Ȃȁ Partʺ: EconomicsRecognizing the subjective aspects of cost, we gain insights into the
dubiousness of expecting prices to correspond to costs in any precise way.
Costs represent values of forgone alternatives: costs are intimately linked
with acts of choice.
Cost curves are no more objectively given to business firms than are
demand curves for their products. A large part of the task of entrepreneurs
and managers is to learn what the cost (and demand) curves are and to
press the cost curves down, so to speak, through inspired innovations in
technology, organization, purchasing, and marketing. Outsiders are in a
poor position to second-guess their decisions.
Subjectivists appreciate the role of expectations. Well before the
vogue of “rational expectations” in macroeconomics, Ludwig von Mises
(ȀȈȄȂ/ȀȈȇȀ, pp.ȃȄȈ–ȃȅǿ) recognized that an inflationary policy could not
go on indefinitely giving real “stimulus” to an economy; people would
catch on to what was happening, and the supposed stimulus would dis-
sipate itself in price increases. Mises also argued (ȀȈȃȈ/ȀȈȅȂ, p.Ȅȇȅ) that
disorders such as the corn-hog cycle would be self-corrective. Unless the
government protected farmers from the consequences of unperceptive or
unintelligent behavior, farmers would learn about the cycle, if it did in fact
occur; and by anticipating it would forestall it. (Ļose who did not learn
would incur losses and be eliminated from the market.)
Much expressed nowadays are notions such as “the market’s” expecta-
tion of some future magnitude—the dollar-mark exchange rate in three
months, or whatever. Subjectivists are skeptical. Ļey understand that
“the market” does not form expectations or change light bulbs (“How
many right-wing economists does it take to change a light bulb?”) or do
anything else.Peopledo, people acting and interacting on markets. Since
expectations are formed by people, they are understandably loose, diverse,
and changeable.
All this intertwines with the inherent unpredictability of future human
affairs. It is not even possible to make an exhaustive list of all possible out-
comes of some decision, let alone attach probability scores to outcomes
(ShackleȀȈȆȁ, esp. p.ȁȁ). Policymakers should take this point to heart
and restrain their optimism about being able to control events.
Ļis is not to deny that some predictions can be made with warranted
confidence, notably the if-this-then-that predictions of economic theory
and of science in general. Foretelling the future is quite another matter.
Economists, like other people, have only limited time and energy. It is
reasonable for each one to stick to work exploiting his own comparative