I have just discovered the website of Axiomatic Economics by Victor Aguilera. He seems to be known in Austrian circles, but I didn’t know him yet.
He criticises Austrian ideas and pays $1000 to the ones who write a good rebuttal of this critique. Anyway, I got really impressed when he writes, after saying he visited the Mises Institute:
“When Jeffrey Tucker called the police, told them that I was a suicide bomber and then tried to stall me until they arrived, he intended to get them to shoot me or at least to send me to Guatanamo, where I would be unable to write any more about economic theory. When the police sergeant said, “That sounds like a First Amendment issue to me,” Tucker became so desperate that he forgot his masculinity and thought to act like a woman in the hopes that they would accept him as a damsel-in-distress to be rescued.”
This seems non-sense and paranoid to me, but I wanted to know from first hand of Austrians what you think of him. He claims himself to be the one who has defeated Austrian economics. As I read from his website, Austrian economists don’t seem to have paid much attention to him by replying to his critique (with some exceptions). Is this true? I wanted to know your views.
This guy sounds like a nutcase, TBH. I’m not versed enough in maths to decipher his rants, but I doubt there’s much substance to them. If Garrison fails in putting this loser in his place, I’ll have to question his credentials…
Yeah I just posted about this around a week ago. Murphy actually gave him some respect and wrote a rebuttal. The problem with this guy is that you can’t figure out what the hell he’s trying to say or what his fundamental disagreements are. How are you supposed to argue with some one who makes no sense? Sure, in his own little world he may be correct, but unless he’s some super genious who no one else can comprehend, his rants come off as paranoid lunacy. He strikes me as some one who is incapable of admitting defeat.
Further, he’s into central control of the economy which tells you he’s pretty off in one regard. I know you shouldn’t really judge the validity of something by someone’s beliefs in other regards, but what are you supposed to do when you can’t comprehend what their fundamental disagreement is?
Here’s the beginning of the “simple” exposition of his first axiom. Perhaps I’m rather stupid but does this not seem to be written in code? Well, maybe we can decode it.
Definitions to which one or more phenomena may conform do not exist at one point on one’s value scale but rather in a series of points labeled “1st occurrence”, “2nd occurrence”,… The intensions of the definitions are the same at each of these points, the importance of each position being different because of factors not contained in the definitions, that is, how many phenomena have come before or are expected to come. The spacing of the definitions in a series is not even but is determined by diminishing utility. Phenomena that conform to the definitions in such a series are fungible, meaning interchangable. Being interchangable, they cannot each have a different value (importance), for the loss of one being employed for an important purpose can be met simply by replacing it with the one that conforms to the definition of marginal utility. Because any of the phenomena conforming to definitions in a series can be replaced by the one with the least utility of those being satisfied, one does not value any of them more than the last one. Marginal utility is all that is ever at stake when risking a unit of fungible phenomena. When considering the acquisition of another unit of fungible phenomena, the value of that unit is the utility of the next want to be satisfied in its series. In either case, the value of a phenomenon is never determined by the use to which it happens to be applied but by the use on the margin between satisfaction and nonsatisfaction; hence the term “marginal utility.” {Victor Aguilar, axiomaticeconomics.com}
This follows an example, but shall we compare this to Rothbard on Marginal utility?
Thus, the actor gives up the lowest-ranking want that the
original stock (in this case, six units) was capable of satisfying.
This one unit that he must consider giving up is called the mar-
ginal unit. It is the unit “at the margin.” This least important
end fulfilled by the stock is known as the satisfaction provided by
the marginal unit,or the utility of the marginal unit—in short: the
marginal satisfaction, or marginal utility.
Also, I would be interested in hearing Mr. Tucker’s comments on the allegations made against him.
I agree that the latter half is pretty much just like Rothbard’s description, or in fact, Menger’s description, of marginal utility. But what’s with the first part? And how is this different than the Austrian position? That’s what I’m trying to pin down.
This guy got my address somehow, and sent me a thick packet of the rantings on his website. He seems obsessed and thinks he can get his ideas noticed by stalking people and being belligerent. If he wasn’t emotionally imbalanced, he would clarify, improve, and refine his ideas so that someone, whether the QJAE, a mainstream journal, or otherwise, would publish his ideas. Bryan Caplan, for instance, is a critic of the Austrian school who has successfully published his opposing ideas without being a total nutjob.