Technology

The Austrian school has also largely ignored technology. This even though all means are technological in nature. Every action in space is technological in the praxeological sense. Technology studies what means have been chosen to fulfil goals. Technology is connected with both psychology and the natural sciences. It is the ideas that choose what technological means to use to fulfil goals. Sometimes the ideas are wrong and the technology chosen does not work as planned.

Sometimes the problem is not in the ill-chosen physical piece of technology but in the misunderstanding of the biological nature of man. For example, socialism believed in the New Socialist Man whose intelligence and nature can gradually be shaped at will. Fortunately, physical reality functions as a feed-back mechanism that gradually forces the development of correct ideas about biology, physics and natural science in general.

Economics and politics

Action is about goals, means and their relationships. This has always been known. The great scientific break-through in human sciences came with the realization that there are regular formal relationships between means and ends. The law of demand and the law of supply make it possible to study interaction in scientific manner. It is sometimes even possible to qualitatively predict the ratios of exchange and exploitation. The praxeological science of economics and politics was born.

The most comprehensive exposition of the economic science of the Radical Austrian school can be found in Murray Rothbard’s magnum opus Man, Economy and the State. He later also wrote a treatise on politics: Power and Market. Nowadays the two treatises are published together in a general treatise on economics and politics.

History and sociology

Praxeological history brings together all sciences by studying what the ends, means and their relationships have been in the past. Praxeological sociology goes a step further and tries to study what they are at the present and could be in the future. Sociology and history are like twin sciences that together try to bring together all sciences in order to understand human society and its development.

There is no radical Austrian general treatise in history. Perhaps the closest to a general outline of history can be found in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s essay A Short History of Man. Progress and Decline. Hoppe points out how the idea of private property is central to civilisation. This is also why the Austrian historians have emphasised the history of ideas. Ralph Raico’s Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School studies how classical liberals created the idea of freedom that transformed the world.

There is also no radical Austrian general treatise in sociology. Perhaps the closest to a general outline of sociology can be found in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s essay Banking, Nation States and International Politics: Sociological Reconstruction of Present Economic Order. It shows how money and banking are at the root of political development. It is the bank cartel that forms the ruling elite that exploits people. It tries to centralize power into ever growing economic and political federations. First a national, then a continental and finally a world state.