The ground on which economics stands is property.  Without property, there is no direction to human action, no calculation, no responsibility.  Man isn’t an animal driven only by appetite.  He thinks, evaluates, chooses—and then acts to remove a felt uneasiness.  This is what marks him as a person rather than a mechanism.  He’s free in the sense that he can choose among alternatives.  He isn’t free from reality.  He can’t suspend the laws of nature.  Freedom is choice, not omnipotence.

Utopians refuse this truth.  They want a world where consequences can be avoided, where choices bear no cost, where wishes outrun reality.  The economist becomes the great offender because he reminds them that scarcity exists, tradeoffs exist, reality exists.  He tells them their paradise can’t be engineered, so they brand economics “dismal.” What they resent isn’t gloom—it’s restraint.  They desire a rebellion against civilization itself, because civilization rests on property, exchange, and limits.

Freedom doesn’t mean life without causality.  It means acting within causality.  Each decision happens inside a world of limits—resources are finite, time is scarce, knowledge is imperfect.  Power is the attempt to command other men instead of cooperating with them.  In healthy societies, men differ, but no one stands above the law of property.  In diseased societies, some attempt to live by decree, pretending that ownership flows from authority rather than effort.

Statistics become the refuge of the planner.  He refuses to deal with cause and effect—with real human choices—he hides behind numbers.  Statistics are always historical.  They merely describe what happened.  They never tell us what must happen.  Yet new edicts are written from charts and spreadsheets, and when their plans collapse, they tinker with variables as if human beings were lab rats.  They dream of isolating “social factors” like a chemist isolates elements, forgetting that human action can’t be experimented on.  To believe social outcomes can be engineered this way is as ridiculous as believing dictators’ mustaches caused their crimes.

The destiny of civilization hangs on recognizing the true foundation of economics.  Ignore property and society sinks into chaos—not immediately, but inevitably.  Attempts to bypass natural law only create deeper suffering.  Empiricism, detached from reason, becomes a tool of tyranny.  The denial of cause and effect doesn’t abolish it—it only blinds the denier.

We live inside a universe governed by laws, and those laws do not bend for ambition or ideology.  The utopian insists that reality accommodate his fantasies.  The economist insists that we accommodate reality.  One path destroys.  The other preserves life, order, and freedom.

References

Ludwig von Mises; The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

Ludwig von Mises; Epistemological Problems of Economics