I think Mises still engaged in non-value-free and ethical judgements in Economics

I understand that Mises made the argument made that economics tells you whether the means that you choose to achieve something will actually get you there, which okay, I guess its value-free (if we dont get into the meta part), even though I would say that even being “value-free” is ironically a value itself. But anyways, I dont understand how you can stay value-free in terms of public policy or economic system.

If a public policy maker asks “how do you achieve efficient tax burden of 40%” and the value-free economist answers “okay this is how you achieve an efficient tax burden of 40%” – the thing is that the public policy maker is clearly not value-free and really cannot be value-free, since he/she has to come up with the public policy and the “value-free” economist only judges the means of the public policy through praxeology and individual preferences of people.

But if we get meta, then even the “value-free” economist is not “value-free” because he/she adheres to praxeology and some axioms. The economist then does the analysis of the means, which comes after the adoption of praxeology and some axioms, which is supposedly objective and value-free, but not from a meta perspective like I said, because there clearly has been non-value-free process of figuring out these axioms and adopting praxeology. And also, the very idea that the means should achieve the goals or that the “value-free” economist should tell you whether the means will or will not achieve the goal, supposes some kind of value-system, that “efficiency” or “achieving the goal” is good (or preferable or logical), for the person seeking those goals and attempting to find the best possible means for that person, is an ethical conviction of the “value-free” economist (since you CANNOT disprove the means without at very least hinting at the alternative). And again, if we say that individual preferences of people are important, then thats not a value-free statement. (Maybe a “more” value-free operation would be to just use VERY CONCRETE statistics and making policy outta that – but thats clearly not possible in all cases and in fact would be immoral)

And even if we ignore that or even if Im wrong here, If private property is part of economics, then clearly, if we are to have rights, then the value-free economist has to engage in moral philosophy and thus not be value-free because private property (estate) is a natural/individual right. So the economist either has to ignore natural rights deontology and objectivist ethics (in terms of polity framework) or straight up disregard ethics completely.

But how can a value-free economist disregard ethics, if he/she has to form an opinion on lets say eminent domain? If someone attempts to implement a law allowing for eminent domains, the economist will agree or disagree based on axioms that he adopts, but those axioms will in some way or another, be adopted through an ethical process, because why cant we influence human nature or go against some of it? Clearly we can, we have mixed economies/coordinated market economies all over! And its not like those are terribly inefficient – what Im saying is that you can somehow stick to the concept of those axioms or human nature, but slightly violate it without causing massive inefficiencies.

Here someone would say that we have to be logical and not engage in contradictions, but the meta problem is still there, its not value-free, the efficiency argument or “best means to achieve your subjective goals” argument is still there, and that argument is clearly moral in nature, its not adopted out of THIN AIR without ANY ETHICAL considerations! Its IMPOSSIBLE to separate ethics from it here! Its basically some kind of more meta ethical egoist argument and THEN we should stick to it and be logical. But the Austrian (this time) “value-free” economist has to identify something as good and something as bad in the meta sense – and from that make the judgement of those means of achieving goals, but the judgement is meta non-value-free.

Logical in a value-free sense would completely disregarding your values and opinions (which is impossible) and then attempting to work with the other persons means as they are. But then if you disagree (or even if you agree) then theres a conflict, and that conflict can be somehow “math-only” (but even if the problem is only math-only it also suggests that solving it through math-only means is good, which again means that you used ethics or value judgement), but when it comes to public policy or the economic system, its not “math-only”, in laymans terms youre fucking with individuals. And there you absolutely cannot separate flatout explicit ethical arguments from economics.

Am I wrong about this?