Conza

One of the most perplexing questions associated with this process is, " Where does the money come from to pay the interest?" If you borrow $10,000 from a bank at 9%, you owe $10,900. But the bank only manufactures $10,000 for the loan. It would seem, therefore, that there is no way that you-- and all others with similar loans-- can possibly pay off your indebtedness. The amount of money put into circulation just isn't enough to cover the total debt, included interest. This has lead some to the conclusion that is is necessary for you to borrow the $900 for the interest, and that, in turn, leads to still more interest. The assumption is that, the more we borrow, the more we have to borrow, and that debt based fiat money is a never ending spiral leading inexorably to more and more debt.

This is a partial truth. It is true that there is not enough money created to include the interest, but it is a fallacy that the only way to pay it back is to borrow still more. The assumption fails to take into account the exchange value of labor. Let us assume that you pay back your $10,000 loan at the rate of approximately $900 per month and about $80 of that represents interest. You realize you are hard pressed to make your payments so you decide to take on a part-time job. The bank, on the other hand, is now making an $80 profit each month on your loan. Since this amount is classified as "interest", it is not extinguished as is the larger portion which is a return of the loan itself.

The decision then is made to have the bank's floors waxed once a week. You respond to the ad in the paper and are hired at $80 per month to do the job. The result is that you earn the money to pay the interest on your loan, and -- this is the point--- the money you receive is the same money which you previously had paid (to the bank). As long as you perform labor for the bank each month, the same dollars go into the bank as interest, then out the revolving door as your wages, and then back into the bank as loan repayments.

Hoppe identifies the reasons why positivism, which vehemently denies validity to the type of reasoning about human action found in praxeology, was especially successful in the social sciences:

Their philosophical message was quickly recognized by the powers that be as a mighty ideological weapon in the pursuit of their own goal of increasing their control over others and of enriching themselves at the expense of others. Accordingly, lavish support was bestowed on the positivist movement, and this movement returned the favor by destroying economics and ethics in particular as the traditional bastions of social rationalism and eradicating from public consciousness a vast body of knowledge that had once constituted a seemingly permanent part of the heritage of Western thought and civilization. (EEPP, p. 356)

Popper would have us throw out any theory that is contradicted by any fact, which, if at all possible, would leave us virtually empty-handed, going nowhere. In recognizing the insoluble connection between theoretical knowledge (language) and actions, rationalism would instead deem such falsificationism, even if possible, as completely irrational.

There is no situation conceivable in which it would be reasonable to throw away any theory-conceived of as a cognitive instrument of action-that had been successfully applied in a past situation but proves unsuccessful in a new application-unless one already had a more successful theory at hand. And to thus immunize a theory from experience is perfectly rational from the point of view of an actor.

And it is just as rational for an actor to regard any two rivals, in their range of application overlapping theories t1 and t2 as incommensurable as long as there exists a single application in which t1 is more successful than t2 or vice versa. Only if t1 can be as successfully applied as t2 to every single instance to which t2 is applicable but still has more and different applications than t2 can it ever be rational to discard t2. To discard it any earlier, because of unsuccessful applications or because t1 could in some or even in most situations have been applied more successfully, would from the point of view of a knowing actor not be progress but retrogression.

"In fact, what strikes Conway as a counterintuitive implication of the homesteading ethic, and then leads him to reject it, can easily be interpreted quite differently. It is true, as Conway says, that this ethic would allow for the possibility of the entire world’s being homesteaded.

What about newcomers in this situation, who own nothing but their physical bodies? Cannot the homesteaders restrict access to their property for these newcomers and would this not be intolerable? I fail to see why. (Empirically, of course, the problem does not exist: if it were not for governments’ restricting access to unowned land, there would still be plenty of empty land around!)

These newcomers come into existence somewhere - normally one would think as children born to parents who are owners or renters of land (if they came from Mars, and no one wanted them here, so what?; they assumed a risk in coming, and if they now have to return, tough luck!).

If the parents do not provide for the newcomers, they are free to search the world over for employers, sellers, or charitable contributors - and a society ruled by the homesteading ethic would be, as Conway admits, the most prosperous one possible!

If they still could not find anyone willing to employ, support, or trade with them, why not ask “What’s wrong with them?” instead of Conway’s feeling sorry for them? Apparently they must be intolerably unpleasant fellows and had better shape up, or they deserve no other treatment. Such, in fact, would be my own intuitive reaction."

"In particular, what are the differences between praxeology and technology, psychology, history, and ethics—all of which are in some way concerned with human action?

In brief, praxeology consists of the logical implications of the universal formal fact that people act, that they employ means to try to attain chosen ends.

Technology deals with the contentual problem of how to achieve ends by adoption of means.

Psychology deals with the question of why people adopt various ends and how they go about adopting them.

Ethics deals with the question of what ends, or values, people should adopt.

And history deals with ends adopted in the past, what means were used to try to achieve them-and what the consequences of these actions were.

Praxeology, or economic theory in particular, is thus a unique discipline within the social sciences; for, in contrast to the others, it deals not with the content of men's values, goals, and actions—not with what they have done or how they have acted or how they should act—but purely with the fact that they do have goals and act to attain them."

"It is not a deficiency of the system of aprioristic science that it does not convey to us full cognition of reality. Its concepts and theorems are mental tools opening the approach to a complete grasp of reality; they are, to be sure, not in themselves already the totality of factual knowledge about all things. Theory and the comprehension of living and changing reality are not in opposition to one another."

And in this way, again and again, governments have destroyed the markets of the world. And in destroying the markets they have gone so far as to destroy completely the system of money, making it necessary to develop a new monetary system.

What we have to realize is this: Every kind of human arrangement is connected in some way or other with money payments. And, therefore if you destroy the monetary system of a country or of the whole world, you are destroying much more than simply one aspect.

When you destroy the monetary system, you are destroying in some regards the basis of all interhuman relations. If one talks of money, one talks about a field in which governments were doing the very worst thing which could be done, destroying the market, destroying human cooperation, destroying all peaceful relations between men.

There is no sense in which an idea can exist only "in the mind." To come to understand and consider any idea is the outcome of actions such as learning and thinking, which require the employment of a substrate called the physical person. And to bring a given idea to mind from storage is also an action with specific costs. Thinking of philosophy means that one is unable to also play football, at least not well. There is a choice and act involved in considering any given concept as opposed to any other, or to engaging in some other less abstract activity altogether. The mind does not exist without the substrate of body/brain. Nor is it reducible to such substrate. Consciousness is an emergent layer of complexity that has evolved out of, and along with, biological structures. Those are scarce resources, which when used in one way cannot also be used in another incompatible way.

On the other hand, no idea exists outside the mind either. Ideas only register within active human understandings within each person. The external markers for ideas, such as books, or instantiations of ideas in the form of physical structures and systems, are, without the ongoing individual human activities of deriving and imputing meaning to them, merely so many rearranged atoms with no significance. Significance comes about when living people relate to them as being meaningful. Just as the mind is emergent from and with the biological layer, ideas and meanings are emergent from and with the mind layer.

Picture a cruise liner or your home—when an invited guest, for whatever reason, becomes uninvited and asked to leave, if they refuse - they then become a trespasser. Removing them in the gentlest manner possible is the evictionist position. 

On a boat, be it stowaway, or uninvited guest, that means waiting to the next port. Throwing them overboard right then and there would be the Pro-Choice position. Forcing the property owner to take the stowaway the entire trip (9 months), is the Pro-Life position. The eminently reasonable and common sense position is to remove them at the next port of call.

Clarifying even further.. a cruise liner is on the trip for 9 months before it comes to a berth (pun intended). "Ports of call" are short stops on the way. Stowaway, invited guest now uninvited, whatever.. gentlest means possible.

The Tender ("In some ports the ship has to drop anchor some distance from shore. Tenders are covered boats that carry passengers to shore") is the medical/technological aspect. They are involved in ferrying the person(/fetus) to safety. The risk involved in whether they make it or not (viable) depends on the technology etc. and obviously thus time.

Of this still under-appreciated classic, Murray Rothbard writes:

"The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943), who wrote this magnificent little book called The State, put the case brilliantly."

In essence, he said, there are only two ways for men to acquire wealth. The first method is by producing a good or a service and voluntarily exchanging that good for the product of somebody else. This is the method of exchange, the method of the free market; it’s creative and expands production; it is not a zero-sum game because production expands and both parties to the exchange benefit. Oppenheimer called this method the "economic means" for the acquisition of wealth.

The second method is seizing another person’s property without his consent, i.e., by robbery, exploitation, looting. When you seize someone’s prop­erty without his consent, then you are benefiting at his expense, at the expense of the producer; here is truly a zero-sum "game"--not much of a "game," by the way, from the point of view of the victim. Instead of expanding production, this method of robbery clearly hobbles and restricts production. So in addition to being immoral while peaceful exchange is moral, the method of robbery hobbles production because it is parasitic upon the effort of the producers.

With brilliant astuteness, Oppenheimer called this method of obtaining wealth "the political means." And then he went on to define the state, or government, as "the organization of the political means," i.e., the regularization, legiti­mation, and permanent establishment of the political means for the acquisition of wealth.