Rejoinder to Machaj on Indifference

In: New perspectives on political economy: NPPE ; a bilingual interdisciplinary journal, Band 5, Heft 1, S. 65-71

Abstract

Nozick (1977) was a methodological critique of the Austrian School of economics. He took the view that the praxeological school was guilty of a logical contradiction. On the one hand, it eschews the concept of indifference. On the other, it utilizes that of supply. But, Nozick argued, for there to be any supply of a good, people must be indifferent to constituent elements of it. Block (1980) attempted to answer Nozick's criticism, making the point that "supply" is a coherent concept, and people are indeed indifferent to units of which it is comprised, but before human action. During human action, there cannot be any such thing as indifference, in the technical sense. Machaj (2007) criticizes both Nozick (1997) and Block (1980). The present paper is a response to Machaj (2007).