in common is the mantra as follows: 

“Imagine a world in which everybody were free to live and work as entrepreneur or as employee where he wanted and how he chose, and ask which of these conflicts could still exist. Imagine a world in which the principle of private ownership of the means of production is fully realized, in which there are no institutions hindering the mobility of capital, labor, and commodities. In which the laws, the courts, and the administrative officers do not discriminate against any individual or group of individuals, whether native or alien. Imagine a state of affairs in which governments are devoted exclusively to the task of protecting the individual’s life, health, and property against violent and fraudulent aggression. In such a world the frontiers are drawn on the maps, but they do not hinder anybody from the pursuit of what he thinks will make him more prosperous.” (Mises 2010, page 718. Emphasis mine.)

To be fair, Lennon’s and von Mises’ visions of a better world are as different as night and day, but obviously, I was only joking. Mises wasn’t murdered by a psychopathic fan of his, lest a fan who asked him for a signature before murdering him. But enough of this. Back to work. We can see that Mises describes what many right-winged Liberals imagine as their Utopia as well: Freedom to hire and fire as entrepreneurs please, without any stately intervention or unions that intercepted in entrepreneurs’ or their HR managers’ decisions; (we can derive this from what I have underlined as a sentence of greatest import) What can be of everybody’s delight, nevertheless and outside of any snappish strikes against his words, is what Mises has written about the universalism of basic rights, “whether native or alien”. Those basic rights are usually inscribed in nations’ Constitutions, which seldom feature rights to asylum in a nation one flees to. I did not choose this topic coincidentally—it has been a hot topic since 2015, when swaths of refugees ended up on the Southern and South-Eastern borders of Europe, namely the European Union. It led towards an internationally conducted discussion about who should be granted sanctuary and who should be sent back. The imagery of people in shallops [29] and dinghies, or unmanned ships heading in one direction, fuelled an emotionalised debate with an indubitably true core: That every human being deserves a life in safety and dignity. And if this cannot be provided in one’s homeland, consequences need to be drawn. Either international interventionism that topples the source of the misery—normally a militaristic or otherwise autocratic regime—and begins to support local groups to reconstruct the country to olden glory. Local rebel and partisan groups oftentimes support the foreign army in their war against the aforementioned source as they bring advanced knowledge about the infrastructure and the rogue cohorts. Wars as in Vietnam show how invaluable this advanced knowledge can determine the final outcome. Yet no-one can be coerced into participating in armed ambushes or even whole battles, just as no-one can be told to return to one’s country and partake in the reconstruction of one’s country. A right to asylum, on the other hand, is a basic right as per internationally signified Conventions[30], but as the footnote reads, those obligations—in the end, there is no legal basis to commit to those Conventions, only ethical ones—are nonbinding, so that many will be picky about who to let in and who to send back. Many politicians, especially in the opposition, become figurative door stewards, thus sending a not-so-subliminal southbound message: ‘If you haven’t got a qualification that will help you boost your independence in our country, don’t even mount the bus that will drive you to the coast of North Africa—we won’t take you.’ In some way, such arguments were heard in Germany as well; many right-winged politicians spoke about eliminating pull factors, i.e. the seeming existence of an open door at the national borders, that everyone was welcome and that refugees could call their families to where they were granted asylum, so that in the end, the numbers of refugees skyrocketed in the end. Their solution, in conclusion: Host fewer and set strict standards for permissions, so that fewer will think that they can arrive with their families in a chain. 

What we have to mention as well is that many qualified refugees could hardly enter the jobs they learnt and even may have practiced throughout their lives, simply because their certificates were invalid in the sanctuary countries. On an ethical base, this generally meant that people were categorised in two classes: Those who were worthy of hosting as a sanctuary because they would not weigh as heavily on the social services; and those who could only be considered in fair-weather times because they had to be pulled up under great expenses. Is this inhumane? Partially, it is, but in the end, we have to also recognise the duties that come with hosting refugees in a country, even if we wanted to save as many as possible and provide them a Utopia in Mises’ sense to the best of the state’s capabilities, especially if a state aspired to the minimality represented in the quote and underlined by me. Yes, costs are a question, but so is the disbursement a state will have to invest in order to track the refugee’s development towards this independence—despite all defence of the refugees’ status, integrity and will to pursue happiness in shape of the “American Way of Life”—from rags to riches, although many already deemed this model dead and gone forever[31]. In the end, to expect of every single refugee that they should be able to care for themselves with little guidance on behalf of the state that hosts them thenceforth, in a country they barely know and whose language they hardly speak, is a farcical apology to veil one’s disinterest in governing. It is true that the best state is an exiguously perceptible one, but this only accounts for naturalised citizens with an already long period of residence in the nation we talk about; otherwise, a state risks to grow a periphery of outcast would-be citizens who would be easily lurked into terrorism of any shade, may it be Islamism or anti-State terrorism[32]. There are only two methods to avoid it: To not host any refugees at all, such as Hungary and, partially, Poland do it, or to introduce mechanisms and institutions that will process the entries meticulously, although there is hardly an apparent country that has managed to do so without any greater interruptions. Germany could be mentioned, although said institutions like the “Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge” (Bamf) (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) have suffered under harsh critique for its mismanagement during the halcyon days of the refugee crisis[33]. One of the core allegations against both the state as well as federal office—the “Bamf”—was a funding shortage, too little personnel even months into the crisis, and, although it received little attention, a lack of personnel that was able to interpret between the public officials and the enquirers, the refugees. Underfunding would be an allegation we also had to mind when speaking about the last quote by Mises we mentioned heretofore: That a state’s sole obligation is to function as the administrative body it essentially is, even without the social services that pulled people up like a tiramisù. Such a diminution, nevertheless, is not a justification for a malfunctioning state, only to use this incapability as an argument to the state’s inherent incapability to do its job, while the market succeeded in all regards, no matter the task given to it. Given the record in the pages above, I think it’s fair to say that this cannot be agreed upon generally, but the market shows that it is able to handle whichever niche awaits proper operation and is capable to derive a profit from its natural standpoint; what the market is unable to handle is the niche of not-for-profit sections, social professions such as childcare, healthcare, and the provision of electricity, water, etc. Controversial sections such as housing/urban development could be up for discussion, as well as the production of renewable resources outside of energy, but which concerned environmental protection. We have mentioned it beforehand: Palm oil plantations are a signature example of how production can harm nature, and finally humankind as well, as the planet’s well-being determines mankind’s well-being too. We have spoken about the market’s conscience or lack thereof to stop exploiting the planet so disadvantageously, and how weary of life many functionaries in the market seem to be, to simply continue with the same old manner as before; or maybe it’s less a weariness of life but more a conscience of memento mori: Live in the day, because the morrow day may not come. And some functionaries work proactively towards this Judgement Day. 

Could an administrative state abort such contraventions? Certainly it could, but such intent damaging first had to be illegalised. Here, we could step into a dead end when it comes to global corporations with headquarters in the Western World, while the damages were caused in regions like South-East Asia—Indonesia, for example—or Central Africa—for example the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Central African Republic. The nations in which those crimes were committed had to pass apparent laws, although the governments might likely hesitate to do so due to economic interests, as the corporations are oftentimes the greatest employers, or because specific delegates inside the government were corrupt and rested inside the corporations’ pockets, so that to legislate against their benefactors likened to shoot their own kneecaps. Perhaps nations in which the headquarters lied had a chance at an international court such as the “European Court of Human Rights” (ECHR) or the “International Crimes Court” (ICC), but this stood up to question. The illegalisation of rainforests, for example, had to become international law in order to accomplish beats against the corporations. Yet if the market was more prudent in its actions and less binary, always headed for the Old Town Road that is the profits that can be gained from a given opportunity to exploit resources. It is a situation comparable to a parent and his or her child: If the child doesn’t behave, the parent will have to withdraw to measured punishments in order to sanction the child’s misbehaviour. Whether punishments in general are still appropriate shall be out of question as we do not talk about pedagogics but politics. The point is clear: When the market sacrifices the planet for own purposes, without the consent of the other groups—nations, peoples of any ethnicities or cultural, religious, etc. affiliation—the state, or states, if we speak of international alliances, are right to draft counter-policies to restrain the market from inflicting further damage on the shared planet. Whether the market doesn’t even hurt himself as he saws on the branch he sits upon, but this is a thought game one can contemplate in one’s ivory tower, out of the danger zone; for the people on the ground, the problem is more immediate, thus requires immediate action. There is no need for a twist of facts, as the true facts are in plain sight. To discuss the reality and impact of climate change in living is futile at this point as only die-hard deniers would reject the fact of its existence and its life-threatening width in debris it will cause, and already causes—through more frequent extreme weather phenomena such as bush fires, droughts and more frigid winters, and the rising sea level that threatens low-lying countries like the Micronesian archipelagos in the Pacific ocean, the Netherlands or Bangladesh, amongst others. Alas, rational free-market apologists, promoters and Liberals have long accepted the facts and thereby argue, correctly, that the market can and is going to create innovations that will improve the struggle against climate change, to deaccelerate its development into the inhabitability of Planet Earth. 

Urgent actions are required, and if the market won’t react fast enough, despite genuine intentions to develop techniques to produce renewable energy the most efficient way, and despite restructuring efforts to transform companies into environmentally friendlier producers and service providers, states have to intervene as time is up. To regulate the market is an ultima ratio, but it is never off the table, and people are better off with a comparably unregulated market; but if the unregulated market does not act for whichever reason, and if he loses himself in perpetual complaints about the oppressive regulations and how they impaired the companies’ ability to work smoothly, to bet on further deregulations would be a dangerous gamble, without a safe chance to try it in a second attempt. Without trying to invoke any fatalist language, the seriousness of the issue must not be undervalued. There should be no experiments but only actions that have been proven to work in terms of decreasing the global temperature, decrease emissions of carbon dioxide, or introduce greater expansion of wildlife habitats in the long run. Instantaneous implementations of such habitats would of course be imprudent as they would likely injure those who were hornswoggled on the other hand, to create this land. Some would call the “fixed-pie fallacy” on this argument—that wealth on the one side would only be materialised at the expense of the other side—, but land, unlike financial means, for example, is in fact finite, although there is abundant of it in existence. When we localise the question of habitats, the abundance suddenly breaks down to a numbered size of a couple of hectares. As all of this land is possessed by someone, someone also has to give this land away for such purposes, or it has to be taken away or bought from the owner, unless the owner is the state or federal state: In this case, the transformation of the land is likely to happen almost automatically. But otherwise, let us break this whole thing down to a simple maxim: 

“It is the state’s duty to preserve an environment (not the natural environment, but the social, economic, and political) in which everyone can live and work alike, regardless of his religious, cultural, social, or sexual background. As an administrative, legislative and executive body, he carries all the necessary capabilities it takes to maintain these conditions in which everyone can pursue for oneself one’s own happiness and life goals, unless those goals inflict limitations on other people’s freedom. There shall be no obstacles for this power un-der the same premise as in the previous sentence: That other innocent people—legal or individual persons, I mean—must not be limited in either their freedom(s) or health. Otherwise, all ways must stay open for the state to achieve his goals, under the assumption of public interest in those goals, which can be evaluated by courts in case there are doubts about this premise.” 

The maxim could likely be more compact, more quotable, but this is obviously not the point: The point is to state how an administrative body can look like without being limited into its own dysfunctionality, as has been mentioned many times beforehand, in the whole text itself as well as in the last few pages we have seen in this review. This indented maxim aligns well with Mises’ Utopian vision which one would like to hope weren’t as Utopian, and of course my focus is the underlined sentence inside the quote. Mises of course hooked upon a common issue I have complained about beforehand: The vagueness of the key statements, if not all statements in general. What he intended was not clear, and so, this statement should detail his idea, although it may not be all in his personal favour. In the end, if one does not clarify what he or she meant, it will be up to the interpreters to add own ideas to the concept. I did this, hereby, under the consideration of realpolitik as well as pragmatism to not scare away moderates would may not jump on the bandwagon of advanced right-winged Liberalism. There is no need for ideological firebrands who defend their belief in a static-yet-die-hard manner such as many Libertarians do. Ideologies and ideals are not made to preserve like a fragile folio in a library: They are meant to be emulated into the real world and adjusted in accordance with the contemporary needs. And if Mises was any good aside of his prolific writings, he would have understood this principle and supported it as well. Otherwise, we should question the fellowship he has preserved unto this day.  

Praxeology & Language

First of all, we should assess what we have to understand under the term “Praxeology”. Mises did not give a single sentence in which he summed up the concept of Praxeology, so it is on us to define it[34]. And in a brief conceptualisation, we could sum it up as the idea that all human actions define later actions, and that in consequence, all actions can be derived from human actions. Furthermore, all human actions can be analysed in terms of what will happen in the future, near and far. To Mises and many Austrians, human actions are one of the main factors in economics as they are like gear wheels within the apparatus that is society, within which the free market is embedded. So far, so good, so com-prehensible. But is there more to the theory? That’s what I have been wondering as this simple conclusion roamed through my head throughout the whole book I hereby tried to review, to more or less success. In the end, it was a mere dissection of single quotes that to me defined the lecture of this book, and while I did enjoy it, Mises remained to me a bit short-sighted, occasionally ideological in his approach to society and economics. Still, his general idea of how a freer society could look like, stands, and is in my personal approval. What he pioneered in certainly was the concept of praxeology, which authors like the Austro-American economist Hans Herrmann Hoppe has grabbed up and tried to diagrammatise, although unsuccessfully, as I will argue later. 

Should we criticise anything about this theory? This question had to be asked when we wanted to extend the influence of this single maxim towards economics, especially regarding how far the consequences of human action should reach, concerning individuality and the limitation of the state’s influence. We could already criticise the assessment that all human action is rational, a truth a priori, as Bruce Caldwell writes in “Praxeology and its Critics: An Appraisal”[35]. Could we consider all human action generally rational? Outside of the decisions felled within job choice, commotion in traffic or the planning of an own family, we could likely question this maxim, and even inside those selected circles, we could question many people’s choices for various reasons. Altogether, this noble assumption appears rather weak. We could even argue this contradiction in a less populist sense: Human beings, whilst able to fell rational decisions under neutral premises, are easy to be manipulated as I have argued beforehand: We could pursue egoistic reasons that could only be enforced at the expense of others, thus violating their own freedoms and health at worst. Whether such occasional violations were necessary and inevitable in society and life is not up for debate: It is simply irrational to exercise one’s liberties at others’ expense as we would subsequently offer to do the same against us as well. One must at all costs avoid such violations in order to not corrupt society, the model in which the preservation of all liberties alike is served best. Regarding the status quo and how the struggle for the maintenance of all liberties is fought with every following day only shows that not all human actions are inherently rational; instead, many human beings continuously exercise questionable actions; questionable not only in a personal point of view and from a wholly subjective point of view, but rather from an objective point of view: Some of the actions consciously exercised of-tentimes do not even serve the executor him- or herself. Where the truth perceived a priori comes from is anybody’s question. It can be presumed that the fact that it was not considered a posteriori answers the question, only to argue why perceptions are worthless a priori as no valuable theory emerges therefrom. That is, at least when it comes to conveying them into the physical world from the metaphysical onwards. 

Continuing with the general onset of usually reasonable actions, the same theory, according to Caldwell[36], those same actions are also always purposeful, and with this argument, we can agree; nobody acts without a cause, and all actions have got some kind of intent behind, no matter the usefulness or degree of sense, which is mostly purely subjective as many of these factors are bound by context. To some, it might sound unreasonable to commute for two hours per day to get to work, for example from Czechia to Saxony in Eastern Germany, when one could likely find a job nearby in one’s own country, to reach in half the time (time is understood to sum up the time to get there and back form there), but for the commuter him- or herself, it might be a reasonable action as it is his or her job which he or she might have aspired to practicing for years, so that the long ride is a minor nuisance as compared to the job waiting for him or her. 

In the next couple of pages, unto the third Roman numeral, the text deals with two variations of critique against the aprioristic stance that is also applied in the Praxeological theory. It is alleged of being unscientific and unintelligible. At least the latter is correct; the former could be correct insofar as that it cannot tell us anything about the conditions a posteriori, the more interesting area when it comes to transporting theories into practice, in terms of creating practical phi-losophies rather than lofty thought games as philosophers are usually accused of exercising, rather than contributing something of general worth for society. The academic mass exposes philosophers as oftentimes estranged from the real world, and for good reason. An economic philosophy should avoid such accusations like vampires avoid garlic. 

But why do so many economists who try to establish a new approach to their discipline prefer working with aprioristic approaches rather than aposteriorian ones? Many of them try to reconstruct society from the bottom to the top, from the beginning unto the status quo. And therefore, a period before the advent of self-consciousness and fundamental enlightenment needs to be presumed in order to understand what is self-evident outside of any contradictory evidence. A basic theory requires a blank world in which no individual conditions exist. Such conditions only exist within the most primitive state of humankind, comparable to a foetus without any senses of perception, without a functioning brain to process information. From this state of complete disability to exercise anything meaningful, anything progressive, the most basic conditions shall be examined, the conclusions of this examination shall subsequently manifest the goalposts the novel theory shall accomplish the most effective way possible. John Rawls, the late philosopher who became famous for his “Theory of Justice”, presented this concept easily imaginable when he contemplated a state of ignorance prior to birth, in which we shall consider ourselves as the incapable hump of meat without any sensual organs and now knowledge about our fate on Earth, drafting a society to our liking, which would thenceforth also affect our peers, amongst them disabled persons as well as people of ethnic minorities. We are not told about those catches to mind in the drafting of our future society. Rawls argued that under the state of uncertainty about our own whereabouts, we would act more just simply because we wouldn’t like ourselves to suffer from inconveniences such as buildings with barriers that would naturally cast out wheelchair drivers who cannot surpass stairs; ramps would help them out, but what if the creator of the future society either forgot about the probability of wheelchair drivers, or willfully ignored them because he or she thought that he or she would not become a wheelchair driver him- or herself? Such probabilities, Rawls argued, would be evaded through what he called the “Veil of Uncertainty”. 

Rawls’ a-priori approach is exceptionally practical, hence a uniqueness amongst the social philosophies. I call it social because his economic part, on the equal distribution of goods, is sturdy, complicated, and resembles a planned economy, combined with mathematics. The latter is not a nuisance by itself, uttered by a humanist who cannot calculate, but the former precedes the latter, blended into an immobile, statist model that collapses within the first crisis that approaches it. Rawls tried to bring up a model that would convert his theory into a practical roadmap to be adapted by politicians who read him. (Perhaps this was his idea) What would have served him better would have been an approach comparable to what the right-winged Liberals usually presume for the people: A will to power, an intrinsic interest in creating something of one’s own, to hustle through all the work that is bound to it and to overcome the obstacles that occasionally emerge before one. That is not to say that societal failures such as racism or discrimination through other prejudices must not be crushed in a mutual, concerted action—there is a need to do so, indubitably—but aside of those artificial barriers, there are natural contraflows that need to be vaulted with some efforts. We have spoken about this abundantly beforehand, and so, it is just another repetition of knowledge acquiesced a priori, so to say, and it also shows why many economists rely on this state prior to cognizance: Because it helps them to assess the whole issue form rock bottom. As for the issue of unintelligibility, this is true for cases in the world post cognizance, after we have gained knowledge of the physical world, the civilised world even, although the same applies also for the world of aboriginal people, obviously. The conclusions drawn from the primitive assumption only apply for their exact world. Conclusions drawn from a more aposteriorian assumption could have been helpful to convey them onto other places on the earth, i.e. other societies that liken the one posited in the original thesis; some might even be akin to it, such as the Western European society which is nearly akin to the US-American. The issue of provability weighs heavily with the aprioristic stance as nothing can be proven that hasn’t ever happened or has never been documented. All thoughts invested into aprioristic contemplations runs into a void as all man can do in this direc-tion is based upon opinions, with little empirical surplus. Therefrom we could also witness certain problems concerning the implementation of the theory into the practical world. What if the shoe doesn’t fit? Ideas developed in the pre-cognizance world could likely run against the interests of the post-cognizance society. Fundamental theories of a society yet to emerge, with little self-awareness, such as during the age of Adam and Eve, who yet had to eat from the tree of wisdom to become aware of themselves and of their interests and desires are forlorn in these days, where people know exactly what they want. It makes more sense to use this knowledge as the fundament of a new theory, rather than rely on futile thought games about probabilities in the realms of a new human race that dwelt from the deep blue sea, lacking whole self-awareness and in need of only the most basic needs, such as nutrition and safety. Luxury desires emerge as soon as production evolves into higher technical standards, making it possible to create convenience products, reaching the state of today. To ignore all of this and instead start anew without even planning to imagine a world in which all trades can be summed up as “You give me this, and I give you that in return” is to oversimplify everything in an erroneous attempt to achieve easy comprehension for dilettantes of the discipline of socioeconomics. I have mentioned it before: Thinkers in this field have adapted Smith’s examples regardless of the changes that have been accomplished throughout the past centuries since the publication of his “Wealth of Nations”. And so, aprioristic as well as inopportune examples to display the practicality and correctness of one’s theory are disadvantageous to oneself and should therefore be abandoned. Practitioners, as I have mentioned before, already understood this and therefore turned away from the theorists and ideologues who observe society and the free market from afar, superficially, trying to argue the virtue and untouchability of their theory, regardless of whether it is of ideological or idealistic nature. Contemporariness is key, just as prudence, logicality and a sense for the simultaneity of individualism and sociality is. Ideological tribes that consider either one superior to the other has driven a wedge into the open discourse. Vicious approaches to novel issues—i.e. issues that are novel to oneself and have been understood to be strongly affiliated to the opposition, such as macroeconomics, which have been seen by left-wingers to be captured by right-winged Liberals and their likes, whereas the question of how to combat poverty has been captured by left-wingers, according to popular beliefs held by right-winged Liberals[37]—will convey expectable, yet unscientific and incomplete results, mostly fuelling pre-existing beliefs through a little thorough comprehension of the issue by itself, as one was not determined to really understand the topic at hand. To put it simple: If one had read Marx’ and Engels’ treatises on “Scientific Socialism” before one had read a textbook on Macroeconomics (such as has been written by Nobel-Prize winner Paul Krugman, to mention a left-winged liberal-leaning economist, the most tolerable we can get towards the “Left”), one will apparently enter the latter with a significantly demeaning opinion on the system that makes up the Free Market. Contrarily, if one had read any study concerning poverty (the only text that comes to my mind was an essay on “Working-Class Libertarianism”) by the Libertarian think tank “Cato Institute” before reading books like “Punishing the Poor” by Loїc Wacquant, one will easily believe that the poor are where they are because they waited for a Samaritan to pull them out of misery rather than taking matters to their own hands. One is easily turned to believe that there is no exteriorly inflicted misery and that one only ended up in the gutter because one did too little to change this state of existence. 

Maybe those points are partially exaggerated, and of course there will always be exceptions to such assessments, to such assumptions: People who begin to like the concept of a free market while previously thinking that a planned economy would do a better job than the free market does as of now; or that the market and the state were equally bad to the people, so that both had to be abolished in order to introduce equality and freedom. Needless to say that for me, Mises was a crucial author as well: Of great renown, but contrary to my personal beliefs. Praxeology proved to be one of his greatest contributions to economic philosophy, but in the end, it appears to allegorise a poor generalisation of human behaviour and to shape it in such a way as that it could fit the economic model of the free market; that people’s behaviour matched the procedures of the market. There is nothing wrong about investigating this field to clarify that the people functioned as the steering wheel of the market, directing it from left to right and into all vectors. But in the end, the details show that praxeology cannot serve this purpose in fully as it relies on stances that are too philosophical to fit into the dynamically practical world of the market. Later on, with Ayn Rand, we will see that aprioristic premises are far from unusual in this field, but this does not mean that they are therefore justified. A practical concept in the physical world requires hard evidence, hard facts and pragmatist thinking, no impertinent thought games harvested from the aether. Again, I do not condescend upon theorists and the work they do, as we do need to draft theories before getting into action, but those theories still need to be worked out down to earth, and not up in the clouds.

One last crucial page, or two pages to be precise, the pages 371 and 372, in which it was again emphasised that next to a preference to aprioristic assump-tions and theories, it is also justified on why empirical reasoning is not sufficient to provide evidence on the correctness of Praxeology. We also again occur to see a more philosophical argumentation, rather than a practical, realpolitik-like one as one could expect from a more pragmatist perspective, in order to stay on the ground rather than breezing along with the breeze. On the one hand, they write that 

“Forecasting, which occurs when trends in a body of data are extrapolated into the future, can be of great practical value. In addition, empirical work can determine the applicability of a given theory to a particular problem (Rothbard 1976, 20-22). But testing is not use-ful for the confirmation or falsification of theories.” (Page 371)

But on the other hand, as if it weren’t enough to understand the Praxeological theory as unfalsifiable because of the dynamic equipment of data and the comparably unpredictable future trends—altered by human behaviour, apparently—did not allow general theories set in stone through empiricists who wanted to derive them from data collected in surveys and behaviourist methodologies. The question is what kind of falsification we would like to undertake: It is not wrong to assume that it is hard to either verify or falsify theories that are built solely upon one trend in human behaviour as trends are fluctuating all the time; there is never one trend that will persist infinitely—may it be because of innovations launched on the market, influencer-led trends on the internet, results from journalistic investigative reports, or other stumbling blocks—there can be gross tendencies in human behaviour; human behaviour is not a multifarious hodge-podge of individual human beings with unique desires, ranging from overly healthy diets to cardiac arrests in one’s mid-twenties; from wearing black-tie suits as leisure gowns to sandal-wearing IT clerks; from hobby scholars hording books of ungeneralizable degrees to entertainment junkies who life estranged from the real world to usually escape into rosier parallel universes in fiction of any medium. Of course all these variations exist, they are not grasped from thin air, but these groups are minorities in a bowl of homogenous John and Jane Does, they are black patches on an otherwise all-white ingrain wallpaper. To say that either there were too many minor influences to derive a general theory from the whole group, or that human society participating in constant actions and performances was nothing but a never-ending rollercoaster ride is to say that praxeology can hardly have a case due to its reliance on aprioristic statements, regardless of what they think about empiricists and prejudices against their tools, of which there were mentioned “Falisificationism”, “Confirmationism” and “Instrumentalism”[38]  , all mentioned in quotation marks as we speak of valid practices in philosophy, nothing made up by a single thinker who required a strawman to bash. Of Confirmationism, the following words have been uttered by Caldwell: 

“Neither confirmationism nor falsificationism seems capable of providing adequate grounds for the assessment of theories. [...] high confirmation need have no relation to the truth of an hypothesis; often, many competing theories have evidential support, yet the application of supplemental criteria of theory appraisal is itself problematical when such criteria are either difficult to define or conflict with one another.” (sic!) (Page 372)

To put this quote into more comprehensible shape, what is argued is that a high confirmation did not require support from a theory as the one that is confirmed through data, it can stand all by its own and will be regarded proper. This makes sense as it would be a problematic prerequisite as there is no perceptible need for something like a supplemental theory in order to verify the value of a confirmation. What is more problematic, on the other hand, is the follow-up sentence that runs against what we have stated in this text beforehand: That we could deal with a thesis that were hard to define, or that we dealt with several theses or theories that conflicted with one another. One could wonder what the physical complexion is that we dealt with in this example, as a concrete one was not given. It again shows that we are better off when staying on the ground and dealing with hard facts rather than unbound rather than contemplations with no relation to any real problem or proposal that had to be debated with dissenters to it, to figure out fallacies or mistakes in the details. It refers to the last sentence of the last footnote. 

Finally, this text took a more philosophical approach and turned out to, while equipping quotes from Mises, working to Praxeology’s disadvantage in retrospective, although this of course is only my personal, dilettante assessment of the theory. It is true that human action defines society and the market like no other factor, regardless of the supplemental fact that human action itself is affluence from outside forces too, so that they cannot function independently. The forces that affluence human action, in turn, emerge from the market, so that a cycle is thereby assembled. Unfortunately, it has been revealed that aprioristic assessments are the rule rather than inadvertent exceptions, thus uprooting a practical philosophy of its fruitful ground, to thenceforth serve as a figurative walking aid for the theory to move on. Assuming that this were the rule, there could be less than the basic thesis left of it to exploit. Fair enough, we shall rely on further texts to make the case for the Praxeological theory, moving on with a text by Roderick T. Long[39] . 

Long chose to approach Praxeology form Ayn Rand’s perspective, and while we have mentioned her abundantly within the last pages, we cannot avoid her in this topic either, but even erect her as a pillar in the subsection of Mises’ review. At first glance, her opinion on Mises’ approach to Praxeology is more reasonable than Caldwell’s; and while she does not abstain from the aprioristic stance the latter had taken, she places it under the necessary affirmation of a conceptual truth, so that it can no longer stand by itself and be almost self-evident, in order to lead an argument. With the following words, Ms. Rand is quoted by Long: 

“As Rand ([1966–67] 1990, 59) observes, “there is a way to ascertain whether a given concept is axiomatic or not:  one ascertains it by observing the fact that an axiomatic con-cept cannot be escaped, that it is implicit in all knowledge, that it has to be accepted and used even in the process of any attempt to deny it.”” (Page 303)

This is the practicality we did not find in the previous text, or at least the clarification we did not find with Caldwell: That there needs to be a ground to operate upon, a clear view of a concept that can be proven to be true, rather than vague premises from conditions before the acquisition of knowledge. Long already noted before this quote that Mises might have stumbled over his own words, either contradicting himself or misleading his own points through almost Heraclitean language. 

Rothbard supports the more empiricist assumption when it comes to praxeology, being quoted that “the fundamental axiom and subsidiary axioms are de-rived from the experience of reality and are therefore the broadest sense empirical.” (Page 304). In this case, Rothbard is right as the only true laws and only true statements about human behaviour and actions can be derived from actual reality, from empirical surveys. And for all the plainness elaborated within these pages, where philosophical approaches are countered with the behaviour of a politician or practitioner of the market growing tired of the philosopher’s preaching of justice, ethics and doing the right thing. But this is what we have to talk about when talking about amending the status-quo Capitalism in order to accomplish true Capitalism, rather than the neo-corporatist bastard that has been developed within the 21st century[40]. There is no need to step into the philosophical debates, there is no virtue in it. Instead, the main disciplines dedicated time to should be political science, sociology and economics. Humanities in shape of philosophy or any micro division such as African-American Studies, Gender Studies or Feminist Studies in general are not useful as they are ideologically biased in their goals, they watch studies as an exercise through biased lenses, trying to verify frameworks rather than investigating their subjects to describe the truth. Rather than donning a broad view and trying to gather as many evidence that could likely come in handy when examining the findings, they pose a narrow question pointing towards a preferred outcome they thence intend to prove correct, or otherwise scrutinise in favour of their retrospectively disproven thesis. This general statement might not be completely correct and demean the discipline of Gender and Feminist Studies unfairly, but nevertheless, those fields are known for their radical background, their attempts to expose injustice experienced exclusively by women and people of colour. So far, few of their discover-ies have made it into the broad public; that is, if there had been discoveries that were worth the public funding they received. Some of the researchers working in these disciplines blame the patriarchy and the fiendish mentality targeting their minor scopes and their comparably outlandish purpose. And without any grudges against the partisan affiliation of those disciplines—it is one important step to admit this partisanship, or else, we remain in circular arguments—, we can iterate with certainty that their objectives are small. We could even go as far as to opine that their objective is to construct society anew, to their liking and in their per-ception of justice. Instead of becoming part of an interdisciplinary reconstruction of already existing fields such as sociology, they proclaim at many universities departments of their own, trying to argue their personal raison d’être, failing many times. But their declaration of independence, as we could call it, speaks volumes: Their interest in reconstructing society is honourable, indubitably, but it is of an artificial understanding of how radical reforms must be enforced. Alas, it is important to argue in shape of verifiable evidence, but this evidence must not only be examined and displayed in a context that is not too narrow, so that it can withstand all questions extended against it. Like a ship that needs to cover enough space on the water’s surface in order to not sink, a worthwhile theory must cover as surrounding space of its core target as possible to withhold its critics through its live ammunition—facts, and data. The clichés emphasised especially by right-winged populists, but not only such demented folks, is the detection of patriarchal symbols such as church steeples that cognize a phallic shape, or patriarchal hierarchies within popular culture, with silly women and masculine, heroic men next to them; or simply a prioritisation of male role models, leading towards no female role models. More or less we could also witness some influence of those academic fields in the debate concerning the introduction of quotas in boards of advisors in greater corporations, or in state assemblies. [Landtag] Critics made fun of the fact that no such quotas were demanded in factories or other lower-class jobs—only in the upper management. They blatantly miss out the fact that it is exactly about leadership responsibilities and where the corporations’ course is directed. No craftsman or –woman will alter the direction of a company, he or she could at best strike against a course, but how often do we see such movements? Seldom. Nevertheless we need to criticise such quotas as artificial attempts to implement justice where it is believed to have been cast out thitherto. 

Another question in which they could likely be considered an influence to accelerate the debate is the equalisation of the language. In the English language, this debate could never set off because of its lack of gender-related nouns. In German and in French, on the other hand, we had such debates; technically speaking, it still moves on, but continues smouldering in the background and the widths of the internet. To therefore show what the debate is more or less about, we shall have two exemplary sentences in both languages, French and German. We could actually replace French with any Roman language, and perhaps even add a Slavic language like Polish as they too differ between up to four grammatical genders: Female, Neuter, and Male, animate as well as inanimate. But for the sake of brevity, we will leave Slavic languages out as I, personally, have not heard of any comparable debate. Left-leaning newspapers like the “Gazeta Wyborcza” also do not add any additional suffixes to include either the male or female gen-der, whereas the comparable German daily “Tageszeitung” (Taz) does in fact add the female suffix to nouns that refer to groups of people which can be con-sidered mixed, when they are not evidentially already. 

The first sentence (including both grammatical genders): 

1. Der/Die BäckerIn verkauft der Frau zwei Brötchen und ein Brot. 

2. Le/La boulangeurSe vende deux petits pains et un pain à la femme. 

3. The baker sells the woman two rolls and one bread.

To be fair, we could also mention how the same sentence would probably look like in Polish and Czech, for sake of completion of what I speak (without the endings). 

1. Piekarz sprzeda dwie bułky i jeden chleb kobiecie. 

2. Pekař ženě prodáva dvě chlebíčky i jeden chléb. 

Now people might wonder where the female-gender suffixes are. Apparently, at the end of the two sentences’ subjects—„Piekarz” and „Pekař”—we had to add respectively one “–ka” so that women were added as well. But as for my knowledge and what I was able to find, there had never been any debate about whether such suffixes should be added obligatorily, for sake of justice[41] . If I should be wrong about this, I would like to be notified about this misunderstanding, so that I can amend this point. The superior argument stands strong, nevertheless: That languages are different from one another, if not inside their own cultural spectre, their own linguistic family, (Slavic languages, Romanic languages, Germanic languages, etc.) then across them. There are languages that differ visibly between grammatical genders through clitics, as German and the Roman languages do, (That is, all Germanic languages, and all Romanic languages) and there are languages that don’t, such as the English language. This horizon is narrow, I must confess, I am intellectually bound to the European continent as I do not speak any other and don’t dare to rely on Anglophone studies and working papers that could offer a glimpse into other languages and how they treat the issue. Therefore, we shall hereby stay inside these borderlines; it suffices to make a point as we have conflicting perspectives on how to treat the issue of the generic masculine gender is treated: some offer the opportunity to distinguish between the agents’ and objects’ gender with separate suffixes, while others generalise them, without any differentiation and rare exceptions, such as in English. (Viz. Aviator vs. Aviatrix; Actor vs. Actress; Master vs. Mistress; etc.) Especially in the English language, we could nevertheless opine that most of those words that still differ between males and females were derived from the French language. The last example of those mentioned in the brackets is the most obvious: It is derived from the French Maître vs. Maîtresse. Acteur vs. Actrice work the same way. 

It contains the general question: Are speakers of languages that generalise more sexist than languages in which such differentiations are undertaken? It also included the issue of plural nouns—in the French language, one man in a group of, say, 99 women would turn the group wholly male. If we spoke about a group of 99 women and one man hiking through the mountains, we spoke about des randonneurs, simply because there were one man who flipped the general sex of this group. If they were 100 (or 99, without the man) women, we could speak of des randonneuses. Many might think that this is sexist, and there could be a hard time trying to argue against it: Why should the presence of one man nullify the presence of 99 women? Outside of languages like the German, in which the same method applied—the same ratios in the French example produced respectively Wanderer and Wanderinnen—we consequently had to imagine that people tended to fewer sexist prejudices or thinking that could direct their behaviour towards diminishing or oppressive actions against women. Is this the case? In one study I could find, in a mixed review, there is evidence for a correlation be-tween a language that features the generic masculine and discriminatory behaviour recorded in society[42]. Amongst the findings in this study, it could be found out in German-speaking Austria that men were considered more qualified for a vacant position in management when the ad target a dominantly male audience. (Page 04). It matches the common argument that is boosted in the debate for a stronger enforcement of the gender-sensitive language: That language conveys prejudices and hierarchies, perceptions of a natural order within a society; in this case, it would apparently manifest a male dominance, therefore a female inferiority. From page 05 onwards, we also come across the arguments on why there is so much defiance against a sensitivity towards such details, and it is as of this point, that I as a German too must address it as there is a lot ado about the introduction of further recognition of women in society, but little about the practical conversion. Every language needs a tailor-made model, although it is less about the creation of a female gender in grammar—many languages feature it, while others do not, such as English, which is therefore recommended to instead replace gender-assumptive variables with more general terminologies, with reference to the policeman who shall become a police officer (our more radical friends from the political Left would likely recommend the pejorative pig)—but the smooth inclusion of the female gender whenever language needs to switch to the generalisation. From the examples above, we have already seen some methods, but have so far kept out Spanish, which, in popular culture, has found the creative variance of adding an (at)-symbol at the end of nouns and adjectives. It brought us writings such as: Bienvenid@s. Spanish, one could admit, had it easy in finding out an easy-yet-not-ungrammatical way of solving the issue of gender inclusion. Germany, on the other hand, relies on so-called Binnensuffixe, or Appended Suffixes, if we should translate them anyhow. (Google was not able to deliver practical translations) We have seen them above with the sudden capital letter following the actual end of the word, and I have mechanically added them to the French counterparts as well, although it stood up to question whether this was the official adjustment for sake of gender sensitivity[43]. Studies as cited in the 288th footnote show that language does to some degree determine discrimination as experienced by either minorities or women. (Women are not considered a minority n this sentence because they simply aren’t: They make up a stern half of this world’s population) What the footnote also shows is that it is neither that easy to find a proper way to include women wherever a mixed gathering is either addressed or mentioned. Languages are respectively unique, hence require indi-vidualised approaches in which institutions like the “Real Academia de la Lengua Española” (RAE) in Spain or the “Académie Française” in France, both of which seemingly cower over a tolerance and procedure of aspirations towards this stance on social justice, as can be read in the footnote. 

But how did we get here? What is the core question we were addressing when we brought up the question of gender inclusivity and meandered therea-bout for pages of footnote? The question of discrimination accelerated by what we can understand as praxeology in exercise. When we consider human action natural, sparking equally natural sequences initiating a cycle, the arbitrary conventions (a terminology I overuse all the time) we have invented, such must be the discrimination it leads to; and so we are humanly capable of mending those fallacies that have manifested in language. As I noted in the epithet of my last footnote (one page prior), language is mendable, and obviously so as it is naturally grown, not artificially created by academics or amateur linguists; we would face slight obstacles with regards to artificial languages such as from the Tolkien universe or with Klingon. There, it depended on the respective creators—J. R. R. Tolkien with regards to the manifold dialects of Elvish, or Marc Okrand for the Klingon language—to be consulted for questions like gender-inclusivity, assuming that such implementations could even be undertaken. Some languages might not even feature grammatical genders in the first place, or already be inclusive, naturally. Some languages, on the other hand, might already fail to be used like orderly languages with a vocabulary broad enough to converse in it, let alone become targets of such debates. Tolkien’s are again of such nuisance, his were never expected to be used conversely, but only be examined by linguists. Its vocabulary is insufficient to navigate one through a normal day. Luckily, we are only interested in organic languages that have grown throughout history. Those have been victimised by the patriarchy, one could argue, as many of them tend to exclude women for sake of simplicity and economic convenience (also according to the RAE), because they preferred to understand themselves as means of communication, breaking down their nouns to the shorter form, which is usually the masculine one. The brevity is obvious: Compare the male French Vendeur to the female French Vendeuse, translating into English as a salesman and a saleswoman. In both languages, the masculine form is shorter, although the impact is only greater in written language rather than the spoken one. Nominally, to claim that the reason for preferring the masculine over the feminine for economic reasons hardly holds up, given that in French, there are few cases in which greater suffixes had to be added to a noun or in which greater adjustments had to be undertaken to mark the female sex of an employee or the executor of a specific action. The regular case is that an –se had to be added, such as in professeur/professeuse. The aforementioned maîtresse would be one of the exceptions as it required more letters to be added as a suffix, but in spoken language, the addition is hardly recognisable for the untrained ear. Hence, the economic benefit is a Potemkin argument; and in written language, as we decreasingly apply printed words and instead rely on digital communication via emails, text messages, etc., the impact of additional letters are even more infinitesimal. Nitpickers who would count every byte they had to transfer additionally because of a few letters that conveyed the women in their team, or their female customers, should possibly see their therapist to speak about the complexes they suffered from that led them to complain about such nooks. It would be a little step for a piece of justice that could be achieved. We could also talk about the hobby aesthetes who see the beauty of their language stained with those enquiries for adjustments to their language in this direction, but those people are oftentimes the same who would stain their language through malicious curses and the exploitation of it for heinous accusations, derogative and dehumanising lingo against ethnic minorities such as refugees from Africa and the Middle East. The argument that has to be made is that aesthetic is not only about the lexical level of language: It is also about what we say through our language, what we say and how we say it. Those who want to instrumentalise the honourable issue of linguistic beauty should take the plank out of their own eyes. If one wanted to celebrate the beauty and, to some extent, the purity of one’s language, if any sense of purity can ever be applied onto language, given its regular blend with neigh-bouring languages (even with the olden standards of Middle High German or English, one is going to always find inserts from Latin even with texts directed towards peasants and craftsmen; one only needs to look into texts by Geoffrey Chaucer or Sebastian Brant. And Chaucer did write for his fellow landsmen in the inferior classes as he did not write in Latin or French, as some poets of his stand might likely have done, and as we know, Chaucer was fond of both lan-guages as he, for example, also translated the Italian poet Petrarch into English, thereby also introducing the Petrarchan sonnet to England, particularly its stanza). Let them celebrate whatever they want to celebrate, but do not offend others wilfully by claiming to preserve what does not exist. Cheekily one could enquire those dilettante purists to ban all non-Germanic loanwords from their vocabulary if they spoke German or English, or ban all Germanic loanwords if they spoke French. Their jargon would end up poorer and widely impaired in terms of expressing themselves within any field, once they realised that our society has grown accustomed to the richness of variety the blending of languages to fill gaps the original tongue was unable to stuff. The American vernacular of the English language has burst any boundary with its manner to brandish nouns as verbs without any addition of a verbalising suffix such as –ise. ((to) instrumentalise, (to) weaponise or (to) aggrandise. Especially in colloquial language, this can bring up almost peculiar con-structions when verbs are created from scrap, simply by creation novel compounds: Words like (to) shitrig [44] or (to) shoehorn (sth. into sth.). This is by far no uncommon or all-American practice, the latter at least not exclusively. We see it too in countries like Germany, which also indicates the presumption of the option to create neologisms via compound creation: Languages that do not practise this fashion, which are hard to find under certain circumstances—what we are looking for are languages that create neologisms by combining nouns, not only adjectives or verbs in connection with nouns (which is common with the Polish language, which has brought up words like bezpieczenstwo (security)[45])—would therefore create their neologisms in other ways, such as adapting words from other languages and assimilating them to integrate phonologically. A special example would be the Icelandic language which has got its own committee that takes care of creating names for inventions that are not covered by the Old Norse language[46]: Words like the computer; for this, they have created a word that relates to the Völuspa, a female clairvoyant, who has also contributed to the famed “Edda”, the epic featuring stories by the Norse Gods Thor, Odin, etc. As the footnote points out hereunder, this does not work all the time and there are many words that had to be assimilated in its original language as an Old Norse language that works with a narrower vocabulary can only persist so far. The Icelandic language became the object of an almost herculean undertaking, and for as long as it was exercised, it went successfully: As the Icelandic language pre-served approximately 97 percent of its original tone and extended its vocabulary apparently, it can be said from an outsider’s point of view, without any knowledge of either the Icelandic language or Old Norse. What does this mean for prescriptivists? Certainly that a core language can be preserved when as the dynamic society moves on and brings up innovations, discoveries and conceptual novelties in an environment that has declared the English language its lingua franca, with little space for mavericks who would like to establish their own native tongue into the discourse. The German language was defeated too, even though some academic journals tried to oppose the trend to publish contributions in English. One of the last Mohicans in this field of German academic publishing bowed before the inevitable eventually as well, notifying its readers that it would soon abandon the German language for the universally intelligible English language[47]. The increasing frequency of usage of the English language as compared to the other less distributed languages like German, Russian or Chinese, is therefore only a first step: The second is what we experience today: That more and more words are introduced to those subordinate languages, either because they have become fashionable or because they—allegedly—fill gaps that could not be filled with a generic native term, even under the consideration of a neologism, created as a compound or from scrap. Even such creations by a single poet or author are not unusual: Germans might remember the recently deceased satirist Wiglaf Droste who became famous for his texts on Eastern Westphalia, a region West of Hesse, located in the Eastern Region of North Rhine Westphalia, which is amongst Germany’s most densely populated regions, with plentiful towns and cities of idiosyncratic names like Detmold-Lippe, Höxter, Hamm or Castrop-Rauxel, the latter which translates to foam castle. He went ahead and created city names that did—and still do—not exist (yet), mocking the region’s optics. Alas, there is no rule that forbade the creation of novel words by any means, although their distribution and acceptance by the other speakers are a wholly different and more complicated question, lest the most important one in order to also apply for a cansation in authoritative dictionary: In German, it would be the Duden, in the English language it would either be the OED or Merriam-Webster. In the end, there would be few serious attempts to create new words and even pursue an entry in a reference book, at least if we look into the broader public: In scientific fields, such as sociology or economics, such neologisms—mostly via compound creation, which the English language makes possible, although those compounds are seldom written as one word, as is the case in German, in spite of the trend to separate compounds with hyphens (or apostrophes, as the 45th POTUS once gaffed on Twitter); words like the (in)famous Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (Danube steamboat corporation captain) might be known colloquially even in Anglophone regions of the world, due to its obscene length (43 letters) and the fact that it was used in the public body politics of Prussia—are regularly created to introduce new concepts in the measurement of, for example, the measurement of cases of police brutality and thereby, whether minorities are disproportionately often affected by this brutality; moreover whether one of the probable reasons is an equally disproportionately high crime rate amongst minorities.. Tylko na przykład. In such cases, those concepts receive novel names. One could argue that a name does not liken a new word that could name a general object that is going to assemble an entirely new taxonomy of its own. Names are oftentimes uniquely bound to the one thing—animal, plant, machine—and therefore unable to also address even something similar, let alone something wholly different. But are there any such names, or general expressions? We could go ahead and mention the word stone: It is an archaic means of measuring weight—one stone weighs approximately 06.35 kilogramme—, it is “hard solid non-metallic mineral matter of which rock is made, especially as a building material.” (OED 2010, page 1,735) A stoner used to be someone who got drunk but has changed within the last century to refer to people who smoke marihuana. (Some people might remember Big Mama Thornton’s song “Let’s go get Stoned”) If we speak about a rolling stone—regardless of whether we speak about Bob Dylan, the band from England who called itself rolling stones collectively, or Shane McGowan—we speak about a modern-day vagabond, or some-one who “is unwilling to settle for long in one place”. (ibid., page 1,541) The name also works as a family name in both, Germany and selected Anglophone countries like the United States. Popular namesakes include the Trump confidante Roger Stone or the Prussian politician, patriot and nobleman Heinrich Friedrich Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein[48] . Last but not least, there are also the metaphorical opportunities that come with words like stone, as the bare words as well as in shape of compounds. One only has to think of idioms like heart of stone, cold as stone, the German auf Granit beißen ((to) bang one’s head against a brick wall), although we had to be complacent about the fact that it did not use the word stone explicitly, but only a form of rock, namely granite; stonewalling is a more American compound verb, with famous namesakes like Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson[49], but the meaning is universally applicable: It refers to the wilful and proactive obstruction of progress, especially in legislature. 

Those are just a few examples of how words can bear a multitude of meanings, depending on the context and minor adjustments in order to fit the meaning they shall transport. The ones that occurred in those examples are not larger than those one might usually recognise in Slavic languages, although they there convey grammatical meaning in terms of references to the nouns. The noun stone might be a lowbrow choice of words with little dispute to ignite. There is no language that had to necessarily loan from other languages a point to start from to translate the rocky, salty, deformed balls that occasionally crack off from mountains. 

But how does this match the original question, on whether there is such a necessity to loan from different languages to fill gaps one’s own language is unable to fill? The lowly example of the word stone has shown that what might firstly be considered a task impossible to be solved by one’s mother tongue could actually be a lack of creativity—creativity that is available to everyone of us, as the Icelanders have shown grandiosely. Still this must not be understood as a call to ban all words based on loanwords, including the words that have not even been assimilated but only copied and pasted like a term paper set up the night before the end of the deadline: We have spoken about this elaborately. The final result is mixed, and there is not an authoritative statement to be expected as it is hard to extract one. Languages could be better off when assimilating loanwords in accordance to the overall phonology, but without an institutionalised committee on the state’s behalf, there is no chance a generalisation could be achieved, at least in paper, through dictionaries or educational material provided to schools and kindergartens. In the end, it will be up to the language-utilising people to find common standards, and in general, they fare well at doing that, although it is not unusual to see multiple standards colliding when they are tangent to one another: Adolescent vernaculars versus standard language or the hypercorrect language of newsreaders during news breaks; the “British Broadcasting Corporation” has long been a quantum for a standard of its own. Outside of such mortal standards is the “Queen’s Speech”, i.e. the language that is spoken by the English monarchs, particularly the Queen and the King her- and himself. Colloquial speech is the broad standard with all its details of rough-shod pronunciation, a loosened choice of words and a narrow vocabulary limited to an active vocabulary that is shaped through one’s quotidian lifestyle, including a register for one’s workplace. Standards that are not as easily recognised by many as such due to clichés that have grown above them as their scope and their speakership has decreased throughout the past few decades are local dialects, which we have previously addressed in minor as vernaculars. But when we look at regions like the American South, Northern England, with particular focus at Liverpool, Norfolk and Birmingham with their noteworthy dialects, or South-East Asia, with countries like Singapore, Indonesia and India, we see that language is in constant development, constantly altering itself. African-Americans have coined their own vernacular with the “African-American Ver-nacular English”[50]. (AAVE) As we can see, while the general standard is a great point for orientation on how to speak in a manner that is intelligible across glottal borderlines, they will prevail underneath the parquet floor of the standard languages, what is considered the “Standard High Language”. The adolescent vernaculars are the most prominent to apply loanwords without any further adjustment, mostly because of social media influences, young migrants who repre-sent the first generation to be born and/or raised in their new homeland, speak-ing in their native tongue with common peers. All those are main streams to be watched when speaking about the future of a language, in which the gender question plays a major, but most obviously a controversial, role. What might appear bizarre could also be a tight-rope act therein: That the question about female inclusion in general addresses is more hotly discussed by purist pseudo-prescriptivists plays a greater role than the introduction and inclusion of migrant-related vernaculars; variants of the standard language in a nation that grows exclusively within the peripheries of a culture, such as the German or the English. Why wouldn’t they assail the emergence of these varieties, but barely mince their words when speaking about the in- or exclusion of women? The tight-rope walk would be the choice which development to oppose, ending up with the one that could be borne more easily: To be a racist, or to be a masculinist. Of course the idea is stupid and most likely is reasoned otherwise—it took more efforts to investigate the differences between the High Standard Language and the novel vernacular that is not yet fully documented in all its varieties, i.e. to exercise the work of a linguist rather than that of a loudmouth—, but in the end, it doesn’t matter when it comes to evaluating the worthiness of critique uttered in public. Finally, it will all be destroyed before the rocks of the dynamic society and its autonomous procedure, come hell or high water. Once the wheat is separated from the chaff, it will be for all to see what is here to stay as compared to what will fade away as it was hyped more greatly than it was exercised by speakers beyond the realms of the proponents and sympathisers. Language, in the end, is nothing but human action in exercise. In order to act as human, communication is key, and so, it was important to speak about this issue with regards to the most pressing issues in the public discourse. 

Let us return to Long’s analysis of Rand’s thinking about Praxeology now. We have stopped at a bold point, where we could note that Rand, while speak-ing more clearly about her favour for Praxeology, she is not favourable about the apriorist stance it takes, as she refuses the concept of a-priori philosophies in general; but not fully, as Long notes, she herself applies aprioristic positions herself. (viz. page 305, where we have stopped when transitioning into a short debate about gender-inclusive language in various European language) On the same page, we can also note a quote by Mises which, according to Long, could also find approval with Ms. Rand, and also seems to refer indirectly to David Hume’s “Meditations”, where Mises proves the existence of human consciousness by the simple fact that we are able to deny the very same consciousness. A self-evident approach to proving consciousness’ existence, and also indicating one of the few fields in which aprioristic reasoning makes sense and is useful to apply: In humanities, in philosophy of the mind in particular. (As humanities include the field of social sciences, which again should work as little with aprioristic thinking as possible as it needs to work in the here and now) When we talk about concepts and affairs that do not change or change only slowly, little to not at all, the concept of a-priori thinking could make sense as the conditions are manifested, immovable, encrusted on the soil it has grown upon. But when we talk about sociology, economics or political sciences (the latter separated from the former to to the best of our possibilities), we speak of rapidly changing concepts with continuously alternating conditions, which makes it impossible to contemplate an ancient state that could have influenced the current conditions, a more fundamental mindset that has indirectly forecasted the status quo due to its underlying configurations. Of course there are presuppositions that have in part led the way to the outcome, but they are not the paramount we should watch in order to understand. There is a borderline to mind when trying to draw lessons from the past to understand the presence, as well as the future we must brace for. And in order to understand where the borderline is located, we need to first investigate the present, collect the data and see how those conditions have come to be. This is where we chart the geographical field we are talking about. Luckily, we live in postmodern times—times in which we are not con-fronted with anything new in terms of politics, or sociological nuisances. Everything has been here before in terms of human interactions, in terms of human actions. All that is new is invented and encountered in the natural sciences: In astronomy, biology, chemistry, and medicine, amongst others. When we analyse recent encounters and try to disseminate them to understand their origins, we do not have to reach too far back, thus keep it comprehensible even to those who do not follow politics all too thoroughly. 

On the last two pages, we lastly return to the topic of praxeology and what is to be noted on this topic with reference to Rand and Mises, with a brief notice to the late US-American philosopher Robert Nozick. Mises, firstly presumed rationality with all acting human beings, whereas Rand was more realistic about human beings, narrowing it down to some people, although she is not specified with her quote, regarding whether she had a certain quota in mind. She is furthermore quoted indirectly with the objection that people rely on certain things, but not all of them, to reach favourable ends, i.e. ends favourable to them, with disregard towards how this is going to affect others. To us, this might not sound like something surprising, as three in four of us would likely behave this way—altruism sounds worthy of approving in theory, but when it comes to practice, most of us would likely behave like egoists and prefer personal progress towards united progress. As the idiom goes: “When everybody takes care for oneself, everyone will be taken care of.” 

What follows after this rectification of points of view regarding how people are perceived in terms of (ir)rationality, there comes a paragraph with the intent to clarify further how humans perceive reality, and it is of utmost import to quote it hereby: 

“In a sense, then, it is true that agents always act rationally; but the only sense of this claim to which Mises is entitled is that agents always act, not necessarily in a manner ap-propriate to their situation in all the ways they actually see it, or even in the most justified of the ways they actually see it, but rather in a manner appropriate to their situation in the way of actually seeing it that is constitutive of their action.23 And this is a claim that Rand has no reason to reject.” (All print letters are emphases by Long, not mine) (Page 310)

We would call this behaviour selective perception, or more vulgarly ignorant, as one wilfully betrayed oneself in rejecting what is happening before one’s eyes, thus impairing one’s own ability in decision-making. It is true that we do not always need all available information in order to fell an informed decision. But we should not undertake this selection of information prematurely, i.e. during the process of gathering information. Like good journalists, or good empiricists, we first gather the information we can get and separate the worthwhile infor-mation from the garbage during our writing process. But before we start writing, we can hardly tell what kind of intel we are looking for. Of course we know our general goal, we know what we are looking for in terms of an objective, a ques-tion; maybe we also have a questionnaire when we are empiricists looking for subjects willing to contribute to our survey. But other than that, we do not know what we are going to receive. 

It is true that Rand hardly had any reason to reject this approach of Mises’, and Mises was right to assume this as a pillar of human action. There is just one problem when we reflect this onto a previous assumption of his, that humans, unlike Rand perceived it, always act rationally. Again, we are confronted with a fallacious philosophical universalism, that something that shall be constituted must enjoy universal correctness, that catches are not permitted. Now, how does this concur together? Mises did not say that in order to always act rationally, we had to collect all information and pay equal attention to all single pieces. He understood correctly when he said that we all perceive reality incompletely, because we only pay particular attention to what is of especial interest to our interest. As I have written beforehand, so Mises emphasised decades beforehand. Human action is advanced to such an extent as that we could all watch onto the same scenery and display a multitude of differentiated descriptions. This hodge-podge of individuals blossoms when the right combinations are created by coincidence, each one serving oneself and creating a surplus as compared to when everyone behaved like a maverick and book one’s own bread, fished one’s own fish, etc. One lecture from human actions, as has been with the “Wealth of Nations”, is that organised societies of like-minded people are essential to human action and interactions. What Praxeology can teach us, and what it can perhaps tell us more about, is the rationality of human actions as such, although no consulted text was able to tell whether there is more to learn from this separated field. It is therefore likely that it is nothing but an artificial erection of Mises’ opus magnum as an own scientific field while the subject itself is covered well with the pre-existing terminologies, and by economics as such. Nevertheless, one cannot tire from reading and rereading his books. There is a lot to consider and to object in his writing and thinking, just as is the case with the following author: Ayn Rand.  

Please share your comments hereunder: https://t.me/Rationalpolitik/74

---

[1]

A note to all of those who plan to revisit the quotes cited in this review: All pages mentioned with regards to Mises text are the consecutive page numbers of the PDF and do not (necessarily) match the page numbers imprinted on the photocopied pages, so that while one may have the correct edition of the book, there might be confusion about the pages. I apologise for this inconvenience, but hope that this will not impair your reading enjoyment. The Mises excerpt will not be separately published as a PDF due to a lack of interest in such an additional PDF. Instead, the release of a PDF that also includes this chapter will be adjourned until the whole text will be finalised, in its full length. Thanks for your understanding.

[2]

Mises, Ludwig (2010). Human Action. A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar’s Edition. Auburn (AL): Ludwig von Mises Institute. Page 166.

[3]

Simoes N., Diogo A.P. (2014) Marginal Utility. In: Michalos A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_1724

The issue was previously addressed by the Washington Post, although the article that can be found on this issue, although its age of two years and more might bear a little on it. Still, the facts stand nearly uncorrected.

Stein, Jeff (September 30, 2018). In expensive cities, rents fall for the rich — but rise for the poor. The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-expensive-cities-rents-fall-for-the-rich--but-rise-for-the-poor/2018/08/05/a16e5962-96a4-11e8-80e1-00e80e1fdf43_story.html

The age was addressed not only in terms of thoroughness or probable objections for the sake of objecting, but because we did see some changes in the year of 2021, already from the start, at least in comparison of the time before the Coronavirus Pandemic. In many larger cities, we did see suddenly plunging rents, although not in all—moreover, we did see rents soaring despite lockdowns and in-creased application of home office spaces. Rentable office spaces as provided by upstart entrepreneurs like Adam Neumann from WeWork were needed less than beforehand, so that consequently, more living space was theoretically available. But in terms of this, we could discuss separately in a whole essay of its own. Instead, we shall look at the numbers under the following link:

Richter, Wolf (January 04, 2021). “Exodus” Havoc: Rents Plunge in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Seattle, Other High-Cost Cities, but Soar 50% in Newark in 18 Months, with Double-Digit Jumps in 20 Cities. Wolfstreet: https://wolfstreet.com/2021/01/04/exodus-havoc-rents-plunge-in-san-francisco-new-york-boston-seattle-other-high-cost-cities-but-in-newark-soar-50-in-18-months-with-double-digit-yoy-jumps-in-20-cities/

[4]

Siddiqui, F., Salam, R. A., Lassi, Z. S., & Das, J. K. (2020). The Intertwined Relationship Between Malnutrition and Poverty. Frontiers in Public Health, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00453

[5]

There is hardly any reporting on the origins of the people who live in L. A.’s Skid Row district, so that it becomes a gathering of pieces of information from newspapers if one wants to create a thorough picture. Yet, such a ragtag collection of information could end up in a patchwork image. The creation of this district is said to have begun with the end of the Vietnam war, when many veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a reason that also led to a spike in homelessness in post-war Germany after World War I, where many war veterans did not find a home after returning home with PTSD and disabilities such as missing extremities. Disabilities are a main driver in homelessness in Skid Row as well, as can be read in this photo essay: 

Stein, Suzanne (November 25, 2020). The Faces—and Stories—of Skid Row. Los Angeles Maga-zine: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/skid-row-residents/ 

 This essay, nevertheless, tells unfortunately little about the background of the people who ended up in Skid Row, although much can be presumed from what is told about them: Many have a history of drug abuse, others are mentally disabled or have experienced bullying at home and in school. Despite all societal efforts to avoid such people’s exclusion, it still does not penetrate to the core of also the minority sufferers, as can be read elsewhere: 85 percent of Skid Row denizens are African-Americans, 80 percent of them are women. Beside disabilities and history of drug abuse that finally, and for no good reason, has gotten them criminal records that would stigmatise them until their death, and consequently impair their efforts to build a life of their own, skyrocketing rents that would obstruct newcomers’ efforts to start anew in the “City of Angels”, in the “Land of Infinite Opportunities”, so that they would eventually end up in some of L. A.’s multiple homeless areas, of which Skid Row is only the most infamous: 

Casey, Forest (April 14, 2017). How Los Angeles Created Skid Row. The Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-los-angeles-created-skid-row 

 Reading through the piece exposes a row of chain reactions that placed many locals before damn-ing decisions to be felled: Move out because the rents are too high, or stay in the city but end up as a homeless person because rents went from affordable to prohibitively high? It settles what has been extracted from other pieces and been opined out of the most obvious assumptions: That those who have not been born in the streets ended up there because they have been shot off the rails, such as through crises or sudden job losses from which they did not recover. Drug abuse too could have hap-pened either in the job or aside of it. Stories of normal people who once tried out drugs and later made them a habit such as because of unbearable distress or peer pressure… The reasons are manifold. Finally, outside of the investigations into the origins of homelessness, with particular focus on Skid Row in California’s largest city, there is also the problem of governance and policing the homeless people. Missionaries who take care of the homeless people, mostly Catholic social workers, have estab-lished a mission in the neighbourhood and since tried their best to cope with the influx of desperate people seeking help with their hardship: 

Rymer, Russ (March/April, 2003). The Rules of the Row. Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/03/rules-row/

[6]

And even they run by their own logic, although it is strictly economic in its calculation. Read more about it: 

Fleming, Harold M. (1966). The Pricing of Gasoline. Foundation for Economic Education: https://fee.org/articles/the-pricing-of-gasoline/

[7]

For more information on the mining business, viz. “No Business Like Mining Business”, on page 236 cf. 

[8]

We spoke about it beforehand, but it should be reemphasised: Unless someone is given a real choice between the market and a plan B, there cannot be any discussion about the freedom to choose. Mises brought up a similar analogy when he stated that there could not be a choice between Capitalism and Socialism as it finally was not a choice at all. Instead, he stated that “A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death.” (Mises 2010, page 713; emphasis mine) when speaking about the façade that was the choice between Capitalism and Socialism. Conversely, we could say that there is no choice between a life within the Free-Market Society and opting out of it to seek one’s luck elsewhere, as poverty would be the inevitable result thereof. The market economy did not bother to create a plan B, nor did anybody else ever do, and so, one can only choose the life of moving to a (pseudo-)Socialist autocracy such as Venezuela or Cuba, or live thenceforth as a rolling stone, perhaps in a leftist-alternative commune that too was not able to escape the Capitalist society but stands stubbornly as an exclave inside a gauntlet of what is viewed as an inhumane treadmill that stood opposed to the pursuit of human well-being and happiness. Whether one considered this a true repetitive nine-to-five lifestyle stood up to a question directed to everyone individually. Could this be undertaken? Per-haps through a survey, but before it were conducted, one question had to be extended to those who showed readiness to undertake it: What for? Should anybody be engaged to create an artificial society that embraced a narrative opposed to the Capitalist society of the status quo? This would contradict the narrative we call history: A world of multiple societies that grew naturally from human interaction, can-not maintain a society that was grasped out of thin air and with little popular support, i.e. support from the populace that too had to stem the efforts and costs it required to constitute such alternative society that was given no time to develop by itself. The question of merit hangs above its head, additional to the question of whether it was not just an overzealous medicament to a symptom that emerged from entirely different causes: Does it solve the issue that led to its creation? Or does it just relocate an illness without curing it? It had to be answered with a stern Yes—appeasement towards all directions because of perceived injustice or slight inconveniences would lead towards societal instability and permanent upheavals, society would fracture until it finally collapsed. What could work well in order to scatter na-tions into a healthy kleinstaaterei, a collection of equally autonomous communes, would firstly and most likely set off as an open wound that poured salt into itself through mutual animosity. Hence, this pro-cess needs to be stopped by permanent recovery of nuisances such as those that have been mentioned and examined abundantly beforehand. To create alternate societies because of issues in the given one would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and outside of this, it would be radical, but simply Utopian and divisive.

[9]

Johnson, Peter G. (12th January, 2021). Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas Convention Visionary and Philan-thropist, dies at 87. Las Vegas Review-Journal: https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/sheldon-adelson-las-vegas-convention-visionary-and-philanthropist-dies-at-87-2250326/

[10]

Bylund, Per (26th October, 2020). Why There is No Such Thing as an Exploitative Monopoly in a Free Market. Mises Institute: https://mises.org/wire/why-there-no-such-thing-exploitative-monopoly-free-market

[11]

Right-wingers of all walks of life and all levels of theory, from pious Conservatives to idealistic Liberals and Libertarians, denounce the Marxist saying of serving everyone “to each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, but when we adjust the phrase to their concepts, it could read like: “To each according to his ability, to each according to his desire”. Of course it would no longer function as the ledge to servitude, to mutual care and support without an expectation of a revanche. It shows the major division between the idealistic Left and Right: The former are oriented alongside an almost religious view on humans, where superiors—i.e. those who can give—to be figurative shepherds who will support the inferior—i.e. those who are in need, just as God took care of the human beings roaming the earth, and Jesus took care of the lame, the blind and those who admired him the most (we shall exclude the people who had a party but ran out of wine. An honourable mention, on the other hand, would be the people who had to little bread and fish to nourish the hungry).
Of course there is a major difference between servitude and mutual agreements: Into the former, one could be coerced—viz. the buzzphrase about left-wingers who made others to care—, the latter can only function through persuasion and compromises. Servitude was a suggestive choice of words, but wicked support required intrinsic commitment, thus could be found on both sides, but more earnest on the right wing, although more seldom in consequence. Questioning the true intent was out of the game, though, as it was mentioned before that tit-for-tat intents were excluded, and while they are more present on the right wing than the left wing, they could not be categorised in the same shelf.
Why are they compared, even equated? Because the mechanism is the same: Everyone will be given after fulfilling the necessary requirements, but without any thought spent on what could be the conse-quences after the extension of the goods […] desired. In the original term, even requirements were not placed before, for the pauper to be fulfilled. Instead, one only had to utter the desire, and the shepherd would redeem this desire. Within both sentences, we could imagine the opposite entity to behave, or even be!, like a dispenser: Enter the coin, and you will be given what you asked for. The dispenser never asks any questions or wonders whether the extension of the good desired could lead to any negative consequences. Arms trades would be the most obvious example to show the lack of consideration of a possible aftermath with the simplicity applied n those calendar phrases: If an arms trader sold weapons to a Congolese warlord or a Shiite militiaman, he would most likely contribute to an ongoing civil war that cost innumerable civilians their lives. He would consciously condone civilian casualties and the fur-ther continuation of a said civil war, or any other

[12]

Mason, Margie; McDowell, Robin. (18th November, 2020). Rape, abuses in palm oil fields linked to top beauty brands. https://apnews.com/article/palm-oil-abuse-investigation-cosmetics-2a209d60c42bf0e8fcc6f8ea6daa11c7

[13]

Under different circumstances, approximately two years ago, German newspapers started discussing the very same issue, about the reform of Capitalism, as the then-head of the “Young Socialists” (Jung-sozialisten), a remnant of the German Social-Democratic party, comparable to the English “Labour” party, accused Germany’s largest automobile companies of predatory methods and that they were in need of being collectivised “by Democratic means”. His words, although expectable from a remnant like his, which was known for adolescent ideals that would eventually flatten once its members aspired to ascend into the parliament, triggered a weeklong debate about what was going wrong, and so, one of Germany’s largest economic magazines published the following analysis/essay: 

Delhaes, Daniel; Rickens, Christian; Wemke, Christian (10th May, 2019). Sanierungsfall Kapitalismus. Handelsblatt: https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/deutschland/wie-sich-die-marktwirtschaft-neu-erfinden-muss-sanierungsfall-kapitalismus/24312268.html?ticket=ST-3797513-HDfRbRHgfMbjZcaHgf9t-ap3

[14]

We are not going to dive into rabbit holes as derisory as Liberland, the small independent territory that was captured by anti-tax Libertarians who not even live on the speck of land they want to use as a Po-temkin post box so that to avoid paying taxes in their actual homeland, while making good use of the benefits of paying taxes. (Public roads, facilities, programmes, etc.) Or US states like South Dakota, which attracts companies that try to pay as few taxes in the US as possible, whereas Ireland is the coun-try to file for taxes in when settling for business in the European Union, next to countries and duchies like the Netherlands, Luxemburg, or Monaco. Libertarian policies are not just about whether or not to pay taxes, although many sympathisers and amateur thinkers (such as me) who are interested in an exclusively market-oriented society surround themselves across this single question, i.e. this single pro-posal: That it must be gotten rid of coercive tax payments. Or that central monetary institutions have to be abolished in favour of decentralised monetary alternatives such as Bitcoin, and its substitute curren-cies. (Ethereum, Dogecoin, etc.) Those aforementioned tax havens have got as little to do with the the-ory as Marxism has got to do with the abolition of the “Drag Queen Story Hour”. 

(viz.: Amhari, Sohrab (August 15, 2016). Illiberalism: The Worldwide Crisis. Commentary Magazine: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/illiberalism-worldwide-crisis/)

[15]

… Or inadequate factor accumulation, as actual researchers mention; Socialist nations eventually ran out of investments, so that there was too little liquidity, while production remained up high, without any adjustments towards the meagre situation and what the people need. Overproduction was no rarity in Socialist nations, just like overemployment. While they became countries of plenty, this wealth in resources and goods, particularly the latter, came with a heavy price: Lack of competitiveness and many open flanks for enemies and fiends to attack.
A complete picture of why Socialist societies tend to fail can be read about here:

Vonyó, T., & Klein, A. (2018). Why did socialist economies fail? The role of factor inputs reconsidered. The Economic History Review, 72(1), 317–345. https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.12734

[16]

One does not even have to look far to find reporters (not necessarily intellectuals) to find arguments in favour of Venezuela and Maduro’s authoritarian government. (The argument that he was a dictator depends on which tenure is looked at—his first election he won righteously, only in his re-electoral run he chose to corrupt the ballots in his favour). The overall problem, concerning Venezuela’s gradual demise, still seems to be more complicated than blaming it solely on Maduro and his malgovernance. Or so, some sources want us to believe, or understand:

Main, Alexander (May 17, 2018). The United States’ Hand in Undermining Democracy in Venezue-la. North American Congress for Latin America (NACLA): https://nacla.org/news/2018/05/18/united-states%E2%80%99-hand-undermining-democracy-venezuela

Some might question the independence of this non-profit organisation, concerning the language ap-plied and that some of its contributors also write for the left-leaning “Nation”, but it would be to seek the needle in the haystack to look for evidence on pro-Maduro bias rather than looking at the argu-ments presented. And in this regard, the “NACLA” withstands obtuse critique. The US oil embargo against Venezuela to dominate Maduro and enforce any opposition contender—in the end, for a short-lived time, Juan Guaidó was this contender, although he didn’t manage to become president, and finally lost support from the European Union as an unofficial parliament president—had its toll in worsening conditions for the Latin American nation, as was also mentioned by me beforehand. But this doesn’t exonerate Maduro, anyhow: He did suppress the opposition and dissenters, he even used drones against protesters, police brutality was in his toolbox as well. While Maduro planned to become a dictator through his second term, he was not one from the beginning.
Another point of view can be gained through a second source, which focuses more directly on former POTUS Donald Trump’s consideration to deploy military forces in Venezuela to remove Ma-duro directly, and end violence against dissenting voices on the streets—a war was not out of sight as Maduro enjoys support from the military, as do most autocrats; Belarus’ Lukashenko too enjoys full military support, lest he keeps the military shtick of the Soviet Union alive.

Nugent, Ciara (January 25, 2019). Why the Threat of U.S. Intervention in Venezuela Revives Histor-ical Tensions in the Region. TIME Magazine: https://time.com/5512005/venezuela-us-intervention-history-latin-america/

The question is whether an intervention is useful in terms of either penetrating the autocratic gubernatorial structures manifested by the regime, or whether it is better to seek different ways, more diplomatic ways to topple the regime, or enforce its voluntary resignation. Neoconservatives are known for their approval for militaristic intervention, although even some of this sub-ideology’s best-known icons are occasionally reluctant about the idea of intervening in nations for any endeavour’s sake:

Unilateral military intervention by the United States on behalf of “human rights” would have to overcome resistance from both our enemies and our allies. And steps short of military intervention will almost always be more symbolic than real. True, symbolic action may sometimes be better than no action at all. But over time, the impact both at home and abroad, of a series of mainly symbolic actions will be negligible. (Kristol, Irving (1986-1987). “Human Rights”. The Hidden Agenda. In: Himmelfarb, Gertrude; Kristol, Irving (Eds.) (2011). The Neoconservative Persuasion. Selected Essays, 1942 – 2009. New York City: Basic Books. Page 229.) (Emphasis mine)

Nobody ever considered introducing a rule of thumb to evaluate whether it would be meritorious to intervene in a foreign nation currently ruled by an authoritarian leader. Alas, the very existence of such an oppressor could much argue the case for a militaristic intervention if it will not lead to a chain reaction of allied nations’ entrance into a multinational war. When the US commenced their first banana wars, many critics argued that this could lead towards a war against the USSR, which supported many of the Socialist nations in Meso-America and Latin America, e.g. Cuba and Granada. But would it con-trarily be fine to leave behind a people oppressed in its basic human rights of speech, press and movement? To protest? Such is the ethical catch-22. What can help is professional advice from one’s advisers and a discussion with the international community—one reason why it is advantageous to be part of an assembly such as the United Nations, although their merit could stand up to question as well, an undertaking we are going to ignore in this footnote.
In conclusion, we have to note that the origins of Venezuela’s failure is of a twofold fate: There is Maduro’s obvious mismanagement on the one hand, with a desperate readjustment as the oil prices were slumping, and martial measurements once the US started to intervene to urge his withdrawal from the presidential office, and the US intervention itself, which came at the expense of the Venezuelan people, to operate within the Monroe Doctrine and the belief in moral superiority. Whether Maduro would have become such a rogue personality without the US’ intervention can now only be conducted as a thought game, or through the achievement of time travel that did not lead towards the eradication of the travelling human being, to alter prior actions to change the future [our present] towards the de-sired status quo (posteriori). Otherwise, and given Maduro’s reaction to the two fateful encounters, there is little chance Maduro would not have sought autocratic powers, but the US indeed worsened the future to no avail. But like Morales, Maduro would never have become—until the US started mingling with the Bolivarian presidential elec-tion, Morales was in a good path towards conceding in spite of his valuable record. Footnote number 18, on page 17, was one evidence previously presented, and another is the study that too is worth read-ing, and shall thus seal this footnote:

Kopek, Justin (October 13, 2020). Grappling with the Legacy of Evo Morales and the Future of Bolivian Democracy. Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC). https://items.ssrc.org/democracy-papers/democratic-erosion/grappling-with-the-legacy-of-evo-morales-and-the-future-of-bolivian-democracy/

Interventionism is a useful tool from time to time, but it must be handled with care, and must not be overused, as it can lead to devastating results when not applied correctly and with a long experience in geopolitics. It can easily be exploited by imperialists as well as mentally distorted moralists who think that they or their nation bore an ethical duty to convey their or their nation’s principles in the world. The US’ moniker as The World’s Policeman did not come out of nowhere, and they did certainly did not give themselves the name. It was earned through hard work and abundant bloodshed around the world.

[17]

Kapoor, Amit; Debroy, Bibek (October 04, 2019). GDP Is Not a Measure of Human Well-Being. Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2019/10/gdp-is-not-a-measure-of-human-well-being.

[18]

Some texts paint an even rosier picture, although it fails to mention how the wages that raised dispro-portionally higher than the manufacturing factor to the increasing costs in the common living standard. There is no doubt about the vagueness of this factor, the living standard. But we can fix it upon certain costs that affect nearly everyone: Rent costs; costs for payment of nutrition; (perhaps) costs for the way to work, such as for monthly or annual public transport tickets, or a vehicle one possesses (including maintenance and petrol, or electric charge if one has an electric vehicle); costs for children (education, clothes, hygienic articles. Things that also address the common man or woman). The following text should be read:

Berlingieri, G., Calligaris, S., & Criscuolo, C. (2018, May). The productivity-wage premium: Does size still matter in a service economy?. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 108, pp. 328-33). Link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26452757

There is nothing to criticise about the structure or the data available—to OECD has previously been used for visualisations too, on the pages 210 and 211. One may only wonder why the US have been cast out from the data that was compiled for the graphs, despite its mundane significance and its vast, profound social inequalities. Other economically important Western nations, like Germany, Japan and so on, have been added. The paper is apparent in this argument, although it lacks the one significant point: That it does not show how the wages developed as compared to the prices to make ends meet without living nearby the borderlines of poverty, on the verge of impoverishment. Further texts have to be viewed in order to assemble a complete picture.
If we assess that single factors compared to the wage growth, we could find information easily, alt-hough incomplete still: At Rice University, it has been found out in 2019 that housing costs rise dis-proportionately faster than the wages people supposed to invest in private housing earn. Whilst the costs for residences have risen by more than 150 percent, wages hardly rose by 100 percent. The consequences should be obvious: Fewer and fewer people can afford to invest in an hacienda of their own.

Binkovitz, Leah (July 25, 2019). As of March 2019, only a handful of the largest metropolitan areas had housing markets that would be considered “healthy.” The Kinder Institute for Urban Housing at Rice University: https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2019/07/25/gap-between-income-growth-and-housing-cost-increases-continues-grow

What may surprise are the cities in the plain Western states like Idaho (Boise received a rating of 22,5, meaning that it was prohibitively unaffordable for average Jacks), while Colorado is less of a sur-prise with Denver. But this is only for the dynamic map in which sporadic cities were highlighted in terms of affordability. The graph displaying the disparage between wage growth and the rise in housing costs suffices nevertheless. It might be true that some sections have seen worthwhile wage growth and can actually afford housing even in the booming urban areas such as New York City or Miami-Dade. But an average employee at a middle-class company will hardly be able to live in the same city as he or she works in—such people had to stick to commuting to or from the workplace that at worst lasts for hours due to traffic jams or delayed trains, at worst involuntarily contributing to damaging congestion and an unhealthy lifestyle in terms of distress. Additional to this grim outlook, empirical institutes came to the same conclusion. (It shall hereby noted that neither an academic institute, nor an empiricist can be considered biased towards any political leaning. Contradictory statements must be established with credible evidence or otherwise be scrapped):

Desilver, Drew (August 07, 2018). For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in dec-ades. Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

Other than the news report from Rice University, the Pew article does not take housing costs into account but only compares ancient wage rates to new ones, figuring out that people hardly saw a sur-plus on their paycheques, so that we could assume that Americans saw a downturn in their wage rate which was eventually abridged again. The hole they must have seen compares to discounts in super-markets: While consumers are granted a discount on the façade, what has actually happened is that for a brief period of time, prices surged and were capped for a discount so that customers could believe that they were given a rebate, while they paid the original price without any shorts. It’s been a charade from the beginning. The final question remains: Are higher wages incentives to become more productive? While we have proven that wages do not catch up with the costs they need to parry, we did not answer the ques-tion on whether people who earn more are also more productive than their counterparts with a thinner pocket. The following text from a fellow of a centre-right think tank can make this case, thus rescue the argument, although some from academia might insist that the mentioning of only one source is too little to establish an argument. Whether an argument becomes better when more people have written in its favour, is too big a topic to now discuss it on the side lines. Instead, we shall opine that an argument well-constructed and knee-deep in good arguments is worth a thousand times more than an armada of good-faith sympathisers in an ill-conceived argument. The following paper shall thus be conveyed:

Strain, Michael R. (February 04, 2019). The Link Between Wages and Productivity Is Strong. The Aspen Economic Strategy Group: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/longform/expanding-economic-opportunity-for-more-americans/the-link-between-wages-and-productivity-is-strong/

This final argument again is a withdrawal to classical arguments, enforced with arguments from the current market. Shall we thus resign and acknowledge that there can be no measurement of whether higher productivity is linked to the previous increase of payments to the workers that achieve these heights? The problem is the multifariousness of the market in general, that there are several factors beside the payment that causes those spikes. There is a stark intent behind the belief that workers are like machines—‘enter more fuel to accomplish greater power’—, but the market is not contained only by employment and wages: We also have the competition of job offers and wages paid; of business markets and regulations in key nations; of outsourcing for cheaper production emergent trends; et cetera. Wages are only one factor amongst many, and whether production could have been higher within a specific period of time is a mere thought game. We could speculate about the probability of higher production, but we can never know for sure whether this could have become the case. It’s an illusion to precisely recount alternative outcomes in the past, just as clairvoyance is a tell-tale power.

[19]

I normally try to stay away from such immature, populist approaches to arguments, to accuse others of erecting strawmen or/and applying fallacious arguments that had no merit at all. But in some cases, it is worthwhile to use them, but they must not be overused insofar as that they became the rule. Except when an argument is grasped out of thin air and had no argumentative foundation, they can be ad-dressed and deconstructed, not formalistically, but by its content. No-one breaks a leg in such an un-dertaking, but we will learn to listen to one another, rather than attacking one another in tribal animus.

[20]

An evergreen joke went like this: “Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die”. A blunt punchline indeed, but the morale is clear: Why should one not try to sell tainted ethanol when there is no longer any criminal prosecution? Even commercial interests could not be infringed by this when there is hardly any infor-mation on the fact that this particular bartender sold tainted ethanol. And those who wanted to do most likely were not in pursuit of commercial interests but only on a high death toll.

On the internet, where such alleged fallacies are hotly discussed, although many consider it debunked already, so that only populists and self-proclaimed “trolls” re-emerge the issue for the sake of trolling, or in a strict belief that it is not a fallacy but a proven argument against equally self-proclaimed anti-Capitalists. (Not necessarily Socialists or Communists, those are the figurative backbenchers of the anti-Capitalist “party”.) It’s called a gotcha argument, and one may wonder, when thinking about it outside of the internet, where the fallacy actually lies: Can someone who criticises Capitalism and its exploitative remnants, which also arbitrarily condones child labour and poor worker protection regulations in sweatshops in mainland China and Bangladesh, wear clothes from South-Eastern Asia and use an iPhone “made in China”? The only viable source to address the issue could be found in a 2018 article of the Socialist magazine “Current Affairs”:

Bee, Vanessa A. (October 24, 2018). Innovation under Socialism. What the “capitalism built your iPhone” refrain ignores… Current Affairs: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/innovation-under-socialism

The note that the chief editor of “Current Affairs” calls himself a Socialist, and that Ms. Bee too called herself a Socialist, because the argumentation resembles a typically Socialist motif. Before we will focus on quotes on this issue, we should answer the question according to Ms. Bee, on why “Capitalism made your iPhone” is a baseless fallacy that leads nowhere as it is essentially flawed. The argument is that Capitalism actually stifles innovation for several reasons outlined in the article, między innymi the ownership issue, that only the company’s boss possesses the rights on the innovation, and not the workers who transformed the idea into physical shape, not even the engineers who stand closest to the innovation’s mastermind; the problem of patent rights, that an innovation can only be replicated by others with permission from the original innovator, mostly for a limited period of time, as long as 70 years after filing the innovation for a patent. The note on the workers—presumably those who work in factories or in craft jobs in general; for more information we had to know which innovation is talked about in order to imagine a setting in which the workers are involved with the innovation—is particularly interesting as we have addressed before, for example on page 209. Workers who chose a job in the craftsmanship, or generally in a subordinate profession, such as in the factory or in the office, but not in a leadership position, those people were never interested in creating outstanding innovations or taking over responsibility that went beyond their own; they were then only interested in exercising a 9-to-5 job to earn a living, and that’s about it. To fight for rights on intellectual property the workers them-selves are possibly not interested in is purposeless and at worst counterproductive to the workers’ cause. It’s also a birth defect within Marxist theory: To believe that the workers’ cause can be hijacked intellectually—claim to represent their cause and fight for them without even gathering them behind one’s back—so that every argument can be coated within a nearly emotional frame that to refuse it was to kneecap the workers’ well-being. No-one doubts that many arguments in politics are conducted on an emotional base in order to gain popular support, but Marxists, who usually claim to impersonate the working class, the exploited and the downtrodden, but with scholastic rigour, to add highbrow charac-teristics in order to create the infamous intelligentsia, should abhor any such emotionalisation and stock to the facts that not seldom speak in their favour, ostensibly. An emotionalisation of their arguments would conceive previously uttered arguments against right-winged opposition groups such as the Con-servatives who they usually allege of sticking to past conditions and refusing all progress, like reaction-aries. (Which is only half true and lacks context) Marxists are thereby ideologists in a twofold manner: Instead of sur-veying their target group, to hear about their interests and transpose those interests in arguments, they stick to past arguments inscribed in archaic texts written by their greatest idols, like Karl Marx, thus disjointing from their said target group. (There is a good argument about how the workers have, within the past few decades, moved from the left to the right, and said disconnection of the intelligentsia and parliamentarian left-wingers from the people they should represent in their respective niches is one major reason) There is another quote worth of noticing:

By contrast, the public sector innovates under an academic model instead of for profit. Certainly, earning tenure or an executive position can be lucrative. In some industries, a revolving door gives individuals the opportunity to innovate in both the private and public sectors throughout their careers. However, innovation in this area is less motivated by ex-tracting profit, and more so by signifiers of prestige, career appointments, recognition, publication, project funding, and prizes.

The problem that went seemingly unnoticed is that it all needs to be funded. In a Capitalist society with tax-subsidised states, this is not the problem—there, the problem is less about the money needed to fund not-for-profit projects, but whether the state is interested in funding them. Hungary has been scrutinised therefore when President Viktor Orbán ceased funding for Gender Studies, questioning its merit. Later on, the Arts have followed suit. And while Hungary is not a de facto autocracy—even ru-mours about manipulated ballots are rare and seldom founded in evidence; the opposition is not being openly suppressed, whilst Orbán consecutively rails against Soros, the Free Press (not to mention what has happened to the independent news portal “Index.hu”), etc.—, it shows what every interventionist could do in terms of interior affairs and the Damocles Sword of public funding: Select the projects without any pretended benevolence towards the people’s projects. As in former Socialist nations, they could be picked by what serves l’ésprit du corps better, what transports the nation’s ideal better. Open dissent against the politburo would thus fall under the table, and at worst would be persecuted by the executive body. When the nation’s Constitution does not regulate the selection of public funding in their favour—and what good does such a legal text serve when the politburo can likely manipulate it in their disfavour?—, they might always be rejected. It does not have to happen, it must be said, but the power is lied out in such a governmental construct. Nothing keeps them from doing so, as they are not even accountable to the populace: What they always serves the public, the theory says, they cannot fail them as they are akin to them—a government from the people, for the people; a government that is the people. Hence, when Gender Studies are no longer funded and leads to a subsequent quitting of all its professors and readers, this is the people’s will; and when public theatres have to close because their funding was ceased due to critical plays enacted on their stages, the people wanted it so. No opposition could question it, and no institutional watchdogs could investigate the decision-making behind those terminations. It would have happened, and the government continued with its usual business. China is an example of such non-braked progress at all costs: The modern-age concentration camps against the Uyghurs in the Northern region of Xinjiang could be constructed without any opposition: from the in-side, it was not to be expected anyway; but from the outside, aside of sanctions against party officials and statements of condemnation, nothing has happened. Because the politburo in Beijing is familiar with those common punishments, they have adapted to this. They can live off it. It is aware of its eco-nomic hegemony and its status as The Western World’s Sweatshop, if we should coin a phrase of our own. (Familiar terminologies were given to neighbouring nations like Bangladesh, and it is not unlikely that China was given a similar, if not exactly this name, by other journalists already) Whichever reaction is chosen against China’s violations of human rights, its war crimes, it quickly shows that it lacks the teeth to hurt the politburo or to cause long-term pain. It cannot weaken the politburo, it cannot force it to change its turn towards are more desirable direction, like leaving the Uyghur alone.

Doubtlessly, we can imagine that a less strategically important nation like Hungary could be pun-ished more easily. Some might even consider an intervention to topple the regime that turned the Magyar nation into a Socialist federation. Therefore, and assuming that there were no moral opposition against interventions and the distance were not too great—the military’s putsch of the Democratically elected government in Myanmar showed that distance might play a major role, in times of commercial and passenger flights, shipping cruises around the world—, violent interventions could be considered an option. Economic interests, nonetheless, weigh even greater than the moral question preceding the deployment of troops. China is important, economically; to speak and stand up against it meant severe consequences for the nation that dared to, and so, Western nations restrained. Other potential Socialist nations had less luck when they did not offer cheap labour—they would be smothered the first time the rebel leaders entered the parliament to declare the foundation of their institutionalised revolution from the balcony of the building. Without strongman brothers and sisters allying with them, they would be removed faster than the independent Catalan nation in 2017. (It lived for less than a day)

What does this mean for the question we proposed beforehand, concerning the means of innova-tion in Socialism? Nothing. But we need to know about the strengths such a nation could have, the muscles it could flex for its people’s interests and endeavours. As has been mentioned, Ms. Bee said that a Socialist state would simply hand over money if the people asked for it, if they needed it—a Socialist state is omniscient and always knows in advance what will have to be produced. Only Smith’s metaphor of the invisible hand is laughably illogical. In order to achieve such a lavish model, a constant stream of cash had to be maintained, or otherwise, the state would drain itself as all those projects that enquired for money did not extract any profits from which the credits could be repaid. It would be a one-way affair. The national debt would skyrocket at worst, rating institutions would vote it down, other states would abstain from trading with it as well, because of the irrational spending behaviour. Maybe it is true that this way, because the profit motif can be abandoned by the uprising innovators, as Ms. Bee argues, and because the concept of property and patents will no longer be of concern, but the long-term damage that will be caused is unique.

Last but not least, we would also like to have Ms. Bee to have the last word on how her Utopaian society could compete with the Capitalist concept, as she in the end does not challenge how Socialism was involved in the creation of the iPhone in this physical world, but how it could have existed in the Socialist alternate universe. And therefore, she has a concept in her pocket which she unfolds in the following paragraph:

In this market socialist society, most shares are pooled into highly regulated mutual funds, which then pursue different in-vestment strategies when trading them on a highly regulated stock exchange. This exchange helps monitor the perfor-mance of the firm managers and assess which innovations are performing strongly. To avoid the concentration of market power and capital, the government sets the bar for how much stock any stakeholder can hold in any firm and industry. It also sets the minimum and maximum amount of dividends that each person can receive annually.

One thing again comes clear for sure: That she is not subliminal about her plan for a Socialist gov-ernment, if it ever came to power. Her concept of boosting variations relies heavily on regulation and longing for things to just materialise out of thin air. She does not explicitly elaborate on what those regulations were exactly, and so, in opposition to this demand for highly regulated funds stands the Liberal rule of thumb that the more regulation exists within a certain space, the more innovation is being quenched. To think that innovation required is to say that children needed to be supervised during their whole day at school because they might not know what to do, thus needed an instructor to tell them. The argument lacks basis, moreover could lead towards fewer innovations because they, if matters ended up worse, could also be coordinated by the regulators in charge. In the end, it depended on what the regulations said, although there is little chance that they were in favour of the innovators and their entries. Reading through the example, the only difference seems to be the fact that high regulation is considered—otherwise, the model compares to what we already have. But the limitation of stocks to be held per person already limits the chance of innovations that could make it through the searching process, as people might end up with fewer stocks than they would like to hold, fewer opportunities to support innovations one considers worthy of their money, and so, the iPhone, to return to the example, could have ended up with less money than it did end up with, a factor that could become fateful prior to its market launch. At worst, innovations could fail to materialise because too little money was injected, because the regulators capped the amount of stocks permitted per portfolio. Of course crowd-funding platforms like “GoFundMe” and “Kickstarter” could help creating a second inline for cash, but the amount of money averagely extracted therefrom might still be too little to properly fund a project that shall eventually become a decent company competing against rival producers or servicemen. Far more money can be harvested via the stock market, and to limit it would mean to partially handicap the market. And it wouldn’t have benefitted anybody, a misperceived symptom of an equally false mal-ady would be fought, and the damage that emerged thereof were real. Germans have coined a word for such well-meaning, but poorly executed measurements: Verschlimmbessern, a portmanteau of verbessern (improve) and verschlimmern (worsen). Maybe a word like worprove could be introduced for the English language to describe what would have been done via the limitation of stock possession: A planned improvement that ended up worsening the whole situation without any advantage for anybody. The stock market would have been worproved by the Socialists, and they could not even enjoy the rotten fruits of their labour. The same argument can also be applied on the capped dividends to be earned from the stock depository. It is just the belief that regulations and limits would magically increase justice on the market, a logic emerging from incomprehension of how the market works and why things are the way they are.

Another quote we shall have, the succession of the upper paragraph:

As the economy grows, dividends can be adjusted to increase by a percentage, or commensurate with inflation. Surplus re-sulting from distributing only part of the profits allows the more profitable firms to subsidize innovative, but less profitable, activities. In addition, this regime does not tolerate anti-competitive contracts like restrictive employment agreements, strict license agreements, and long patents (although inventions may be attributable to their inventors and may be re-warded through other means like prizes, bonus compensation, or simply very short patents periods).

This quote shows that Ms. Bee believes that things had to be made possible which were already possible, and where it was up to the companies whether they wanted to either support or annex a company, depending on whether they deemed them worthy this support or inclusion. When it comes to the worker protection measurements, simple regulations enforced through the state or a (temporary) boycott would have done the trick as well, although we did read beforehand how the belief in a superior power of consumers and workers against companies and their occasionally anti-workforce regulations. It’s at best a pipe dream, and at worst apologia in favour of the companies and in denial of the little power the workers bear when it comes to strike against such bondage contracts without leaving the company immediately, heading back to the job search. General strikes, the betrothed power weapon of Anarchists and Socialists alike, can constrain better conditions and fairer wages, but they are not a universal force to be injected once something didn’t go the way it should, according to the workers. That Mises was strictly against strikes in general, may they be the small-scale factory strikes or general strikes that shut down the business for the duress of the negotiations, it does not need to be men-tioned separately, it should be clear from now on. Still, he says that it is not the right to strike that bothers him, but

“[…] the right-by intimidation or violence-to force other people to strike, and the further right to prevent anybody from working in a shop in which a union has called a strike. When the unions invoke the right to strike in justification of such intimidation and deeds of violence, they are on no better ground than a religious group would be in invoking the right of freedom of conscience as a justification of persecuting dissenters.” (Mises 2010, page 773)

We could again refer to the sign of times, that Mises’ times differed strongly from ours, and that the rule of law has changed in certain points since the first time his book has been published. Nowa-days, people are allowed to work while their colleagues went on a strike, just as the workers are allowed to vote on whether to found a union or not. Violence and the destruction of private property is for-bidden during strikes just as during any other activity that is not a war. We must forgive him those peculiarities for he does not stand a chance to adjust them to the 21st century. What we cannot forgive him that, one paragraph beforehand, he, by his succinct argument that if all interest groups were al-lowed their own protests—which is possible by now—, religious groups and even the Ku Klux Klan could march through the streets to argue their points on, for example, the need to abolish abortions or mass deportations of African-Americans and Hispanics to their own lands. Both categories have been seen holding protests, the latter with stark opposition from anti-Fascist groups. But once violence is included in those protests, the police will begin dispersing the groups.

If we exclude the application of violence and focus on the emphasis for better working conditions, we could say that Mises generally did not have a problem with workers having their voice heard by this means, as unions can only go so far either, and if the problem is of a more general note, individual negotiations would hurt the business even more than a quick-and-dirty strike that would urge the boss to enact reforms to calm the tides. And why shouldn’t workers do so? Free speech is part of the Bill of Rights, and to strike because the conditions are mismatched with the work exercised on a daily base, this has to be exposed for the public to see. Anything else would show autocratic nuances, and a dex-terous entrepreneur would notice if any of his employees were dissatisfied with their workplace and how they were paid. To think that the solution to such grievances was to tell them to quit and seek their luck elsewhere would run crassly against a healthy work environment and a fruitful soil that eventually accelerated progress and boosted innovations. Work is no longer the two-way relationship between the employee and his boss, where the former worked for the latter and the latter paid the former for his work. An occupation that utilises approximately up to 23.80 percent of one’s time per week cannot be as hollow and empty as Lo-Fi Hip Hop music playing in the background while doing some work in the foreground.

Returning to the Current Affairs article to finish it once and for all, we can tell that what is usually considered a gotcha argument against Capitalists and other opponents of left-leaning ideologies cannot be defended even under greater efforts. Why? Because one has to decide: Does one support the conditions under which those devices are produced, or does one take a stand and look for alternatives to them, to boycott the conditions under which they are produced? An argument one will come across on the in-ternet when finding someone who is not already sick and tired of explaining it even those who mean well when enquiring for an explanation, one will either hear that both options were feasible together—to be a Socialist and possess an iPhone—, mostly with the argument that, as Ms. Bee has pointed out, the same products could have been produced in a Socialist Utopia as well. And while this may be true under certain circumstances, how does it justify to reap the fruits of a tree one wishes to see felled? It is the common proverb of drinking wine while preaching water, the hypocrisy that is usually condemned with the Christian church. And even when we speak about actions that are part of a greater scheme to achieve something more fundamental, as is the case with Greta Thunberg, who once shipped to the US to participate in a UN Assembly Session in New York City. (She originates from Sweden, so that she has to cross the Broad Atlantic somehow) The final argument aligns with this framing: “Let her travel by ship or plane, it serves the greater good!” It can be read here:

Malik, Nesrine (January 08, 2020). Don’t just shut up – act. The Correspondent: https://thecorrespondent.com/215/dont-just-shut-up-act/230417262570-2e9d3c6a

Climate Change is a nearly untouchable issue so that an argument against his fallacious logic is hard to set. A different set can be chosen, nonetheless. Would it be equally justified to travel to Patagonia (in South America) from, say, Hamburg, because I am a student of geography and would like to travel there to undertake personal explorations to examine the rocks, their development and what it says about the prehistoric era. We could argue that such data is available online, in well-researched paper, at best from scientists of Argentine, Chile, Uruguay, etc. There were no need to travel thousands of kilometres across the world to repeat this work, and if it was for exercise’s sake, one could still stick to Germany, which has a rich history of mountains, caves and landscapes to examine in general. And while Patagonia might deliver the exotic flair, one has to contemplate what is more important: Exoticism, or the climate? And this could argue the point. Abstinence for the greater good is the little man’s contribution to fight climate change. Consequently, one should leave the iPhone behind because Apple contributes to both the exploitation of natural resources and egregious working conditions in the Far East. There are cheaper, fairer producers who do the same work, but under better conditions. There is no natural need for an Apple product, and so, if one likes to exclaim about the importance to change the world, one should function as an idol to others, rather than living like those who don’t care but continue moralising; speaking all vulgarly, because the purpose requires it. And so, the argument was deconstructed. Quod erat demonstrandum.

[22]

As a German, I still would distinguish between pastries and bakery products as the former would normally indicate sweets like tartes and pies, whereas the later referred to general bakery products such as rolls and bread. But ‘tis just a side-note, it ought to be generally understood what was meant thereby.

[23]

This is not to say that, on the one hand, the voluntarily accepted data breaches on behalf of the government were in any way fully justified, nor that this proactive mass vaccination operation is going to have the desired long-term effects everyone is hoping for. In the end, the whole rush for quick vaccina-tions of as many people as possible happens because people would like to return to the “Normal” of the status quo ante, before the pandemic’s offset. And Israel is viewed by many as (one of) the first nation(s) to return to a state of before the pandemic. Still, some are sceptic.

Read: Waitzberg, Ruth; Davidovitch, Nadav (February 05, 2021). Israel’s vaccination rollout: short term success, but questions for the long run. The BMJ Opinion: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/02/05/israels-vaccination-rollout-short-term-success-but-questions-for-the-long-run/ — and in case anyone wondered: “BMJ” stands for “British Medical Journal”, a peer-reviewed journal in the field of medicine.

[24]

The famed Blues musician Big Bill Broonzy, who lived in the Deep South for a great part of his life before escaping to Chicago (IL), showed in his song “Black, Brown and White” that not all racists who occupied the South were as honest as the man who turns down an application right away. He showed that many even employed them but payed them half as much as their white colleagues. The line that emphasises this is the following: Me and a man was workin’ side by side / This is what it meant / They was paying him a dollar an hour / And they was paying me fifty cent. | It was because those accusations were well-known and therefore true that the song materialised in subsequent outrage, which was one of the reasons why Broonzy first failed to find a label that would release his song. What should be nonetheless outrageous is the pragmatism in this shape of dishonest racism that could also be found ever thereafter, including in Hitler’s concentration camps: That people of colour are considered subhuman, even savage, but still good enough to do the work for a naturally lower wage than their white counterparts. It’s dishonest insofar as that the workforce is received gratuitously, but when it comes to rewarding this work, they are unworthy again.

[25]

For the United States, we unfortunately do not need to look for resources concerning the impact of a minimum wage hike in the fashion of as we are looking for in Germany, because no federal minimum wage has been declared, but if there had ever been one, it would be up to the states themselves to enforce them on the one hand, and to manifest it at a certain level. Due to the comparably high independence individual states enjoy before the central government in DC, they are free to not enforce a minimum wage, and to also implement a certain standard. Nevertheless, we will look at the latest report on a minimum wage hike up to US$ 15 as released by the nonpartisan “Congressional Budget Office” (CBO).

First, though, we will look at Germany, where a minimum wage of EUR 09.50 (US$ 11.52) has been developed in 2021. It was first initiated in 2015 and has been growing ever since, although many left-winged parties have been calling for a quicker increase to respectively EUR 12.50 (Approximately; US$ 15.16) and EUR 15.00 by now. (Again, approximately; US$ 18.19) A gradual increase bears the opportunity to organise the company’s finances without sudden whacks of great size. Proponents against a minimum wage usually cite the negative effects on the economy when stating that it should be relied on the market’s miraculous capability to adjust the wages in accordance to the work done and what it is truly worth. (We have spoken about this before with reference to Mises’ assessment). Jobs, they say, would die in consequence to rising minimum wages, thereby suggesting that it was better for people earning too little to make ends meet, just so that there could be more people to work for this same pittance; it would be more preferable to fewer people working for wages that allowed them to make aforementioned ends meet. One could well question the merit of such conditions, as even the argument that everyone were free to find a better-paid jobs couldn’t work, as the median payment is hardly crossed by the employers hiring for the desired profession. And to say that it was the enquirer’s failure to be trained in something better-paid is rude, blunt and misses the target. Furthermore, such fallacies, amongst others, have previously been addressed in a detailed report with a renown American magazine:

Lowrey, Annie (January 29, 2021). The Counterintuitive Workings of the Minimum Wage. The At-lantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/counterintuitive-workings-minimum-wage/617861/

Who the article doesn’t address, while writing about low-wage workers, are the vocational workers, mostly youngsters who earn a little for their pocket money, who want to spend their holidays produc-tively as they have got nothing to do because their friends went abroad. Such people are not looking for a living to earn, but only some cash. Such jobs, the proponents contra the minimum wage, fear would be cancelled altogether because it would not be economic for employers to hire adolescents for a part-time job if they had to pay them the full minimum wage. That’s where the German concept has done a good job: The minimum wage only applies to jobs from a certain amount of hours worked per day, and those who work less are not eligible for the full EUR 12.51. Such exceptions naturally bear loopholes dishonest, corrupted employers gratefully exploit when there are opportunities to do so without any chance for legal repercussions. Outside of the loophole diving operations, economists admit that one of the pawn sacrifices were the low-wage sector:

Knabe, Andreas et al. Bilanz nach fünf Jahren: „Was hat der gesetzliche Mindestlohn gebracht?“ In: Ifo Schnelldienst (2020), Bd.. 73, Ausgabe Nr. 04. Ifo-Institut: https://www.ifo.de/publikationen/2020/aufsatz-zeitschrift/bilanz-nach-fuenf-jahren-was-hat-der-gesetzliche-mindestlohn. Seite: 06; 07.

It is exactly what I mentioned beforehand: That those who are going to be forsaken in the wage hike are the low-wage sector workers, usually describes the innocent wage slaves amongst the otherwise orderly employed and well-paid. And while this is indeed the case for many, it does not mean that those who are employed part-time with infinitely connected part-time contracts that will keep them on the short line, and without any perspective to pay for compulsory insurances while private insurances are hardly affordable for them. (In Germany, they are given a choice even as low-wage earners, whether they would like to pay for an insurance not, but most decline as their wage does not allow any such expenses) Rising prices were an expectable downside as the money lost to a surplus in wage payments, whereas flintier measurements to decrease costs would be unlikely as an increased wage rate—if it still has to be raised; many companies already paid wages higher than what is expected from the minimum wage—does not create such high costs.

Another important note can be read at the end of the second analysis of this brief compilation (Knabe 2020, p. 07-08) as it emphasises another important fact, addressing also an important talking point of proponents of the minimum wage: The curb on poverty and impoverishment in a full-time job. It was noted that the minimum wage barely managed to lower the level of full-time workers living on the brink of poverty. Unfortunately, no numbers as to how many people in total were lifted out of the dependence to unemployment benefits, it is only noted that three percent of all full-time workers in Germany live in poverty, whereas 27 percent, more than a quarter, are at risk of poverty although dedicating a regular worktime to their professions.

Coming for the latest report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), we will see many previ-ously read arguments: That spending will increase when the minimum wage is increased, including costs for Medicaid (medical care for low-wage earners), Unemployment Benefits, Social Security, etc. The following source is considered:

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) February 08, 2021). The Budgetary Effects of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021. Link: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56975

What is peculiar is that the CBO does not want to say what it thinks about the “Budgetary Esti-mates”, that is how they are going to be affected by the minimum wage hike. (Page 06) Before they make any particular statements concerning on how the status quo is going to alter, they await to see “how quickly wages would grow in the absence of the policy and how employment would respond to higher wages” (ibid.) this would not be about to happen now, as this report was already directed towards the “Raise the Wage Act 2021”, so we are going to see how it is going to affect the costs people (and companies) will have to pay in hindsight. But if everything went as it went in Germany, it could have dominantly positive effects. In one point, the CBO’s report elaborates on where the economists of the “Ifo” lacked detail: They note that “cumulative pay would increase by $509 billion for people who were employed at higher hourly wages under the bill. Pay would decline by $175 billion because employment would be reduced in that period under the bill.” (Page 09) It must therefore be reckoned that “the cumulative pay of directly and potentially affected workers would increase, on net, by $333 billion.” (ibid.) Hence, the minimum wage hike is a mixed blessing: On the one hand, people in total will get more money when they are already employed and cannot be fired just because they became too expensive, but those who are looking for work would face a hard time as they were scrutinised more closely because once they were employed, they had to work harder in order to amortise the costs they created, more or less—more than the employer would consider paying personally, if it weren’t for the minimum wage setting the standard. We must therefore consider the minimum wage a relative catch-22: On the one hand, there is a small chance that the minimum wage is going to improve the people’s lives as they are going to have a little more money in their pockets. But on the other hand, there is also an unfortunate chance that fewer people are going to receive the job they wish and/or apply for because companies face a greater burden, financially, and will there go for the more experienced workers, moreover abstain from more part-time and adolescent workers who seek an additional income or a springboard into the business world. Hardliners will blame the Capitalist economy that created artificial obstacles we didn’t face in a different world. (They won’t name this alternate world as they either had to rely on buzzwords or introduce a sketchy concept they never fully thought through, so that apologists of the status quo and proponents of Capitalism and general free-market theories, who dedicated a lot of time in their ideologies and ideas will clash fiercely) The dead end we have reached in this debate drives many people justifiably furious, but we must abstain from therefore trying to break through the wall by running against it with our heads first. This way, we are only going to murder ourselves without cracking but one brick alone.

[26]

Bump, Philip (April 12, 2019). One exchange during a congressional hearing laid bare the CEO-employee pay disparity. The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/12/one-exchange-during-congressional-hearing-laid-bare-ceo-employee-pay-disparity/

[27]

The origin of the quote is contested as there is no text or fragment that featured this exact quote. As it arose, there have been multiple variations in literature as well as philosophical tractates.

Read: Quote Investigator. (Last time checked: August 28, 2015). Chinese Proverb? Maimonides? Lao-Tzu? Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie? Italian Adage? Native American Saying? Mao Zedong? Quote Investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/

[28]

… Although the call is originally of Socialist origin, coined by the initiators of (one of) Great Britain’s first Socialist parties. It can be found in a brief manifesto published in 1883: Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Socialism made plain. Being the social and political manifesto of the Democratic Federation. London: Offices of the Social Democratic Federation. Link: https://archive.org/details/SocialismMadePlain.BeingTheSocialAndPoliticalManifestoOfThe/mode/2up — the title resembles the German “Anarchismus in einer Nußschale” by Johann Most, a brief explainer of what Anarchism stands for, written in a simple manner so that the workers could get a grip of the ideology that promised them the pie in the sky.

[29]

Microsoft Word pretends to not know this word. And in case this word should be broadly unknown, viz. “Oxford Dictionary of the English Language” (OED) 2010, page 1,635. It exists, and describes a lightweight long-boat, mostly attached to vessels as a life-saving boat in case of capsizing.

[30]

This statement is not entirely correct and needs specification. First of all, the power of the United Nations’ (UN) General Assembly is limited and can hardly exercise prosecutions by itself, whilst it can in fact sue other nations. Its control could somewhat gain further strength when a member of the Assembly committed crimes against its principles, laid bare in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. There, in Article 14, sentence number one, it reads that “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”, and secondly, that “this right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations”. Under the following link, this Declaration can be read in fully: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ — obviously, there is no speech stating that this right to seek asylum must be responded with a sanctuary provided to this asy-lum seeker. Nations that are enquired by such seekers can still turn them down, for whichever reason. (Poland is known to reject all enquiries by Muslim asylum seekers as it only permits Christian refugees)

An addendum to this Universal Declaration, with specific regards to the status and treatment of refugees, is the “Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees”, signed in 1951.

There, under point D, it is recommended that “Governments continue to receive refugees in their territories and that they act in concert in a true spirit of international cooperation in order that these refugees may find asylum and the possibility of resettlement.” As I have written, this point, as well as all others in this Convention, are just recommendations as the United Nations cannot legislate across nations, or above their heads. The full text can be found under the following link: https://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10 — what does this mean for nations who have signed both of those Conventions but still turn down enquiries by the thousands? Are they all hypocrites, then? Not necessarily. All nations have got concise definitions of who to consider a refugee with justifiable interest in seeking asylum abroad, and who not to. Heroic benefactors would pass all enquiries without turning a hair, certainly, but pragmatists would set standards to manage the influx of refugees. Whereas the benefactors would lean to the left, pragmatists would likely lean to the right, but what about the latter group’s standards? Some say that qualified migrants should be favoured over those who have learnt no profession so far. Economic migrants should be sent back too, as they did not suffer any life-threatening persecution, unless they were professionals by any section, they say too. To infringe the influx of migrants, on the other hand, does not make a pragmatist already, there are also levels of a burlesque theatre of wannabe-arguments: Poland has been mentioned in the brackets beforehand, mentioning their stance to only allow Christian migrants and turning down eve-ryone else. For recapitulation, read:

Żyła, Marcin (May 27, 2015). Polska przyjmie Uchodźców z Syrii. Tygodnik Powszechnie: https://www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl/chrzescijanie-z-syrii-znajda-azyl-w-polsce-28442

Hungary was plain enough to say that they were not going to accommodate any refugees at all, i.e. refugees from Syria, but their absolute stance referred to the whole Middle East. Poland argued with a discrepancy in culture, moreover they wanted to show that persecuted Christians should have a Christian nation grant them sanctuary; Hungary just considered all refugees terrorists and a threat to public safety. Do these arguments make sense? Hungary clearly doesn’t, it simply discriminates all people alike in terror. Poland’s Ewa Kopacz—Vice President of the European Parliament and former Minister of Health in Poland. No nation must forcefully abandon its own culture, its cultural identity. That’s up to each on its own. It becomes hypocritical, nonetheless, when this same argument is used as a justification of abandoning refugees who seek safety from extrajudicial persecution. (Extrajudicial in such a way as that there is no impartial trial, and at best one based on religious reasons or law, such as the Sharia) Especially when we’re talking about a nation that proclaims for itself the practice of Christian values. Then, the argument is zilch, and the true intent—to aggressively lower the number of refugees to host without facing consequences in shape of funds the European Commission skipped as a punishment—came in sight. The Yezidi, while also a persecuted minority in both Syria and vast parts of the Middle East, but in this case, they become nothing less than an excuse to house nearly nobody.

So, what can we say about my own argument? It is not entirely correct, there is only a recommendation to house refugees, but by signing the Conventions, no nation is legally obliged to host every refugee that will extend an enquiry for such. That’s why the debate about how many refugees every nation should pick up and how to organise the influx within the European Union could last for months: Because there is no internal mechanism to solve those questions automatically. There never had been such a deluge from the Middle East to the European continent that could have preceded this struggle. And in the end, nothing had been learnt, so that a similar encounter could revolve the whole drama.

[31]

More or less, the “American Dream”, synonymous to the “American Way of Life” as the former must be achieved through the latter, has deceased within the prior decades. Only within specific counties can preserve conditions in which everyone is able to rise above by own efforts rather than blown-out social services required to break the caste system that suppresses lower-class people.

The following report clarifies the conditions that disrupt the “Dream”: Economic Innovation Group (EIG) (Accessed February 18, 2021). Is the American Dream Alive or Dead? It Depends on Where You Look. Link: https://eig.org/dcieop

[32]

Islamist terrorism is by far the most frequent shape of terrorism spot with migrants who were arrested on charges that affiliate to terrorist malpractices. But it doesn’t mean that it is the only shape of terror-ism migrants (can) practice. As left-winged as well as non-ideological intentions could be common, although less than the religious one, it was gathered under a simple hatred against the state in general. Whether it will gain traction in the future is hard to tell, thanks to the sudden rise and fall of the “Islamic State” and the dwindled strength of al-Qaeda in the Western world—it is a greater threat in nations like Afghanistan and Pakistan—, Islamism remains the scope.

[33]

Thränhardt, Dietrich (17. Juli, 2020). Die Asylkrise 2015 als Verwaltungsproblem. In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Band 30-32, Seite 37-44. Bundesamt für politische Bildung (BPB): https://www.bpb.de/apuz/312835/die-asylkrise-2015-als-verwaltungsproblem.

[34]

This is not exactly true. The author we will consider first in this brève, who can be found hereunder, mentioned two quotes in which Mises describes his concept of praxeology. The fact that I did not consider them valuable is the vagueness in their assessment, or contrarily the simplicity praxeology en-sues; as if human actions have never been considered in philosophy, or elsewhere. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the page numbers are less helpful with the edition we use, especially as a PDF. The page numbers are still correct, obviously, but as a PDF, it is more practical to also know which page to jump to when also dealing with the altered page number thanks to the preface. The first quote can be found on the book page 64 and on the PDF page 101; the second quote is found on book page 34 and PDF page 71. Still, both of them are not trumped in terms of vagueness and the alleged simplicity of praxeology.

[35]

Caldwell, Bruce J. Praxeology and its Critics: An Appraisal. In: History of Political Economy (1984), Volume 16, Issue 03. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Page 364. Link: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~bjc18/docs/ — By pressing CTRL+F and typing in the title of this paper, you will easily find the text you are looking for.

[36]

Caldwell 1984, page 366.

[37]

Disclaimer: This view relies completely on personal observations and do not intend to reflect a general condition within the public discourse. All that is meant to state is that I as the author have perceived many left-wingers to hold personal grudges against macroeconomics as well as microeconomics, so that both shall be abolished, according to them. In the meantime, many right-wingers blame the state’s high tax inflictions and too much paternalism as the cause for high poverty rights, and proclaim self-reliance and self-responsibility as the (miracle) cure for their misery. This assessment can also be viewed as a rebuke to the hobby commentators who claim that the left-right model had expired and was too simple (mostly without a proper alternative other than that the question was about rich versus poor, or the powerful versus the powerless, or freethinkers versus those who believed in what the media told them), which denies in itself the core tendencies that are located within the graph of four quadrants: The Socialists who belief in the virtue of an overly powerful state; the Conservatives and monarchists who believe in the virtue of a state and a rigidly puritan understanding of culture, and the despicableness of left-winged ideologies and ideas; the right-winged Liberals and Libertarians who believe in the abolition of the state and the freedom of the market that would enrapture all the people into the world of abso-lute freedom; and finally the left-winged Liberals and Anarchists who believe in either a left-winged government or the ruling class’ abolition and either the increased regulation or downright abolition of the free market to replace it with whatever is preferred. Of course this summary is superficial and incomplete, it only points towards general tendencies, but it tells what it has to tell: That the model is far from expired. Fairly enough, there are buzzwords—“Capitalism”, “Socialism”, Conservatism”, etc.—that have been exceeded by vulgar utilisation by promoters of completely different tendencies. Fur-thermore have all of these terminologies been corrupted by people who misused them in their own self-description, thus distorting their original meaning. We only need to think of the Grand Old Party in the US after Donald J. Trump had been elected 45th POTUS: He described himself as a Conserva-tive, and so did all of the Congressmen and –women-elect, including the likes of Senators Lindsey Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, etc. None of them would be considered true Conservatives in the original sense as they collectively let down the principle of a lowly indebted state, to name only one example. A lack of morale could be mentioned as well, although this would be embattled by many left-wingers who would point towards George W. Bush and his dis-heartening mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina. Hence, we shall not consider it hereby. But when it came to the construction of the utterly worthless wall alongside the US-Mexican border, none of those Senators objected towards the debt that would be allotted through its construction, barely exceeding the usage by any means. Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis which too bore its toll in society, could be an equal, if not a much heavier disaster in both ways, management as well as the debt that it brought into the government. Finally, it was thanks to Trump that “Conservatism” had been distorted, at least in the American sense. Similarly, many of the other general ideologies have lost the glow of their original meaning. The only one amongst them could be Socialism, although many of those who promote it seldom insist on the introduction of a single-party state. They usually call themselves “Democratic Socialists”, meaning that they would promote a Socialist parliamentarian party, awaiting its election and advertising for its election in a brute manner, demeaning critics as well as those who loathe the idea of being ruled by a party whose signature policy was to print more money in order to hammer out gargantuan projects. Needless to say that the most extreme ideals and ideologies are the least tolerant towards dissent, although not everyone of their sympathisers confront dissent with utmost hostility. Just because an iceberg looks threatening above the sea’s surface does not mean that it really is that dangerous; what hides underwater cannot be seen, so that the true degree of danger is as high as we perceive it through mere observations with a binocular.

[38]

There is one interesting post in which the former two terms were explained:

Andrew (September 05, 2014). Confirmationist and falsificationist paradigms of science. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science at Columbia University: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/09/05/confirmationist-falsificationist-paradigms-science/

As for the latter terminology, Instrumentalism, we do not need a separate source. It simply means the exploitation of a thesis or theory for exact purposes such as the argumentation of a different theory. Practicality is key; otherwise, a theory or thesis were nothing better than a shower thought. A theory is only as good as the purposes it can serve, or assail through negation of its weak arguments. (Without trying to militarise philosophical or any other arguments)

[39]

Long, R. T. (2005). Praxeology: Who needs it. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, 299-316.

[40]

Some people state that Capitalists or Libertarians who argue that true Capitalism has never been achieved, but only been tangent to it via neo-Corporatist co-operations were nothing but a cheap apology to defend Capitalism’s failure; an argument similar to those uttered by Communists and Socialists who claim that neither the Soviet Union/USSR, the GDR, nor the Khmer-Rouge Cambodia, nor the Viet-namese Republic nor mainland China, etc. were true Socialist States or Communist societies. Inarguable it is that they rolled under the red banner, although neither Marx nor Engels, nor anybody else claimed copyright violations on the abuse of this label. And so, we can say that those attempts were correctly run under these terms, as much to the disliking of many who would like to whitewash the legacy of those theories, who, as noble as they have been in their endeavours, have scornfully trenched dissenters as well as great parts of their own people in gułagy as well as compounds of any shape in order to coordinate the public opinion. Some would argue that if we declared the aforementioned nations Socialist or Communist, we should also argue that what we have been living through in the post-WW II Western world has accordingly been Capitalist, with all its up- and downsides. But this easy it isn’t, as apparent literature argues in favour of the disagreement that prefers to put the etiquette of “Neo-Corporatism” onto the society that emerged during the fin de siècle, or more aptly the post WW II world. It can be read under the follow-ing citation:

Schmitter P.C. (1985) Neo-corporatism and the State. In: Grant W. (eds) The Political Economy of Corporatism. Sociology, Politics and Cities. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18041-7_2

And for those who are fond of the German language, there could be another collection of essays concerning the topic of neo-Corporatism, although its availability may have narrowed down to trusted libraries at university campuses.

Given the age of both citations, many people would correctly argue that a younger source would be more credible than such that could have already borne children, built a house and experience a midlife-crisis. The problem is that we should instead recapitulate the last forty years to answer one question: Did we experience any major undertakings towards a deregulation of our society? This question points towards the Western world in particular as we all are most likely therefrom: The Western European nations, the United States, or any Asian or African nation that either qualifies for the status of a first-world nation or a threshold country. Of course we saw single tenures of presidents and chancellors that tried to deregulate parts of the market or society, but their attempts were quickly overturned by their successors; the United States are the most prominent examples for such merry-go-round presi-dencies: A Republican president will deregulate the market and dismiss taxes introduced by his succes-sor, ironically increasing fiscal debt (nearly every Republican President since Abraham Lincoln has promised to eliminate fiscal debt to the best of his abilities, but regularly, the debt always went up), just to then see his proposals paddled back either through Executive Orders (EOs) or the modest way, through Congressional approval.

[41]

As I learnt later, there was a respective recommendation on behalf of the Czechs to include the female gender regularly, whenever the context deems it inclusive. It can be read about in the following document: Technologická Agentura České Republika (last time checked: February 26, 2021). Příručka pro užívání genderově senzitivního jazyka v komunikaci TAČR. Link: https://www.tacr.cz/gender/160324_prirucka_gender_jazyk.pdf (PDF, 442 KB) — Yet in the study that will follow hereafter, it is confirmed to me that there have been no official guidelines published on the usage of gender-inclusive language in Polish until 2016, and onwards, according to my knowledge.

In the meantime, no apparent recommendations with regards to gender-inclusivity or neutrality could be found in the “Internetová jazyková příručka”, only an entry on the adjustment of female surnames, especially names of foreign origin.

[42]

Sczesny, S., Formanowicz, M., & Moser, F. (2016). Can Gender-Fair Language Reduce Gender Stereotyping and Discrimination? Frontiers in Psychology, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00025

[43]

The German option is not considered in France, nonetheless. It never has been as feminists, amongst others, have moved straight ahead and demanded a gender-neutral language. A history of how this development came to be, although the text itself is far from up to date, can be read under the following citation:

Burr, Elisabeth (2003). Gender and language politics in France. In: Hellinger, Marlis; Bussmann, Hadumod (Eds.) Gender across Languages, vol. 3. The de/construction of gender through language variation and change. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 119-139. Link: https://home.uni-leipzig.de/burr/Publikationen/Burr_Gender_and_language_politics_in_France.pdf (PDF, 226 KB)

Fast forward nearly 14 and 18 years, into respectively the year 2017 and 2021, we have two more encounters to notice with regards to the question of either a more inclusive or a completely neutral French language. In 2017, when the debate over a neutral language re-emerged within the public discourse, the renowned « Académie Française », the institution for the Bon Usage (Correct Usage) of the French language has issued a statement in opposition to measurements that would have accomplished a rectification of inclusiveness with nouns and adjectives. The two paragraphs can be read here:

L’Académie Française (October 26, 2017). Déclaration de l’Académie française sur l'écriture dite “inclusive”. Link: http://www.academie-francaise.fr/actualites/declaration-de-lacademie-francaise-sur-lecriture-dite-inclusive

As it can be read, they cite problems for teachers, amongst other pedagogics, in teaching the details of a more inclusive language, which is understandable in a language such as the French, which is already riddled with exceptions and traps many people from outside France brace for when hooking up with this otherwise majestic lingo. But can such pitfalls justify the exclusion of inclusion? The argument would be subjective, emotional even, and so, the faults remained, between the Conservatives who affiliate with the Académie Française, and those who affiliate with the feminists and Intersectionalists.

And now, it has led towards the 25th February 2021, in which it could be heard from the incumbent “La République en Marche” (LREM), the party of Emmanuel Macron, incumbent President of France, whose party has officially rejected the application of a gender-inclusive language, pouring further oil into the devastating fire in an already torn country. It read be read here:

Dodman, Benjamin (February 25, 2021). ‘Françaises, Français’: Could the French language be less sexist?. France 24: https://www.france24.com/en/culture/20210225-fran%C3%A7aises-fran%C3%A7ais-why-the-french-language-need-not-be-so-sexist

Now, the only language which we have mentioned but ignored for another time is the Spanish language. With a brief sentence we have mentioned that in the colloquial, popular culture, a compromise has been found with the @-symbol, but such an ace cannot be pulled up from one’s sleeve in more formal correspondence, in press releases or governmental/gubernatorial proposals. Representatives, especially from more Conservative wings, would irk over such quirks. Apparently, the address for such enquiries again is a an academy that deals with such questions: The “Real Academia Española” has, unsurprisingly, a mixed opinion on the reformation of the Spanish language in terms of further inclusion of all genders, not only grammatical. Therefore, in the year before, they have released an assessment of this question which can be found here:

Real Academia Española (January 16, 2020). Informe de la Real Academia Española sobre el lenguaje inclusivo y cuestiones conexas. Link: https://www.rae.es/sites/default/files/Informe_lenguaje_inclusivo.pdf (PDF, 2.55 MB)

What can be extracted from their study? Generally, that they are seemingly in favour of not introducing a shorthand for one-word gender inclusion as comparable to German. (Not French, as I presumed without further information at hand during the writing of my two examples) Nevertheless, both sides are heard profoundly and with neutral exhibition via arguments. Therefore it can be found that until now, the generic masculine was not only used as a method to include mixed groups of more than two with both sexes assembled, but also for individual women in reference to their profession. One would wonder what would be the reason for such bluntness, to even drown the existing female suffix for nouns, which is by far no early modern invention by sexual theorists or feminists who wanted to enforce equity between men and women in language. And one of the clearest examples, in terms of what the RAE brought up as an argument, could be read on page 50:

“El masculino posee un valor genérico que neutraliza la diferencia entre sexos (Los derechos de los ciudadanos = ‘Tanto de los ciudadanos como de las ciudadanas’) y un valor específico (Luis es un ciudadano ejemplar). En algunos ámbitos se ha difundido la idea de que el masculino genérico es una herencia del patriarcado. Su uso es lesivo para la mujer, por lo que se ha de evitar en el discurso.” (Page 50)

Normally, one would likely agree with the argument that the generic masculine would neutralise all differences between sexes, but the study previously cited brought up a different argument, with empirical data at hand. The comparison between different Constitutions from other Hispanic countries such as Mexico and Brazil, which, in their full range, alternatively applied both sexes in writing, whereas others did not. Prior to this quote, exercises have been undertaken to compare various options in including women either through separate mentioning of the female sex in noun, and in a mixed approach where the preceding article indicated the addressed or mentioned individual’s sex, but the noun itself still showed a man, regardless of the individual. Feminists and other people who were otherwise interested in more inclusion in language would have found the moderate approaches hypocritical or ignorant, root-ing with the full inclusion or exclusion of the male form. (The recently deceased United States Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was once quoted with dreaming of an all-female Supreme Court bar, iterating in a follow-up sentence that while some (men) might find this discriminatory, none of them ever showed suspicion with the preceding occasionally all-male bars. After her decease, Sonia Sotomayor remains the last remaining female justice in the States’ highest court order. Whether Clarence Thomas will resign from the bar anytime soon, thus opening the opportunity for POTUS Joe R. Biden to nominate a successor to the first African-American SCOTUS justice (likely an African-American woman, for sake of sacrosanct precedence) is anybody’s guess.) At a different point, editors for the RAE also claimed that “en lógica y en semántica se denomina género al concepto que incluye en su clase a otras nociones más concretas”. (Page 47) Again, we are confronted with a subjective perspec-tive that is not even established with researchers who have previously brought up this argument, a footnote sight we oftentimes come across in the humanities, firstly with shortened citations and then in full length in an index. But the RAE did not add any such index, nor any resources to double-check their arguments. And so, we can doubt this argument as well. But why? The RAE listed the argument of stereotypes, by which people have a firm, culturally dependent understanding of axioms such as with birds: Americans would most likely think of a robin when it comes to birds, and likewise, Spaniards would most likely think of oranges when thinking about citrus fruits. But do we, consequently, think of both men and women when thinking about human beings, or do we primarily think of men when thinking about human beings, even referencing the Bible by which Eve was created from one of Adam’s rips? It is most likely that we would think of men. Alas, men are even used synonymously of hu-mans, giving us also the word human, or (hu)mankind. (Needless to say, the origin of the word man is firmly disputed amongst linguists, so that many happen to carry a theory of their own. One can be read in a blog entry with a journal and publisher:

Liberman, Anatoly (November 11, 2015). You’ll be a man, my son. Part 1. Oxford University Press Blog: https://blog.oup.com/2015/11/man-word-origin-etymology-part-1/)

If we went by this presumption, the argument would run into the opposite direction from which the RAE claimed in defence of the generic masculine.

One last interesting argument made in the otherwise rather descriptive informal piece was made on page 57, where the RAE spoke/wrote about the doubling (desdoblamiento), such as with hermanos/hermanas. (Brothers, sisters; generally siblings, without any indication of the siblings’ sexes) Whilst they have written that this doubling is not ungrammatical, it injures the general purpose of language, which is the means of communication, furthermore a most economical one. What is forgotten about it, and frighteningly so, given that the RAE publishes the most renowned editions of Spanish classics like “Don Quixote de la Mancha” (which I own personally, and am proud to tell, given the great introduc-tory essays on the book itself, and the occasional facsimile prints) by Miguel Cervantes, is the aesthetic factor of language, the opportunity to play with it and bend its fringes to the utmost extents. Indubita-bly, language is a means of communication, first and foremost, but secondarily, we must never forget that language is also a means of the arts, a means to express oneself and shape oneself, one’s character. This might sound subjective, populistic even, but it is true, and we do not have to look long to see where one can find evidence for this argument: Literature, poetry, music—all of those artistic genres instrumentalise language for the purpose of… Art! And so, language is not just a means to abridge barriers between humans, and by learning to speak in various tongues, one can make the greatest use of this means. On a downside, language can also discriminate people; dehumanisation is the most perilous grade of linguistic discrimination, which we see dominantly in authoritarian nations, when ethnic minorities are socially excluded, rounded up in compounds or become victims of genocides meant to eradicate them from the world. Language is a powerful tool, hence must be handled with care to not create total bedlam.

What must be noted in terms of gender sensitivity in other European languages? The scope has been narrow for sake of brevity on the one hand and because my skills in languages are limited. Luckily the RAE considered its brothers in linguistics to include languages like Italian as well. But the results have been comparably sobering: Many countries seem to remain Conservative bout the merit of a more gender-inclusive language, other than Germany; The RAE is sceptical about it and continues weighing arguments on which side to choose. In France, we are not going to see it. And only a couple of Hispanic nations in Latin and Meso America have chosen to mention both sexes separately in their Constitutional texts. In Britain and other Anglophone countries like the United States, alternatives to masculine expressions (e.g. policeman) to break up perceived boundaries to professions boys and girls, i.e. women and men, can aspire to work in someday. And this is only one spectre in which predisposed gender roles need to be removed, a field in which language can contribute a fair share to.

There is only one problem no nation has examined yet: How would those new rules be introduced to the broader public? Language must not be coordinated by governments, nor by any independent institutions, languages are free to everyone and may be used by everyone within the legal realms. Hate speech cannot be tolerated, as it could otherwise accelerate dehumanisation. (Which also, partially, hap-pens within left-winged groups as well, when fringe right extremists are decried as Nazis, which categorises them solely by their ideology, no longer as people displaying this ideology. It could grow to become an ethical question whether such dehumanisations are justified when speaking about ideologues to whom dehumanisations are not only a hobbyhorse but also part of a fixed agenda to exterminate disliked ethnic minorities who are believed to stain their Aryan blood. But this shall be discussed elsewhere) Because of this, laws have been passed in Germany, amongst them the infamous “Netzwerkdurchsuchungsgesetz” (NetzDG; Translates to “Network Investigation Law”) Web users could become vigilante neighbourhood watchers on the internet therewith, reporting what they perceived as abusive, discriminatory or downright racist. Pornographic content and calls for lynch justice can be reported as well, and will be examined upon dispatch. Many critics have condemned it as the creation of a voluntary Gestapo (abbreviation to “Geheimstaatspolizei”, or “Secret State Police”) that would roam through the World Wide Web to look for content that could be reported, so that people could inad-vertently be criminalised, always under the sword of Damocles. One can imagine that such swift opportunities to enforce disliked individuals’ bans—to only press a few buttons to send a report to examiners employed not by executive branches of governments (they will be informed in a second step) bears food for sceptics to question the safety of such mechanisms—but it also contributes to marginalising fringe right content that celebrates the Third Reich or questions the Holocaust, that intimidates ethnic minorities online. The same goes for Islamist content or various shapes of anti-Semitism and white supremacy. For sure, it is a twofold blade, just as the surveillance and coordination of language were if any nation planned to introduce an institution to standardise and gauge ubiquitous language usage. This would not lead towards an Orwellian dystopia, but certainly towards something comparable to what (Aldous) Huxley thought of. Nevertheless, languages by ethnic minorities have always been illegalised throughout the history of authoritarian nations, some as young as in the 21st century, in Peru, where the language of the Guarani has been marginalised and criminalised. Obviously, languages like Ladino, spoken by Sephardic Jews in medieval Europe, were haunted as well, as the Middle Ages in Europe are fondly known for their rabid anti-Semitism. More bizarre outgrowths of such disgust for languages has emerged with the Belarusian post-Soviet dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, who refuses to speak Belarusian himself as he considers it an inferior language, a language of peasants, incapable of expressing anything lofty. This is a language policy that heads into a rather different direction, away from any emotional patriotism. Needless to say, Lukashenko prefers Russian.

Language prosecution, if we wanted to call it like this, also left its marks in the ensuing ages, in post-colonial Africa. Cameroon comes to mind, where Anglophone and Francophone communities fight one another over the hegemony in their shared homeland. And those fights always end bloodily, especially during elections. One can tell where those skirmishes arose from, outside of the fact that they might possibly have existed beforehand, under different conditions, and were fought for different reasons. Certainly. But the point that those fights are now continued for reasons of languages that did not originate there until colonisers from France and Britain have arrived, exploited their lands and left them for their own, with languages left like scrap, is their fault, hence it is those people’s blood on their hands. It’s the third path of morphing languages into weapons—this time, for people to fight them-selves over something as comparable to blood-and-soil politics as the question in which language they should converse; in which language press releases by governmental institutions should be published, and in which language speeches should be held. Alas, in countries like Nigeria, the colonisers’ languages were also perceived as an opportunity to coordinate multinational states: When there are dozens of languages spoken across the country, an exterior, nonpartisan lingua franca can help to cross the barriers. It can help to surpass the ethnic conflicts and find a common way to communicate. And this is where the RAE’s argument does make sense: Language functions as a neutral tool to connect people. But when language loses its neutrality and starts to take sides against one side, in favour of the other, it needs to be amended to work equally for everyone who wants to make use of it. To say that one had to deal with the fiendishness in some regards as it had always been this way, and that there were neither merit nor interest in changing it would qualify as evidence of incapability for humankind, after these centuries of successful evolution, and the benefits it brought. Why shouldn’t it be possible to accom-plish those amendments now? Denial is nothing but weak dodging, at worst wilful ignorance in the face of women because one felt uncomfortable with those changes. Those we must ignore likewise, to fight them with their own weapons. Reasonable critics shall contrarily be invited to point out lacking details.

[44]

Buck, Rinker (2015). The Oregon Trail. A New American Journey. New York City: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Page 57. — There’s also at least one more page in which he used this verb, but for mere reference, one example is enough. Strangely enough, it might be an obscure terminology used within exclusive circles as it bears no trace neither in “Merriam Webster”, nor in the “Oxford Dictionary of the English Language” (OED), which even includes words from the Afrikaans language. (Whether aardvark derives therefrom, or only from Dutch immigrants to the US is up to debate) Alas, there are people online who do use it, but still, it might not have been canonised in dictionaries yet, lest those we can consider official and safe to refer to in papers.

[45]

The word is made up of two parts: Bezpieczeń, which means secure and is itself made up of two words, although one will have a hard time finding the second part of this two-part word, as the latter part—the first one, bez, means without—, pieczny, or pieczeń, interpretable as something like danger and dangerous, is no longer used as a single word but only in combination with its prefix bez. Breaking it apart, we will get the word shown in the first line, which means secure. But if we add the abnegator nie. We thereby get the word Niebezpieczny, or Niebezpieczeń. Literally, we would translate them as dangerous and danger. Obviously, this is not a compound of nouns but of particles, objects and adjectives. Finally, there is also the nominalising suffix -stwo, which apparently bears no meaning of its own. On a side-note, it also drops its final vowel when declined into Genitive Plural, giving it the onlook that so many non-Slavs accuse Slavic languages of: Of lacking vowels to make the words pronouncable.

[46]

What is talked about is the “Icelandic Language Institute” at the “Stofnun Árna Magnússon”, a branch of the Icelandic Education Ministry. Nevertheless, the “ILI” only existed from 1985 to 2006. What happened thereafter to the Icelandic language and the many novelties that have been introduced in this world is beyond me. Still, it can be read about under the following link: https://arnastofnun.is/is/islensk-malstod. The idiosyncratic purism preserved until six years ago has even made it into the news: The German radio broadcaster “Deutschlandfunk” (Broadcaster of Germany) has written about them, also indicating how Icelanders call the computer—Tjölva:

Krohn, Tim (August 09, 2014). „Bildrausschicker“ und „Rechenhexen“. Deutschlandfunk: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/islands-kampf-gegen-die-fremdwoerter-bildrausschicker-und.691.de.html

The article shows that this purism is by far not strutted: Creativity is permitted in finding proper interpretations for technical innovations like computers, thanks, drones or TV screens. (It was not ex-plicitly spoken about a television set, and since Poles make the distinction between television sets and screens, we must apply the same pettiness) It’s also a rebuke against the stubbornness many linguistic purists and prescriptivists apply in their characteristics: That instead of creating proper alternatives for novelties, abolishing the loaned Anglicisms (in German) becomes the law, a top priority. It is not the case that there never were alternatives suggested for Anglicisms, but many lack the creativity that can be observed in Iceland. Linguistic purism is treated as an emotional, dry, theoretical, almost bourgeois issue with little appeal for the broader public. One could argue that a somewhat exclusive atmosphere is pre-served, that it required a sacrifice to become part of this club. This must not be the case, necessarily, it can be opened if there is an interest within the purist ranks. If the mentality opened up on its own principles, more people might think about endorsing it. But if it sticks with the Conservative school of preserving the status quo and isolating it from all outside influence, it will also keep out any fresh input. This self-preservation, in human societies a recipe for inbreeding, leads towards self-destruction under an umbrella of perceived superiority through cultural supremacy. As we say in German: „Nobel geht die Welt zugrunde.” — The world descends in nobility.

Briefly we shall also focus on the origin of the word Völuspá, which I still assume to be the origin of the word Tjölva, although I couldn’t find any Anglophone source to back this up. But the German source cited in supra, translates the neologism for computers as a Rechenhexe, or calculating witch. Witches and clairvoyants might have been thrown into the same pot as there was no differentiation between the common attitudes between a witch—erudite in the fields of potions and herbs in general, red hair, probably exercises pagan rituals in obeisance to Gods or spirits of nature (such as Tom Bombadil and Goldberry), maybe even the occasional frequentation of cemeteries—, so that they were called the same. Nevertheless, let’s have a look at the etymological knowledge that can be retrieved from the internet: According to “Wiktionary”, Völuspá is derived from Vǫluspa, the genitive (singular?) case for Vǫlva, which translates to truth-say or prophetess. (We are hereby going to ignore that it also likely brought us the term vulva, which might also be another argument for the clairvoyant’s female gender) Another root word for the prophetess is the Proto-Germanic *waluz, which translates to staff and/or stick, with cognates in Old Frisian and Old English. It is traced back to the Proto-Indo-European *wel, according to “Wiktionary”; Pokorny (2007) offers the reconstruction *ṷel, both translating it as ‘(to) turn’. (Pokorny (2007) also offers ‘(to) wind’ and ‘(to) round’) Could there be an explanation to this relation: Witches and prophetesses, and staffs? It could go back to our imagined optics of druids, witches, sages and –women, hexers: We always imagine them in long coats and spiked hats, men with long beards and women with wart noses; the men look serious all the time, while women sport a fiendish gran and a high-pitched laughter; Men always walk upright and dramatically slow, while women oftentimes have a hunch; what both of them have in common is the walking staff, which is also sometimes used as an extended wand. Popular examples would be Merlin and Gandalf for men, and Elizabeth Howes and Rebecca Nurse, both of who were executed after the “Salem Witch Trials”. It is understandable that therefore, the word witches has to be written in italics. Last but not least, as this footnote has gone a great way from the original topic—purism in linguistics—to the etymological background of the Völuspá, we shall wrap it up once and for all. We have seen that there is not a single utterly pure language, all of them are the final opus of a long history of influence from its neighbours, its peers, if we want so: The further we go back in the history of a lan-guage, the more we see that related languages which are now no longer of greater interest—for example Old Frisian, for example, whose descendant, Frisian, is now a minority language at the brink of extinction. Those are all of course born from a common language, Proto Germanic, but this does not relativize the influences they all have eventually derived from neighbouring languages, although Old Frisian might probably be excluded therefrom. But Dutch, to move a little away from Frisian, has derived influences from French and English. One only needs to think of words like cadeau (gift) or conducteur (conductor). Both words are obviously French, although the pronunciation differs. Which words would its speakers have chosen, had they been as hard-headed about the purity of their language as some prescriptivists and dilettante aes-thetes of today? Perhaps they would have turned their gaze to their big brother, Germany, and adapt apparent terminologies from him. Perhaps we would now see translations of Geschenk in shape of—well, geschenk! A word that already exists in the Dutch language, although it obviously hits close to home, so that the French might be more favourable to the next evidence that Dutch is just a dialect of German, related to Lower German, or Plattdeutsch. And the conducteur would likely become something like a schaafner, assuming that a long vowel would be preferred to the originally German short vowel. On the other hand, I am not erudite in Dutch studies, so that I also do not know how nouns and verbs developed throughout history. But the idea is clear: There are oftentimes opportunities to cast out foreign influences from foreign languages that did not even emerge from the same family—French is a Gallo-Roman language, while Dutch is a Western Frankian language, hence a Germanic language. The idea of a pure language is pointless, futile, and supported by no academic linguist. A language free of any foreign influences would likely be incompatible with today’s breadth of foreign terms needed to express what requires a name for sake of reference, even though Icelanders showed that it is possible to persist with a prise of creativity. But how many nations could have managed to do this if they had been interested in preserving their uniqueness, their freedom of outside influences? Finally, Icelandic was gifted with its remoteness: There have never been any serious attempts to conquer the deserted island in the cold north, which did not even bear any strategic advantage. Icelanders enjoyed their independence like an advanced Switzerland. And so, there were no intruders who could have left linguistic traces. Continental cultures could never have preserved this without also ruining themselves by falling aback in terms of diversity in language, and perhaps even in its capability of calling certain innovations and dis-coveries simply because the original language had no names for them, nor any means to refer to it, thus opening opportunities to create names from pre-existing referrals. As the “Deutschlandfunk” article emphasised, the committee in Iceland only created originally Norse names to the best of their abilities—never had it been mentioned that they succeeded with all technical and sociological novelties. Sometimes, it has to be given in to the English language, which too flourished firstly under the broad-ening of the field of influences, of which there are innumerable ones due to the British Empire’s aggressive colonialist policies that led to the oppression of nearly three fourth of the world and its tribes. One only needs to think of the aardvark, whose name is derived from Afrikaans; the Filipino trike; the Desi chai; the jargon of Classical Music is mostly derived from the Italian language, including Silenzio, Forte, Intermezzo, etc.—needless to say that et cetera and jargon too are loanwords, respectively from Latin and French; in the end, the English language is not a language per se but mostly a kaṟi of influences making up this communication system of theirs. One should not challenge the assumption unless he or she wanted to get into a populist brouhaha on the internet. Only a putz would do something like that. Of course, the latter three italic words were respectively loaned form Hebrew, Yiddish and Tamil, alias Dravian.

[47]

Wagenhofer, A. Ankündigung. Schmalenbachs Z betriebswirtsch Forsch 72, 523–525 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41471-020-00105-1.

[48]

Zeeden, E. Walter (2020, October 22). Karl, Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein. Encyclopedia Britanni-ca. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Reichsfreiherr-vom-und-zum-Stein

[49]

Tebeau, C. W. (2021, January 17). Stonewall Jackson. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stonewall-Jackson

[50]

For more information on AAVE, there is an informative-yet-brief text on its peculiarities that are root-ed in classical literature and olden English standards one would nowadays consider almost poetic:

Luu, Chi (February 12, 2020). Black English Matters. JSTOR Daily: https://daily.jstor.org/black-english-matters/