Ethics

Ethics, or moral philosophy, is the study of what is right and wrong and of the standards by which conduct is judged. It matters to the Austrian School in a particular way, because Austrian economics is explicitly value-free and therefore cannot by itself recommend anything.

Why economics is value-free, and what that leaves over

Ludwig von Mises insisted that economics is a wertfrei science: it establishes what means tend to bring about what ends, and says nothing about which ends are worth pursuing. The proposition that a price ceiling produces shortages is not a recommendation; someone who wants the shortage is not refuted by it.

This is not a modest disclaimer but a load-bearing commitment, and it is why so much libertarian argument depends on a separate ethical theory rather than on economics. It also explains why economists in this tradition who agree completely about how markets work can disagree entirely about what ought to be done.

The Austrian and libertarian literature contains three distinct answers to that ethical question, and they are genuinely incompatible.

Mises: the utilitarian answer

Mises held that there is no way to demonstrate an ultimate end, so argument must appeal to ends people already have. Almost everyone wants a longer life, more goods, and peace with the neighbours. Economics shows that social cooperation under the division of labor serves those ends and that intervention frustrates them. On this account there is no need for natural rights: the case for liberty is that it works, addressed to people who want what it produces.

The obvious objection is that it makes the argument hostage to the facts. If some interference genuinely raised general welfare, a Misesian would have no ground to object. Mises accepted this and denied the antecedent.

Rothbard: the natural-law answer

Murray N. Rothbard rejected the utilitarian route as too weak to support the conclusions libertarians actually draw, and grounded rights instead in a natural-law account of what human beings are and what their flourishing requires. From self-ownership and original appropriation he derived the non-aggression principle and worked out its implications for contract, punishment and children in The Ethics of Liberty.

Rothbard's ethics is deontological: an act of aggression is wrong whatever its consequences, so no calculation of benefits can license it. The standing objection is the one made against natural law generally, that the derivation from human nature to binding obligation is never quite completed.

Hoppe: argumentation ethics

Hans-Hermann Hoppe proposed a third route, arguing that the norms of self-ownership cannot be coherently denied, because denying them is something one does in an argument, and argument already presupposes each party's exclusive control of his own body and of the scarce means he is using. Anyone arguing against self-ownership is therefore in performative contradiction.

The claim is strong and correspondingly contested, including by sympathisers. Critics ask whether the presuppositions of a conversation bind anyone once the conversation is over. See argumentation ethics.

Why the disagreement is worth preserving

It is tempting to present these as three routes to one destination. They are not. They diverge on what to say when liberty and welfare come apart, on whether rights can be traded off, and on how to argue with someone who is unmoved. A reader who leaves this article thinking the Austrian tradition has a single ethics has been misled, and will misread most of its internal arguments.

See also

• Argumentation ethics
• Non-aggression principle
• Natural law
• Utilitarianism
• The Ethics of Liberty
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

Links

• The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
• Principles of Ethics: Anthology
• Ethics at Wikipedia