 And now it's my pleasure to introduce our mystery speaker for this evening. Hans Hermann Hoppe is a leading Austrian school economist and libertarian philosopher. By the way, he will not be here in person. He'll be here via Zoom. So it's still Hans. Whether he's in the flush or he's digitized. I mean, we could have a 3D digitized version of him right here. He's professor emeritus of economics at UNLV, distinguished senior fellow at the Mises Institute, founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society and former editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. He's married to economist Dr. Gulchen Emery Hoppe and resides with his wife in Istanbul. Professor Hoppe attended University of Sarlands in Germany, the Gerte University, and the University of Michigan for studies in philosophy, sociology, history and economics. He earned his PhD and his habilitation, which is a weird European degree, in sociology and economics from Gerte University. He taught at several German universities as well as at the Johns Hopkins University of Bologna Center for Science International Studies in Italy. I think he made that up. In 1986, he moved from Germany to the United States to study under Murray Rothbard. He remained a close associate of Rothbard's until the latter's death in 1995. In addition to three German language books, Professor Hoppe is the author of A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Economic Science and the Austrian Method, Democracy the God that Failed, and boy did it. The Great Fiction, Property, Economy, Society and the Politics of Decline, and the Short History of Man, Progress and Decline, as well as numerous articles on philosophy, economics and social sciences in both popular and peer-reviewed journals. Professor Hoppe will speak to us this evening on Reflections on Method on the Proper Study of Man. All right, thank you. I am speaking tonight to you from my emotional home in Austria, to you guys at my intellectual home in Auburn. The topic of my speech that I arranged with my old buddy, Joseph Alano, is Reflections on Method on the Proper Study of Man. The whole manuscript is rather lengthy and I produced a very much shortened version which might still strike you as rather long. The full version you will see most likely sometime in October. But let me start. We can apply the same methods used for the study of stones, plants and animals, also for the study of men. We consider and treat men as a physical object like a stone that can be measured in terms of weight, height, volume, mass, density, temperature, shape and so on. And that is located and moving around in time and space. As well, like plants, man is an organism with a metabolism. He grows, lives, reproduces and dies. And like animals, men is a self-propelling body equipped with sensory organs and in search of food and sex. There's nothing wrong with such naturalism because just as stones, plants and animals, men is indeed a part of nature and as such shares some commonalities with all other parts. In fact, as in particular the success of physiology and medicine demonstrates, the study of men as a natural, nature-given object is not only possible but of eminent practical importance. But the naturalistic account of men must fail to capture the essence of men, what makes men unique and distinguishes him from all other things, from stones, plants and animals. Indeed, any such description would fail in the same way as a description of a painting or a piece of music in terms of physics, chemistry and so on would fail to capture the essence of the painting as a painting and the music as music. Still, especially among natural scientists, as a show of their self-assured role as no-nonsense scientists, the view is quite prominent that such a reduction of men to nothing but nature is both possible and desirable, that everything there can or eventually will be known about men is the result of the same methods as applied also to stones, plants and animals. We may not be all that successful in this endeavor at the moment, but that is the only way to go. However popular, it is not difficult to discover the fundamental error in this view. The error becomes apparent once we reflect on what it is that we are currently doing, I as a speaker or writer and you as a listener or reader and what any natural scientist must do as well whenever presenting his results of his research. The answer, we speak to each other in meaningful words and sentences. We communicate with other people with the intention or with the purpose and with the goal of achieving some sort of coordination or cooperation with other people and we may succeed or fail in this endeavor. To be sure, we can give a naturalistic account of some aspects of the phenomena of communication in the same way as we can give a naturalistic account of a painting or a piece of music. There are vocal chords, sounds, scribbles on paper, brain activities, bodily movements and so on involved. But there is nothing to be found in any such naturalistic account that would allow us to conclude that these movements, sounds, scribbles, sounds, nerves and so forth have any meaning or purpose and are used by a speaker or writer as means of communication whether successfully or not with some other people. In nature and in natural evolution, there is nothing purposeful, meaningful, true, false, successful or unsuccessful. Nature has no purpose. Nature and the laws of nature are what they are and they work their way they do unchangingly and unfailingly. Deaths and dying are not a refutation of some natural law. They are just as much natural events as life and living. As well, plants and animals do not intend to survive and help reproduce their species. They simply do or they don't. The survival and the extinction of some plant or animal species are both natural events to be explained in naturalistic terms. Survival is not the result of some successful planning nor does extinction indicate some faulty planning. In all of nature, there is no planning, things simply happen. Only we, men, have purposes in dealing with nature, including other men. Only we transform nature-given materials purposefully into artifacts and use such artifacts as means for the attainment of further purposes. Only we use words and non-verbal symbols as means, hence meaningful sounds or signs to affect some definite response from or in other persons. And only of man-made materials and artifacts then cannot be said to be right or wrong, successful or failing given a human purpose. And only of man-made words and sentences as means for the purpose of interpersonal communication can it be said to be meaningful and understood or not successful or not and true, false or indeterminate. Accordingly, every natural scientist was a biologist, physiologist, chemist, geneticist, neurologist who claims that men can be reduced to nothing but nature becomes entangled in a contradiction. With this, we have already reached several important philosophical insights. For one, with language, we have identified the necessary starting point of all philosophizing. We cannot philosophize without being able to speak and write and to listen and read. Indeed, this cannot be denied at pain of contradiction because the denial itself would have to come in the form of words and sentences. Hence, we have reached here a first insight about men to be considered a priori true. Moreover, language serves the purpose of interpersonal coordination and cooperation. And for that purpose, it must be a common and public language. And in fact, it is learned by little people, babies who first cannot act and speak at all, in cooperation and interaction with grown-up people. Indeed, men develops into a self-conscious individual a persona only in cooperation with other persons through a process of socialization. Further, we recognize that instead of a pen-naturalistic methodology, we have to accept a dualism that must be adopted from the outset in the study of men. A methodological dualism. While all methods applicable to stones, plants and animals are also applicable to men, not all methods applicable to men are also applicable to stones, plants and animals. We can speak in common words with other persons to coordinate our conduct. We know why we do or say what we are doing or saying and we know or know how to find out why other people say and do what they are. As well, we know or know how to find out whether or not we have understood or come to an agreement with others. And whatever we do or say is ascribed or imputed to whoever did or said it, and this person is then held to be accountable and responsible for what he did or said. None of this is true of stones, plants or animals, notwithstanding some protestations from certain animal friends. We can speak to stones, plants or animals as much and as long as we want, of course, but we cannot communicate with them. Moreover, as possibly the most important insight implied in what I have said so far in the fact that philosophizing must begin with speaking in a common language, the relationship between speaking or language and acting and action is in need of further explication. All speaking and communicating is an action, but not all action is communicating. As all action, communication is a motivated purposeful activity. It aims at an anticipated goal. It expresses as all actions an actor's value judgment and reveals his preference. The actor values the goal aimed at and he prefers to bring about the goal rather than another one. Like any other activity, then speaking and communicating also involves opportunity costs. A person can also use his body time for other things except talking, writing, listening or reading, but not all action is communication. In fact, as just mentioned, communicating with other persons has opportunity costs. Matters are different from person to person, of course, but typically far more time is spent in our daily activities doing things silently, doing things with things with non-persons rather than talking. Indeed, even the purpose of communicative actions of our words directed at others is often not to have some sort of conversation with someone else, but instead to give or receive practical instructions on how to do certain things quietly and in silence in one's material surroundings. We shall call silent acts performed to bring about some specific end within the material world, instrumental actions in contrast to communicative actions. Instrumental actions are the foundation of our entire material civilization. Every house, street, car and factory, every hammer, nail and brick and so on and so on is a result of successful instrumental action, of engineering, if you will. Indeed, today there is hardly any nature left. Practically everything material around us is some purposefully constructed and manufactured artifice, material culture rather than raw nature. An instrumental action is also the basis of all natural sciences, from logic to geometry, arithmetic, physics, chemistry, biology, physiology and medicine find their origin in everyday life. In learning how to follow simple or complex demands, children come to learn the meaning of and and or, of one, of some and all. That is of logical junctures, sometimes also called connectives and quantaurs. And hence the elementary rules of conclusive reasoning. Craftsmen, traders, engineers, technicians, tinkerers, healers, planters, breeders in order to reach their various instrumental goals have learned how to somehow measure space and time, duration, how to weigh, how to count, how to shape, how to distinguish, how to mix, combine or separate various materials, whether inanimate or animate. And how to compare sizes, time spans, weights, volumes, numbers, forms and shapes. Science is nothing but the outgrowth of and builds on top of the achievements accomplished by craftsmen and artists in the widest sense of this term in everyday life. The only yet highly important addition science brings is that all measuring instruments, such as yardsticks or clocks for lengths and time, for instance, are standardized. That is, they are constructed and operated according to the same norm or recipe. And they deliver because of this data that are independently of any particular actor trans or intersubjectively true or valid data. Every actor confronted with the same task or problem is thus supposed to come to the same measurement results, except of course for some possible malfunctioning of the measuring instrument. Contrary to the image that many scientists have of their own activity and its importance then, engineering, technology and manufacturing are not applied sciences and hence of some lower rank and dignity than the pure sciences. Matters are exactly the other way around. What comes methodologically first and what makes science as we know it possible and provides its ultimate foundation is human construction and engineering. There would be no science and no scientific data as we know them without measuring rods, clocks, planes, rectangles, scales, counters, lenses, microscopes, telescopes, x-rays and ultrasound machines and on and on. So-called natural laws then do not really concern raw nature and processes in raw nature. Rather, natural laws are general practical or technical rules or recipes for arranging some initial conditions within the material world, some specified experimental arrangement or some specific constellation and operation of standardized measuring instruments or technical devices, which then left alone and by itself without any further intervention will always lead to one and the same desired result. The generality and the universality of such laws then is not a hypothetical one or in need of any inductive support as is commonly held. Rather, it is implied in the very fact that all procedures and all applicable objects or settings for such procedures are described in impersonal, trans or intersubjective terms so as to be reproducible at will by anyone. While instrumental actions that provide the basis of our entire material culture as well as of all natural sciences are silent actions, an instrumental success or failure can also be determined in silence by an actor independently of what other people say or do alone and for himself such actions as noted already before are typically learned in communication and cooperation with other persons and are even if performed in silence intelligible events that can be described in terms of some public language. Turning our attention at last now to communicative action, the subject matter of the so-called social sciences, a few general remarks should be stated from the outset. Communicative action is the person's use of meaningful words, sentences or symbols of a common public language directed at some other persons with the purpose of affecting or changing their conduct and or their reality perception in some desired direction. While the meaning of change in conduct requires no further explanation here, the intimately related notion of a change in reality perception deserves some more attention. In learning a native language in what is called Wittgensteinian language games, where in the correct and common use of words and sentences is trained and exercised by the successful performance of certain actions and the exercise of actions in turn is corrected by the use of certain words, people acquire some largely if not entirely common reality perception. We all, even small children, safely and reliable distinguish between stones, plants and animals called natural or nature-given objects. As well, we can safely and reliable distinguish between natural things on the one hand and instruments and artifices on the other. All instruments and more generally all means such as a hammer, a spoon, a car, a cigarette, a pencil and so on and so on are real things and part of our common reality. But they are not raw nature and they can be recognized and identified as a hammer, a spoon and so on. Only in so far as we men can assign a human purpose to them. Without subjective human purposes, no hammer, spoon and so on could exist or rather no objective thing could ever be identified as a hammer or a spoon. Most importantly however, in acquiring a language and some common world perception we also get to know about the existence of social facts and institutions. That is, facts and institutions concerning the relations between men and men rather than between men and nature. The most fundamental social institution of course being a common language itself as a means of communicating and coordinating one's actions with those of other persons. Yet along with language providing the basis for the creation of all other social facts and institutions, we also learn about facts and institutions such as private property, commodities, exchange, sales, money, prices, contracts, promises, greetings, praise and blame, marriage, divorce, parenthood, family, relatives, firms, clubs, associations, employers and employees, superiors and subordinates, appointments and dismissals and on and on and on. All of these facts and institutions also have some expression or trace in the material world just as meaning words. Meaning words have some material physical carrier aspect. But just as for meaningful words, none of these facts and institutions are part of reality in the same way as our raw nature or material instruments part of reality. Rather, the meaning of words as a meaning of words all these relationships concern, define, constitute or regulate interpersonal relationships and they would all disappear from reality if there were no community of communicating and cooperating men. More precisely then, we can determine language now as a means of talking to other persons in order to coordinate our actions within a common reality that is a reality perceived in largely if not entirely identical terms made up of raw nature, of manufactured things and instruments as well as of social facts and institutions. Most importantly, the institution of property that is of determining mind and design. Now, looking more closely at communicative actions, we immediately notice that interpersonal communication can have a great variety of purposes and a correspondingly great variety of success and of failure. My own purpose here in this endeavor, for instance, is to present an intelligible sequence of arguments that can in principle be followed, rethought and recapitulated independently by everyone so as to bring about a common reality perception regarding a certain subject matter here, the subject of men. Yet time is scarce and every action has its opportunity cost and so most human communication actually serves other purposes than arguing for the truths of some proposition. We use words or meaningful signs to call on someone or draw attention to something. We use words to command, to warn, to ask, to explain, to greet, to apologize, to promise, to offer, to chat, to tell a story or a joke and for countless other purposes. Accordingly, the success or failure of a communicative action aimed at coordination can take many forms and yet in any case it depends on a two-fold accomplishment. The understanding of the speech propositional content and the acceptance of its purpose and models of proposing it. Coordination is successful if I ask you to bring me a banana and you bring me one or if I greet you and you greet me back. It is unsuccessful if you don't know the meaning of banana or bring or the social institution of greeting and you show me a teddy bear instead or you respond to my request or my greeting by saying, for instance, I'm 60 years old indicating that you haven't understood the entire purpose of my speech act. Likewise, coordination is unsuccessful if you understand what I say but you reject my proposal and reply, for instance, I don't take orders from you or I have no time or you simply walk away from me. Moreover and importantly, unsuccessful coordination or discoordination can take two possible forms or outcomes. Simple disappointment or serious conflict. After you disappointingly walked away from my request or did not return my greeting and my speech act has failed, we both go about our daily business as before. I with the means under my control and you with the means under your control. That is a case of disappointment. A conflict results if instead of you bringing me a banana while returning my greetings, which would be successful communication or walking away from me, which is a disappointing communication, you respond, for example, by taking a book against my protestations out of my hand or pulling my hair. In this case, we clash because we want to employ the very same scarce means, the book or the hair for incompatible purposes. Because of the scarcity of physical means, only one purpose can be realized and fulfilled. Otherwise, we must clash. The crucial question regarding communicative actions is and has seemingly been forever. However, whether or not there can be social laws in the same sense of laws as we can speak of natural laws. That is to say, can we formulate rules or recipes of talking or writing that if applied under identical conditions, that is conditions expressed in impersonal or trans subjective terms so as to be reproducible or replicable by other people, will always bring about the same response in the addressing. Based on what has already been explained, my answer to this question cannot be in any doubt. Even if many so-called social scientists believe in such laws and are diligently in search for them, the entire endeavor is misconceived and doomed to failure from the outset. And the fundamental reason for the impossibility of any social laws has already been identified. It is the fact that humans can mutually understand or understand each other and based on such an understanding recognize each other and their respective actions as unique and different from each and every actor. Accordingly, it is impossible for the social scientist to ever do what the natural scientist always quasi-naturally does. He, the natural scientist, describes the if clause of his propositions in naturalistic or objective terms in terms of some experimental arrangement of various material objects or their measurement by some standardized measuring instruments and the same with the propositions then clause. This clause then clause 2 is described in terms of naturalistic vocabulary. Even if the social scientist manages to arrange identical external conditions of natural and artificial objects as well as other people surrounding some given actor and even if all naturalistic characteristics of different actors such as weight, height, age and so forth are controlled or held constant however different persons, Peter or Paul still remain recognizably different study objects and hence no general and generalizable if clause exists. The reason being that the persons each and every action is fundamentally and ultimately driven by his personal value judgments by the subjective value attached by an actor to his various potential goals and more specifically his subjective preference or rank order of and among such time wise competing or rival anticipated goals at any given point in time. And that we do not and never will possess an instrument satisfy the scientific measurement requirement of trans subjectivity mentioned before that would allow us to scientifically measure and compare the values and preference orders of different persons. Values and preferences are like purposes not part of the objective external world and there are no such things as units of value or utility or of degrees of preference thus unable to assure the identity or the sameness of some initial conditions that is of the if clause for different actors and no general social law is possible. So the prediction of human actions is definitely not a science as typically conceived but as our everyday experiences confirm over and over again it is also not some haphazard guesswork. It is if you will entrepreneurship in the widest sense of this term. Throughout our entire life we try to successfully adjust to our surroundings and the changes in our surroundings made up of raw material men made materials bread tamed and trained plants and animals and of other people. As far as instrumental actions are concerned we are not infallible of hope but we achieve a relatively high degree of certainty and technical improvements and innovations are predictably swiftly imitated and adopted also by other people. As far as communicative actions are concerned however our predictions concern the response of other people capable of learning and others always more speculative and subject to some higher degree of uncertainty. Yet we have and know of a method how to reduce this uncertainty. All responses are the responses to be ascribed to some particular actors and we are capable in principle to understand, to understand each and every person and why and for what reason and to what purpose he does what he actually does or has done in the past. The premier method of verstehen as indicated before is the acquisition of a common language. It is obviously more difficult to understand and predict the actions of our fellow men if we do not share the same language than if we do. To share a language is to see the world in roughly similar terms and this significantly helps in making sense of the conduct of other people. This instrument is by no means perfect. Some people are more successful in the understanding of others and can make and discern more and finer distinctions whether in and of words or of actions than can other people. And the social institution of a common language itself is not rigidly given but can undergo considerable even if typically slow and largely marginal changes in the course of time. But no one can do entirely without language and even the dullest of person is capable of some basic understanding of others. As well, the repeated understanding or a versteende observation of and cooperation and communication with some particular person helps us to form the concept of a person's character or personality type besides the most obvious type of male and female that of the introvert or the extrovert, the clumsy or the clever, the timid or the daring, the dull and lazy or the curious and ambitious, the hedonist or the acquisitive, the opportunist or the principal type and so on. These and other personality types are not always razor sharply distinguished from each other and the character of a person can and may change over time. But for the time being, for the short and intermediate run that may well last forever in some cases, the understanding of another person's character adds some degree of temporary constancy and confidence to our deliberations because it somewhat delineates a person's likely range of conduct and thus helps us better predict his future actions. Along with the acquisition of a common language, as the second most important social institution comes our understanding of property. Even as little children, we learn to distinguish between mine and dine, between things that belong to me or to my parents and things that belong to others. No society can do without this institution unless reverting to some animalistic struggle for survival. The social institution of several or private property too, as in the case of language, is not fixed once and for all but changeable in subject to potential future changes. And above all else, it is disputes concerning property. Is this mine or yours and may or may I not do this with such and such? These things are at the bottom of all conflicts. But in any case, the social institution of property is, if you will, a conservative institution that typically undergoes only slow, gradual or incremental changes except for the rare event of some violent revolution. To know what quantity and quality of things a given person can call his own, that is his property then, and what other members of the surrounding speech community are calling theirs, is of significant help in predicting his future actions because a person's quantity and quality of property exercises some rather strict constraints on his range of possible future actions. Last but not least, people typically spend a considerable amount of time performing functions or playing roles learned along with a multitude of other social institutions. We act in the role of parents, of husbands and wives, children, uncles and aunts, policemen, teachers, students, doctors, waiters, salesmen, businessmen, brokers, bankers, members of Chessow football clubs, priests, pulps, president, kings, and so on and so on. None of these roles or functions are rigidly defined. Different roles can be assumed by one and the same person at different times and some roles can be assumed simultaneously. Some institutions' roles and functions may become obsolete. New roles and functions can be established and, of course, specific people can sometimes fall out of their role and fail in the performance of their assumed function. Yet none of this changes the basic fact that the predictability of another person's future action is greatly enhanced once the current roles and functions played and exercised by this person are known. Invariably, there remains an element of uncertainty and every role and function leaves some room for personal interpretation, but every role and function also entails some general rules, routines and standards and the prediction of the conduct of people identified as exercising certain roles or functions is often a little more than a matter of routine. Still, even the most enlightening results that the empirical social sciences have brought to light or will ever do so in the future should never be considered laws, whether of the deterministic or the probabilistic kind. They are and they can never be anything, but insights regarding unique historical events, correlations, developments, trends, tendencies or patterns. But then, apart from all verstehen-based empirical social research concerning history and historical events or developments, we, everyday men as well as professional social scientists have one additional method available for making sense of the social world. Indeed, a method that can yield knowledge of even greater certainty than that associated with or attributed to any natural law without claiming infallibility, of course. I briefly mentioned the topic of Begreifen before of conceptual analysis and let me add to this here. We do not know and never will know why nature works the way it does. It just does. Yet we know more about men than about any natural thing. We know that men does what he does for a reason and with a purpose, that is with some anticipated future state of affairs in mind. We know that whatever men qua entrepreneur does, he does so with means sought to be suitable to reach some ends. And we know all of this with apodictic certainty or a priori in so far as we cannot possibly dispute such knowledge without thereby actually affirming its truth. In that its denial is itself a purposeful goal directed action. And all the while we can never scientifically predict the specific content of our own or our fellow men's future actions that our specific choices of ends and means in some continuously changing environment then, as I just demonstrated, based on our aprioristic knowledge concerning the formal structure of all of human action, we can deduce an impressive number of equally aprioristic and universally valid conclusions. These conclusions are either directly implied in the concept of action or else they are conclusions reached indirectly in conjunction with some explicitly stated initial empirical and empirically verifiable conditions or premises so as to allow us to also make some apodictic non-foreverifiable predictions of central importance concerning the social world, provided only that these initial conditions are indeed met and fulfilled. I shall present merely a few examples of such propositions here to give you a flavor of the epistemological status as well as their practical importance. In the course of the next week, you will learn many more of these types of propositions. We do not know all potential human goals, but we do know for certain that whatever they may be, they are supposed to bring about an improvement in an actor's well-being. We do not know all potential means employed by men in his activities, but we do know for certain that whatever is used as a means by an actor derives its value as a good for him from the value attached by the actor to the very end or goal that it is supposed to help bring about. Moreover, while we cannot know or scientifically predict what thing or entity may ever be used as a means or a good by men, we know for sure that for everything ever considered a good by an actor, it holds that more of such a good is preferred by him over less. As well, we know for sure that as more and more units of some given good are added to our supply, the less is the value attached to a unit of such good, as this can only be employed for the satisfaction of increasingly lower-ranked or less urgent ends or needs. This is the law of diminishing marginal utility. Further, while we cannot safely predict an actor's future locations, where will he be and when, we can safely predict that he can never be at two places at the same time and likewise that he can never simultaneously perform two contrary or contradictory actions, such as going up and down the some stairs or ladder at the same time. Incidentally, note that perperience would have to qualify these propositions as unscientific because they are apparently non-falsifiable and yet the alibi principles, you cannot be at two places at the same time and tales that is entailed in the first proposition I just gave you, for instance, constitutes an indispensable tool in practically every criminal investigation as every reader or viewer of detective stories knows and no one ever thought of questioning or abandoning it or taking it as something that is falsifiable. We cannot predict scientifically what sorts of goods or products men will ever produce and what sorts of goods or products he may ever consume, but we know for sure that there can be no consumption without prior production and we can also be certain that whatever is consumed today cannot be consumed again tomorrow. We cannot make safe and certain predictions concerning where, when and what sorts of exchanges, be it of material goods or immaterial ones such as words or gestures, for instance, are to take place between various people. But we do know for sure that for any voluntary exchange to take place, it must hold that both parties to the exchange expect to be made better off by the exchange, that they evaluate the goods to be exchanged as of unequal value and that they have an opposite preference order regarding them. As well, we know with certainty that any non-voluntary exchange, whatever it may concern, makes one party better off at the expense of making the other party worse off. As well, from the outset of human history, we cannot know what sort of thing is to become a money that is a common medium of exchange. How long it is to maintain its status as money or what other things might replace it at money in the future. But for any society exceeding the size of a single household and with a bare minimum of the division of labor, we can, based on our a prioristic knowledge concerning the universal structure of action, reduce and safely predict the emergence of some common medium of exchange. Because any direct exchange of goods or services requires a double coincidence of once. I must want what you have and you must want what I have. Yet this obstacle and limitation of direct exchange can be overcome and the conditions for an actor can be improved by means of indirect exchange. A person who cannot attain what he wants in direct exchange can increase his chances of getting what he ultimately wants if he succeeds in first acquiring a more marketable good than his own in exchange to be then more easily saleable for the ultimate thing he wants. This practice further increases the marketability of the very good in question and stimulates other to follow this example. Thus step by step via rationally motivated imitation a common medium of exchange is to emerge, which is called a money as the most easily saleable and most widely accepted good such clearly to be distinguished in its function from both producer and consumer goods. With money come money prices, price comparisons and economic calculation. There is nothing to be known with certainty about future money prices paid for this or that about future price comparisons or about future business calculations. But again, there are some things that we do know for certain. For instance, if the quantity of money is increased the purchasing power per money unit is reduced below what it would have been otherwise. An increase in the quantity of money cannot increase overall social wealth as an increase in producers and consumer goods would and could but only lead to a redistribution of wealth to the advantage of the money producers. Economic calculation requires that you can compare the input of production with the output of production to determine whether or not less valuable means were transformed into more valuable means as intended. For such a comparison to be possible there must be money prices for all factors of production as well as for all final goods. Under old style socialism with all means of production owned and controlled by one central committee no input factor prices exist and hence economic calculation under socialism is impossible. We can also know for sure via the law of marginal utility the price of some good is increased and everything else is assumed to remain constant this is a so-called Seteris Paribus assumption then either the same quantity or less will be bought and if the price is decreased or for decreased then either the same quantity or more will be bought and we know just as surely that price is fixed above market prices such as minimum wages for instance will lead to some unsalable surpluses that is to forced unemployment whereas prices fixed below market clearing prices such as rent ceilings will lead to shortages to persistent shortages of rental housing and we know as well with certainty that if any of these predictions happens to fail in some particular case this would not be because of an error in our logically deduced conclusion but because the Seteris Paribus assumption had not been met in the particular case under consideration and we would have to look for some significant changes in an actor's empirical circumstances in order to account for the observed anomaly. Indeed as demonstrated already most strikingly the example of the alibi principle no experience or so-called empirical evidence can ever falsify beat or trump praxeology and logic but praxeology and praxeological reasoning can reveal that there is something wrong about some alleged experience or evidence. I could go on and on with further examples of apodic propositions that is of propositions that can be begriffen conceptually grasped but I'm quite confident that the short list of examples that I have provided should suffice to demonstrate that they have some distinctly different epistemological status than what is commonly understood as empirically falsifiable hypothesis and that the popular Popperian view presented by Karl Popper first in his logistic devotion in 1934 of scientific progress as proceeding step by step through the successive falsification of empirical and empirically testable hypotheses gradually into the light is entirely misconceived. Looking from a methodological point of view the current state of affairs in the social sciences including economics then, and that brings me to the end two major and interrelated confusions can readily can be readily diagnosed. Both ultimately rooted in the typically unquestioning acceptance of some variant of empiricist philosophy amongst most practicing social and nearly all practicing natural scientists. The first confusion concerns the widespread belief that things that can be accomplished in the social sciences that things can be accomplished in the social sciences that simply cannot be accomplished. Contrary to the belief of many social researchers there are no empirical laws verified, confirmed or not yet falsified by empirical data to be found and discovered within the realm of human action and interaction. Here more humility is in order. Once research may still be interesting and relevant but it is not what it claims to be it has nothing to do with laws and the second confusion widespread in particular among economists has just been addressed. It is the inability or unwillingness of recognizing the categorical epistemological difference between apodictic or incantian terms synthetic a priori propositions on the one hand and empirical or a posteriori propositions on the other hand. Empiricists who only recognize and only know of empirical laws apart from mathematics they are increasingly often busy subjecting propositions that are deductively derived from some a priori true starting point to empirical tests that is they test the untestable and they try to falsify the non-falsifiable and whatever insight may happen to spring from such misguided endeavors it is always overshadowed by the intellectual damage done and the confusion spread by the blatant category mistake undergirding and committed by people who are engaged in this type of research. With this I end and you realize the Bezos University is not kind some sort of kindergarten university we take truth and reasoning seriously. Thank you very much.