“The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people,†Mises wrote in his 1947 essay “Planned Chaos.â€Most people agree that science is a useful tool, and Mises was certainly one of them. The problem Mises was getting at was that science can’t actually tell us what we should do, which is the realm of subjective value judgments. Science can only tell us what is.
Complex ethical problems demand solutions, and, as journalist H.L. Mencken pointed out, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.â€Outsourcing our complex ethical problems to people with prestigious degrees may be simple, but it’s also wrong. Ethical questions are about what we ought to do, and, as Mises saw, there is no ought in science.
