J2 - A Choice Is Made

I’ve chosen Market Environmentalism as the focus of my project. I feel like it offers the neatest path to a solid destination while also providing many opportunities for branching off and exploring other ideas. Also, while this topic isn’t as useful for my career as the Intellectual Property topic, it’s not totally irrelevant; I’m sure I can find a way to use the knowledge I gain through this project to apply to legal matters in the future. Half of this project can be fueled by knowledge that I already have, but it will also require plenty of information that I’ll need to get. This is optimal, I think, because it will allow me to interpret and analyze the information I gain in light of what I already know. If I was starting out on a completely unknown topic, such as the use of supercomputers to create new protein structures that attack cancer cells, I wouldn’t be able to evaluate the information I acquired as well.

A great portion of my project will focus on general economic principles, I think, because without them my audience will not fully understand the ideas I’m trying to convey or the position I’m advocating for. One thing I’m always interested in is definitions and etymology. Every word actually represents a concept, and oftentimes there is much more to the concept than the word can fully convey. We use words without fully appreciating them, and then their full meanings are lost, little by little. This leads a) to a lack of diversity in language, and b) misconceptualizations. The word “passion,” for example, means in colloquial language “strong emotion,” but actually traces itself back to the crucifixion of Christ, and originally meant “suffering.” It was Hobbes who gave “passion” its current meaning, when he used the word to describe “the inner motions” of man in “the Deliberation.” But the word “compassion,” suffering caused by the suffering of others, still refers to the older meaning. Providing a proper understanding of important concepts, therefore, will be one of the main goals of my project.

I might as well begin this practice of elaborating on seemingly straightforward concepts now, by briefly commenting on the idea of “choice.” And I think this is appropriate because Mises has actually characterized economics as a “general theory of human choice.” 

Economics is the study of human action (purposeful behavior) under conditions of scarcity. “Action means the employment of means for the attainment of ends.” But, because we live in a world of scarcity, not all of our ends can be attained. There’s simply not enough resources to satisfy all of our desires. When we employ our scarce means for the attainment of one end, we cannot also employ them for the attainment of a different end. Every action, therefore, involves a choice. We cannot accomplish all of our goals; we must necessarily choose which to pursue and which to leave unfulfilled. “Action therefore always involves both taking and renunciation.”

Embedded in the concept of choice is the concept of value. Why do we choose the ends we choose? Because we prefer them; we value them more than the other possible ends. It should be obvious how important the concept of value is to economic science. However, value is subjective, and it is immeasurable. We cannot study value without reference to the actions that make known one’s valuations. It is not value that forms the core of economic theory, but value expressed through choice. 

Every action, therefore, is a choice. And every choice is action. The two are one and the same. And this fact should make clear how important choice is to man and to society. Every purposeful thing man does is the result of a choice. “To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value.” Man must always make a choice, in everything he does. The common objection “I didn’t have a choice!” is therefore nonsensical. Man always has a choice, and it cannot be taken from him. Outside forces may influence the costs and benefits of an action, and thereby change man’s valuation of a certain action, but the choice remains his. Man’s will, therefore, is inalienable, and we can know this because every choice he faces remains his to make. 

The idea of choice is at the core of economics, then. It is the root of all change in the universe attributable to man. And it is support for the ideas of individualism and self-ownership. This one concept, underappreciated precisely because of its omnipresence, is of the utmost importance. It is the beginning of this and every other project.