On Human Rationality and Government Control

Emile Phaneuf and Carmelo Ferlito

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In this paper we first address a long-standing criticism of human rationality and what that means for the role of government. We review and compare much of the literature on rationality and demonstrate that various authors within various fields often mean very different things by the word “rational.” While we make no claims as to whether or not humans always behave rationally, we point out the flawed logic for what is suggested for the role of government as a way of addressing the human irrationality problem. Building on the Mises-Rothbard-Huerta de Soto tradition, we argue that what is more important than perfect rationality is purposeful action. We explain the dynamic nature of the market in which time plays an important role, and humans act with expectations to accomplish goals, learn from past mistakes, discover new information and modify their plans accordingly. Using Hayek’s approach, we discuss the knowledge problem in which data is dispersed among millions of individuals (unknown in its entirety to any central authority) as well as the problems with applying the scientific method exactly as it is used in the natural sciences to the human behavioral sciences. These problems combined, we argue, make for a much more disastrous system than would be a system in which often-irrational individuals would be free to make mistakes for themselves, discover new information and take actions for their own betterment.

Keywords: Rationality; Government intervention; Equilibrium; Human Action; Purposeful Behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B53 D80 D84 H10 H30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política 2.XI(2014): pp. 137-181

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/67746/1/MPRA_paper_67746.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:67746

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().