The great mistake here is in assuming that economics is a science which can be isolated from moral, philosophical and political principles, and considered as a subject in itself, without relation to them. It can’t be done.
The best example of that is Von Mises’ Omnipotent Government. That is precisely what he attempted to do, in a very objective, conscientious, scholarly way. And he failed dismally...”
Well, then.
I actually haven’t read Omnipotent Government. Maybe it is in fact in that work that Mises doesn’t address moral, philosophical and political principles.
But he does in Human Action. It seems a bit disingenuous for Rand not to note that. Most likely, Mises didn’t intend Omnipotent Government to be his Summa.
(Of course, this shows one of the problems on our side of the ledger. Everyone has to always one up everyone else, and put others down. Rand basically says that Mises is an idiot here. Which sort of means that Rand is the only one with any answers.
And that differs her from Nietzsche just exactly how?).
I find most Libertarians state ALL the time that “social” issues aren’t important-—just the economics, stupid!
Libertarians seem to think that you can divorce the “social” issues from economics. You simply can’t. All economics are based on human interactions which are always social.
That is why the Founders stated-—Without Virtue, you can not have Freedom. I will expand on that thought-—without virtue, there is no trust and without trust you can’t have a vibrant economic system. Like my Nigerian professor told me—in his country, which was pathetic—you had to bribe everyone for everything, etc. There was no virtue. Why? They had no moral absolutes like America (Christianity) is based on....they had arbitrary laws which were always unjust and favored friends, relatives, etc. They had no true concept of “Justice” which goes back to Plato and Cicero put into Roman Law. His idea became America’s idea—which stated that there is a higher law—God’s Law—where the standard of Justice is set.
Without Rule of Law, you can’t have Justice and a vibrant economic system. All human behavior determines what a society is like. Christian Ethics have proven the best for a vibrant economy. Perfect? No. But only because the Christians failed at acting like true Christians. It worked as perfect as any system with human beings could work.
Note, this was what Rand said in the above letter: “...where his economics came to touch upon moral issues (as all economics must)....” If you take out morality/amorality/immorality-—you take out humans. Only humans can create economic systems. That was Rand’s point-—that Libertarians tend to think you can have an economics system in a vacuum. It is another utopian idea.