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badger comments on Awful Austrians - Less Wrong
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I don't think they make quite that leap. The claim is something more like, "Humans act. Action necessarily entails a goal. Having a goal entails preferring certain states of the world over other states of the world. Therefore, humans have preferences."
Mises and Rothbard are quite clear that these preferences don't have to include self-interest and actors don't always succeed in achieving their goals. I think they both assume that people are self-interested and semi-rational, but don't claim that as being a deduced truth. They should have been much clearer about when they introduce assumptions like this though, as Swimmy pointed out.
This looks like mere word-play. What is a goal? The thing you prefer. What is a preference? Your attitude to a goal. Can you restate your explanation, while tabooing "prefer" and "goal"? I could, for my understandings of those words, but it wouldn't necessarily come out meaning what you mean.
right, but saying that those preferences then map to reality in a useful way is quite a leap.