 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to a very special Austrian economics research conference celebrating the 50th anniversary, as Tom said, of the first Austrian conference in North America, which occurred at South Royalton in Vermont. It's my great pleasure to introduce the Henry Hazlett Memorial Lecture, which is sponsored very generously by our donors, Shone and Bray Sadler. Our speaker, Edward Yonkins, is professor of accountancy and business at Wheeling University, executive director of the Institute of the Study of Capitalism and Morality, and the founder of the university's undergraduate major in political and economic philosophy. He is also the founding director of the school's master of business administration and master of science and accountancy programs. Dr. Yonkins earned a PhD in accountancy from the University of Mississippi. He's on the editorial boards of Reason Papers and Libertarian Papers, the advisory board of the Journal of Inran Studies, the board of trustees of the Savvy Street, and his series editor of Capitalist Thought, Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics for Lexington Books. He is the author of numerous articles in accounting and business journals, and has also published in many free market-oriented journals. He has authored or edited a dozen books, including his trilogy of books on freedom and flourishing, namely Capitalism and Commerce, Champions of a Free Society, and Flourishing and Happiness in a Free Society. Dr. Yonkins will address us today on Inran and the Austrian Economists. Please welcome Dr. Yonkins. Thank you, Joseph, for your kind introduction, and thank you, Shay, and for our saddler for your generous sponsorship in making this event possible. It's a pleasure and personal honor to be invited to deliver this Henry Haslett Memorial Lecture titled, I in Rand and the Austrian Economist at the Mises Institutes Austrian Economics Research Conference. Henry Haslett is one of my favorite writers on economics and ethics. His thoughtful, incisive, and influential writings are marked by his clarity of style and logical analysis. Now, both Henry Haslett and I in Rand could really write, as we know. Haslett's non-fiction books, Economics in One Lesson, and Foundations of Morality, along with his novel, which I really like, Time Will Run Back, complimenting I in Rand's ideas in her books such as The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, and Atlas Shrugged. In their philosophical, political, and economic views, Haslett and Rand largely agree as they make the same points in different ways with respect to the virtue of remarket as a path to prosperity and happiness. Also, they were friends in their personal lives. In addition, Henry Haslett and I had a great friend in common in a late, well-respected, and greatly loved Austrian economist Bill Peterson. I'm sure most of you are known Bill. I'm excited to be here to give this talk on Karl Manger, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard, and how their ideas, maybe complimentary, we'll see. Complimentary to the essential ideas of I in Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Perhaps I will be able to provide some, maybe a few, new insights to you. We'll see. Like my recently deceased friend, Sam Bostaff, I have great admiration for the ideas of Karl Manger. I will begin by discussing some of Manger's key ideas and comparing them with those of I in Rand. I will then repeat this process with the fundamental ideas of Mises and Rothbard. Finally, I will conclude with an overall assessment with respect to the potential compatibility of Austrian economics and Objectivism. Karl Manger, 1840 to 1921, as you all know, began the modern period of economic thought and provided a foundation for Austrian school of economics in his two books, Principles of Economics, 1871, and Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics, published in 1883. And these books, Manger, my opinion, destroyed the existing structure of economic science, including its theory and methodology. And he put it on totally new foundations. Manger was a realist who said that we could know the world through both common sense and scientific method. Manger was committed to finding exact laws of economics based on the direct analysis of concrete phenomena that could be observed and characterized with precision. He sought to find the necessary characteristics of economic phenomena and their relationships. In addition, he heralded the advantages of verbal language over mathematical language in that the former can express the essences of economic phenomena, which is certainly something that mathematical language cannot do. Manger viewed exchange as the embodiment of the essential desire and search to satisfy individual human needs. It follows that the intersection between human needs and the availability of goods capable of satisfying those needs is at the root of economic activity. Emphasizing human uncertainty, error, and the time consuming nature of economic processes, Manger was concerned with the information content of economic choices and the process of acquiring information in order to increase the well-being of economic actors. As this talk will demonstrate, I hope, Karl Manger's writings are the closest to Randian doctrines that I've ever emanated from any economist. It will follow, if that's true, that we should read and reread his great books and share them with our friends and, of course, our students. Aristotelian philosophy was at the root of Manger's framework. His biologistic language goes well with his Aristotelian foundations in his philosophy of science and economics. Manger illustrated how Aristotelian induction could be used in economics and be based on epistemology on Aristotelian induction. His Aristotelian inclinations can be observed in his desire to uncover the essence of economic phenomena. He viewed the constituent elements of economic phenomena as imminently ordered and emphasized the primacy of exactitude and universality as preferable epistemological characteristics of theory. Manger's desire was to uncover the real nature or essence of economic phenomena. As an imminent realist, he was interested in essences and laws as manifested in the world. His general and abstract economic theory attempted to unify all true fragments of economic knowledge. Holding that causality underpin's economic laws, Manger taught that theoretical science provides the tools for studying phenomena that exhibit regularities. He distinguished between exact types and laws that deal with strictly typical phenomena and empirical realistic types and laws that deal with truth within a particular spatiotemporal domain. Empirical laws are found by observation and exact laws are found by conceptualization. Manger's exact approach involves deductive universalistic theory that looks for regularities in the coexistence and succession of phenomena that emits no exceptions and that are strictly ordered. His theoretical economics is concerned with exact laws based on assumptions of self-interest, full knowledge and freedom. Manger's exact theoretical approach involves both isolation and abstraction from disturbing factors. Manger developed a number of fundamental Austrian doctrines such as the causal genetic approach, methodological individualism and a connection between time and error. He incorporated purposeful action, uncertainty, the occurrence of errors, the information acquisition process, learning and time into his economic analysis. As an Aristotelian essentialist and imminent realist, he considered all priori essences as existing in reality. His goal was to discover invariant principles or laws governing economic phenomena and to elaborate exact universal laws. To find strictly ordered exact laws, he said that we had to omit principles of individuation such as time and space. This entails isolation, as I mentioned a minute ago, of the economic aspect of phenomena and abstraction from disturbing factors such as error, ignorance and external compulsion. Manger thus argued for an exact orientation of theoretical research whose validity is totally independent of any empirical test. Both Aristotle and Manger viewed essences, universals or concepts as metaphysical and had no compelling explanations of the method to be employed in order to abstract the essence from the particulars in which it is indivisibly wedded. For Rand, Brian Rand, essences are epistemological and contextual rather than metaphysical. For her, concepts are the products of a cognitive method whose processes are performed by a human being but whose content is determined by reality. Manger's theory of needs and wants is the link between natural sciences, particularly biology, and the human sciences. He established this link by describing the final cause of human economic enterprise as an aspect of human nature biologically understood. He analyzed economic activity based on a theory of human action. His theory emphasized individual perception, valuation, deliberation, choice, and action. The foundation of Manger's value theory is a theory of human action that involves a theory of knowledge. He believed that men could understand the workings of the economy. Manger's goal was to establish economic theory when a solid foundation by grounding it on a sound value theory. To do this, he consistently incorporated his methodological individualism into his theory of value. Manger understood that values can be subjective that is personally estimated, okay? Personally estimated, but that men should actually seek objective life-affirming values, okay? He explained that real wants correspond with the objective state of affairs. Manger actually distinguished between real and imaginary wants and goods, depending upon whether or not a person correctly understands a good's objective ability to satisfy a want. He said that individuals can be wrong about their judgment of value. Manger's emphasis on objective values is consistent with philosophical realism and with a correspondence theory of truth. Manger does trace market exchange back to a man's personal valuations of various economic goods and observes that scales of value are variable from person to person and are subject to change over time. There are certainly subjectivist features in Manger's economic analysis that are founded on his methodological individualism which implies that people differ and have a variety of goals, purposes, and taste. Personal evaluation is therefore inherent in a principled and consistent understanding of methodological individualism. As a supreme advocate of individualist methodology, Manger recognized the primacy of active individual agents who generate all of the phenomena of the social sciences. His methodological individualism is a doctrine that reflects the real structure of society and economy and the centrality of the human agent. Manger's theory of value essentially states that life, okay, life is the ultimate state of value, life of person. According to Manger, human life is a process in which a person, given his needs, and the command of the means to satisfy them is himself the specific point where human economic life both originates and ends. Manger thus introduced life value, individual preferences that motivate people and individual choices into economics. He thus essentially agreed, my opinion, on the same standard of life as the much later iron rand. Value is a contextual judgment made by economizing men. Value is related to the existential state of the individual and the ability of the good in question to change that state in a manner desired by the person. Although Manger speaks of economic value, while Rand is concerned with moral value, their ideas, I believe, are much the same. Both of them view human life as the ultimate value. The difference is that Manger was concerned with economic values that satisfy a man's need for things like food, shoulder, healthcare, wealth, production, and so on. However, from Rand's perspective, every human value, including economic value, is a moral value, okay, is a moral value that is important to the ethical standard of a man's life qua man. Their shared biocentric concept of value holds that objective values support a man's life and originate in a relationship between a man and his survival requirements. Both Rand and Manger espouse a kind of contextually relational objectivism in their theories of value. Value is seen as a relational quality depending on the subject, the object, and the context or situation involved. Not many objectivists or Austrians and others, for that matter, know much about Manger's Austrian with Italianism and his common sense and scientific realism, okay, common sense and scientific realism. This unfortunate, I believe his writings have the potential to provide essential building blocks for a realist construction of economics. Most of you know that. Ultimately, they may provide the vehicle to some degree for the harmonization and integration of Austrian economics and objectivism. Now, as we know, the preeminent theory within Austrian economics is the Misesian subjectivist school. Mises maintained that it's by means of its subjectivism that praxeological economics develops into objective science. The praxeologist takes individual values as given, we know that, and assumes that individuals have different motivations and prefer different things. The same economic phenomena mean different things to different people. In fact, buying and selling take place because people value things differently. The importance of goods is derived from the importance of the values they are intended to achieve. When a person values an object, this simply means that he imputes enough importance to it to be willing to start a chain of causation, to change or maintain it, thus making it a thing of value. As they see in economics, does not study what is in an object as does a natural scientist, but rather studies what is in a subject. Ludwig von Mises, 1881, 1973, the Austrian Philosophical Economist is one of our most passionate, consistent and intransigent defenders of capitalism. Mises defends the free society and private ownership on the grounds that they are desirable from the perspective of human happiness, freedom, peace and productivity. He constructed a monumental overarching, systematic and comprehensive conceptual framework that elucidated the timeless, immutable laws that guide human behavior. Mises integrated his profound theories of methodology, economics, political science, history and the social sciences in his 1949 magnum opus human action. Now, there is an important dissemblance within Austrian theory between Menger and Mises. However, it is possible for Menger's more objective, more objective value-oriented theory to coexist and to complement Mises, Mises's pure subjectivism, which is based on the inscrutability of individual values and preferences. Although Menger agrees with Mises that an individual's chosen values are personal and therefore subjective and unknowable to the economist, he also contended a person ought to be rashly pursuing his objective, life-affirming values. Menger thus can be viewed, I think, as a key link pin figure between Misean praxeology and objective aesthetics. Now, according to Mises, economics is a value-free science of means rather than events that describes but does not prescribe. However, although the world of praxeological economics as a science may be value-free, the human world is not value-free. Economics is a science of human action and human actions are inextricably connected with values and ethics. It follows that praxeological economics needs to be situated within the context of some kind of normative framework. Praxeological economics does not conflict with a normative perspective on human life. Economics needs to be connected with a discipline that is concerned with ends, ends such as the end of human flourishing, throw that out there. Praxeological economics can stay value-free if it is recognized that it's morally proper for people to take part in market and other voluntary transactions. Such a value-free science, praxeology, must be combined with an appropriate end. Economics for Mises is a value-free tool for objective and critical appraisal. Economic science differentiates between the objective, interpersonally valid conclusions of economic praxeology and the personal value judgments of the economist. Critical appraisal can be objective, value-free and untainted by bias. It is important for economic science to be value-free. You all know that and not to be distorted by the value judgments or personal preferences of the economist. The credibility of economic science depends upon an impartial and dispassionate concern for truth, for truth. This value-freedom, as you know, is a methodological device designed to separate and isolate an economist's scientific work from the personal preferences of the given economic researcher. His goal was to maintain neutrality and objectivity with respect to the subjective values of others. The ZCN economics focuses on the descriptive aspects of human action by offering reasoning about means and ends. The province of praxeological economics is a logical analysis of the success or failure of selected means to attain chosen ends. Means only have value because and to the degree that their ends are valued. The reasons why individual values, what he values, and the determination of whether or not his choices and actions are morally good or bad are certainly significant concerns but they are not in the realm of the praxeological economist. The content of moral or ultimate ends is not the domain of the economist's praxeological economist. There's another level of ethics, another level of values that value in terms of right preferences. This more objectivist sphere of value outlaw defines value in terms of what an individual ought to value. Mises, as we all know, grounds economics upon the axiom, which is the fundamental and universal truth that individual men exist and act by making purposive choices among alternatives. Upon this axiom, Mises deduces the entire systematic structure of economic theory. His advocacy of free markets and his opposition to statism stem from his analysis of the nature and consequences of freely acting individuals compared to the nature of government and the consequences brought about by government intervention. For Mises, economic behavior is a special case of human action. He contends that it is through the analysis of the idea of action that the principles of economics can be deduced. Economic theorems are seen as connected to the foundation of real human purposes. Economics is based on true and evident axioms arrived at by introspection into the essence of human action. It is from these axioms that Mises derived the logical implications or truths of economics. Through the use of abstract reasoning, abstract economic reasoning, Mises recognizes the nature and operation of human purposfulness in addition, entrepreneurial resourcefulness and he identifies the systematic tendencies which influence the market process. Mises' insight was that economic reasoning has its basis in the understanding of the action axiom. He says that sound deductions from our prior axioms were apothecically true and cannot be empirically tested. Mises developed through deductive reasoning the change of economic theory based on introspective understanding of what it means to be a rational, purposeful and acting human being. The method of economics is deductive. Okay, deductive. And its starting point is the concept of action. As again, we know according to Mises all the categories, everything. Categories, theorems or laws of economics are implied in the action axiom. These include but are not limited to subjective value, causality, ends, means, preference, cost, profit and loss, opportunities, scarcity, marginal utility, marginal cost, productivity, opportunity cost, time preference, originary interest, association and so on. Now, again, as I'm sure everybody here knows, as an adherent of Kantian epistemology, Mises states that the concept of action is our priori to all experience. Thinking is a mental action. For Mises, our priori means independent of any particular time or place. Denying the possibility of arriving at laws via induction, Mises argues that evidence with our priori is based on reflective, universal inner experience. Now, I think that Misean praxeology could, could operate within a Randian philosophical structure. The concept of action could be formerly and inductively derived from perceptual data. Actions would be seen as performed by entities who act in accordance with their nature. Men's the stake of motive action and what was rationality, we know that, and free will. Men are thus rational beings with free wills who have the ability to form their own purposes and aims. Human action also assumes an uncourged human will and limited knowledge. All of the above can be seen as consistent with the Zeissian praxeology. Once we arrive at the concept of human action, Mises's deductive logical derivations can then come into play. Knowledge gained from praxeological economics is both value free or value neutral and value relevant. Value free knowledge supplied by economic science is value relevant when it supplies information for rational discussions, deliberations, and determinations of the morally good. In other words, economics is reconnected with philosophy. Again, economics can be reconnected with philosophy, especially the branches of metaphysics and ethics where the discussion is shifted to another sphere or another level. It is fair to say that economic science exists because men have concluded that the objective knowledge provided by praxeological economics is valuable for the pursuit of both a person's subjective and ultimate needs for both. Subjective, that is personally estimated, and ultimate needs. Advocating the idea of man's survival qua man or the good or flourishing light involves value judgments. To make value judgments, one must accept the existence of a comprehensive natural order and the existence of fundamental, absolute principles in the universe. This acceptance in no way conflicts with the Misesian concept of subjective economic value. Natural laws, okay, natural laws are discovered or not arbitrary relationships, but instead are relationships that are already true. A man's human nature, including his attributes of individuality, reason, and free will is the ultimate source of moral reasoning. Value, as we know, is meaningless outside the context of man. Praxeological economics and the philosophy of human flourishing, of which objectivism could be one type. There are a lot of different schools or views on human flourishing, but still they are complimentary and compatible disciplines. So again, praxeological economics and a philosophy of human flourishing in some form or another, which could be objectivism or it could be maybe Doug Denial and Doug Rasmussen's individualistic perfectionism, which I describe to you a lot, are complimentary and compatible disciplines. Economics teaches us that social cooperation through the private property system and division of labor enables most individuals to prosper and to pursue their flourishing and happiness. In turn, the worldview of human flourishing informs men how to act. In making their life affirming ethical and value-based judgments, men can refer to and employ the data of economic science. Now, Mises and Ran, as we know, were both passionate critics of collectivism. Whereas Mises criticized the economic and political functioning of collectivism, ran attacked the morality of collectivism, but they agree that collectivism in the form of people, races, nations, so on, does not exist independently from the individuals who comprise them. In addition, they both dismissed positivisms, rejection of the human mind as real and as a tool of knowledge about the world, man and his actions. They also believe that free market capitalism is the best possible arrangement for society. Their promotion of rationality, free choice and subjective, again, that is personally estimated, subjective, personally estimated, and objective values in their respective context make their worldviews compatible, in my opinion. Mises's arguments for capitalism in terms of its utility can be interpreted to be in harmony with Ran's criterion of man's life as the standard of value. There's a great deal in Mises's science of human action that is consistent with objective as principles, not everything, but a huge amount, as stated by Walter Block. Well, the majority of these issues, Rand and Mises are as alike as two peas and a pod. Now, moving on to Murray Rothbard. Murray Rothbard, 1926, 1995, also was a grand system builder. In his monumental manned economy and state, 1962, Rothbard continued, embodied, and extended Mises's methodological approach of praxeology to economics. His magnum opus was modeled after Mises's human action, and for the most part, was a massive restatement, defense and development of the Misesian praxeological tradition. Rothbard followed up and complimented man, economy and state with his brilliant The Ethics of Liberty, 1982, in which he provided a foundation for his metanormative ethical theory. Just the metanormative level, not the personal level. Exhibiting an architectonic character, these two works form an integrated system of philosophical economics. In a 1971 article in Modern Age, Rothbard declares that Mises's work provides us with an economic paradigm grounded in a nature of man and an individual choice. He explained that Mises's paradigm furnaces economics in a systematic, integrated form that conserves a correct alternative to the crisis situation that modern economics has engendered. According to Rothbard, it is time for us, this is 1971, according to Rothbard, it is time for us to adopt this paradigm in all of its facets. Now Rothbard defended Mises's methodology but went on to construct his own edifice, as you know, of Austrian economic theory. Although he embraced nearly all of Mises's economics, Rothbard could not accept Mises's Kantian, extreme or prioristic position in epistemology. Mises, as we know, held that the axiom of human action was true or priori to human experience and was in fact a synthetic or priori category. So Mises considered the axiom to be a law of thought and that's a categorical truth prior to all human experience. Now Rothbard agreed that the action axiom is universally true and self-evident, but argued that a person becomes aware of that axiom and its subsidiary axioms through experience in the world. A person begins with concrete human experience and then moves toward reflection. Once a person forms the basic axioms and concepts from his experiences and from his reflections upon those experiences, he does not need to resort to external experience to validate an economic hypothesis. Instead, deductive reasoning from sound basics will validate it. Then in a 1957 article in a Southern Economic Journal, Rothbard states that it's a waste of time to argue or try to determine how the truth of the action axiom is obtained. He explains that the all-important fact is the axiom is self-evidently true for all people and all places and all times and that it could not even conceivably be violated. Whether it was a law of thought as Mises maintained or a law of reality as Rothbard himself contended, the axiom would be no less certain because the axiom need only be stated to become a once self-evident. Both Murray Rothbard and Ein Rahn were concerned with the nature of man in the world, natural law, natural rights and irrational ethics based on man's nature and discovered through reason. Sounds good. They also agree the purpose of political philosophy and ethics is the promotion of productive human life on earth. In addition, both adopted to a great extent, Lockean natural rights perspectives and arguments that legitimize private property. Additionally, they both disagreed with Mises' epistemological foundations. So they both did not agree with that and on similar grounds. Both Rothbard and Rahn endeavored to determine the proper rules for a rational society by using reason to examine the nature of human life in the world by employing logical deductions to ascertain what these nature suggest. They agree with respect to the volitional nature of rational human consciousness. A man's innate right of self-ownership. And again, here's that word again, the metanormative necessity of non-curse of mutual consent, the metanormative necessity of non-curse of mutual extent. In other words, the technological rights then people on their own for their personal morality. They kind of agreed on that. Both the subscribe to what Rothbard called the non-aggression principle and to the right of self-defense. Now, here's what they differ. Rothbard and Rahn did not agree, however, on that nature or need for government. They disagreed with respect to the practical applications of their similar philosophies. Rejecting Rahn's idea of a constitutionally limited representative government, Rothbard believed that their shared doctrines entailed a zero government or a narco-capitalist framework based on volunteerism, free exchange, and peace. So Rothbard and Rahn subscribe to different forms of metanormative libertarian politics, Rothbard to a narco-capitalism and Rahn to a minimal state. Again, Rothbard ended his ethics at the metanormative level. Rahn, on the other hand, advocated a minimal state form of libertarian politics based on the fuller foundation of objectivism through which he attempted to supply an objective basis for values and virtues in human existence and in which she went into the morality aspect of it. Of course, Rothbard did discuss the separate importance of a rational personal morality, stated that he agreed, essentially, with most of Rahn's philosophy and suggested his inclination toward a Randian ethical framework. So I think the writings of Rothbard, much like those of Menger, have done a great deal toward building a bridge between Austrian economics and objectivism. So now they'll kind of wind up here in the next five minutes or so. Although Mazzisian economist, so we're back to the general level here, Mazzisian economist, who the values are subjective and objectivists argue that values are objective, these claims are not incompatible because they are not really claims about the same things, not claims about the same things. I think they exist at different levels or spheres of analysis. The methodological value subjectivity of the Austrians complements the Randian sense of value objectivity. The level of objective values, moral values, dealing with personal flourishing, human flourishing, transcends the level of subjective value preferences. The value of freedom or value neutrality and value subjectivity of the Austrians have a different function or purpose than does objectivism's emphasis on objective values. On the one hand, the Austrian emphasis is on the value neutrality of the economist as a scientific observer. Value neutrality of the economist as a scientific observer of a person acting to obtain his subjective, i.e., personally estimated values. On the other hand, the philosophy of objectivism is concerned with values for the acting individual moral agent himself. There's no difference there. There's a distinction between methodological subjectivism and philosophical subjectivism, whereas Austrians are methodological subjectivists in their economics, this does not at all imply that they are moral relativists as individuals. Austrian economics is thus an excellent way of looking at social science methodology with respect to the appraisal of means, but not of ends. Physician praxeology therefore must be augmented. Its value-free economics is not sufficient to make, not sufficient to establish a total case for liberty, a systematic, reality-based ethical system must be discovered to firmly establish a total case for liberty. Natural law provides the groundwork for such a theory, and both objectivism and the Aristotelian idea of human flourishing, as I said earlier, as evidenced in Rasmussen and Denau's work, are based on natural law ideas. Austrian economics and objectivism agree on the significance of the ideas of human action and values. The Austrians explain that a person acts when he prefers the way he thinks things will be if he acts, compared to the way he thinks things will be if he fails to act. Austrian economics is descriptive, and deals with the logical analysis of the ability of selective actions that is means to achieve certain ends. Whether these ends are truly objectively valuable is not the concern of the praxeological economist when he is acting in his capacity as an economist. There is another realm of values that views value in terms of objective values and correct preferences and actions. Objectivism, or human flourishing philosophy, is concerned with its other sphere, and thus studies what human beings ought to value and act to attain. When thinkers from the Austrian school speak of subjective knowledge, they simply mean that each person, each one of us, has his own specific and finite context of knowledge that directs his action. So in this context, subjective merely means subject dependent, subject dependent. Subjectivism for the Austrians does not mean the rejection of reality. It only focuses on the view that consumer taste, personal taste, are personal. Austrian economists contend that values are subjective, and objectivists maintain the values are objective. As I said a few minutes ago, these claims can be seen as perhaps compatible because they are not claims about the same phenomena. These two senses of value are complementary, I think. The Austrian economist as a neutral examiner does not force his own value judgments on the personal values and actions of the human beings that he is studying. Now operating from a different perspective, objectivists maintain that their objective values that stem from a man's relationship to other existence in the world. At a descriptive level, the economist's idea of demonstrated preference agrees with Rand's account of value. She defines value initially as something that a person acts to gain or keep. That's descriptive, but then she goes deeper. Of course Rand moves from an initial description, descriptive notion of value to a more normative perspective on value that includes the idea that a legitimate or objective value serves one's life. Serves one's life. The second view of value provides a standard to evaluate for people to evaluate the use of their own free will. So they're complementary. Practical economical economics and objectivism are complementary and compatible disciplines. Economics teaches us that social cooperation through the private property system and division of labor enables most individuals to prosper and to pursue their flourishing and happiness. In turn, objectivism informs men how to act. In making their life affirming ethical and value-based judgments, of course men can refer to and employ economic science. Objectivism's Aristotelian perspective on the nature of man in the world and on the need to exercise one's virtues can be viewed as synergic with the economic coordination and praxeology of Austrian economics. I'll repeat that. Objectivism's Aristotelian perspective on the nature of man in the world and on a need to exercise one's virtues can be viewed as synergic with the economic coordination and praxeology of Austrian economics. Placing the economic realm within a general process of human action which itself is part of human nature enables theoretical progress in our search for truth and in the construction of a systematic, logical, and consistent conceptual framework. The objective of this worldview can provide a context to the economic insights of the Austrian economist. Okay, now to finish. In conclusion, there is much common ground between Rand and the Austrians, I think. Not totally, but much. And much to be gained through the intellectual exchange between Objectivism and Austrian economics. Of course, I'm not talking about the Ironman Institute's version of Objectivism, which is what most of us have taken from Objectivism through. Objectivism can be viewed as an ethical and logical augmentation of Austrian economics. So Austrian economics takes us so far, but then you're gonna live in a moral world. Well, myself, actually, I've gone past Objectivism and I pretty much ascribed to, as I mentioned before, Rasmussen and Denial's individualistic perfectionism. Well, I think it's a much better philosophy than Objectivism. But they were the same ballpark. So I suggest reading some of Rasmussen and Denial's works. Okay, so to finish up here, as I said, Objectivism can be viewed as a logical augmentation of Austrian economics. Then on the other hand, Austrian Praxeology can be seen as the ideal mean for Objectivist of sorts. I'm not an Objectivist. I would say I'm Rand-influenced, that's about it. A lot of the ideas I agree with, but again, philosophy of human flourishing is more of a format. So Austrian Praxeology can be seen as the ideal means for Objectivists when Objectivists, if they do, address economic issues. Economics would focus on attempting to discover economic principles, but would leave ethical issues to philosophy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.