I have never delved deep into economics and mostly read mises.org, because it offers an interesting and unusual perspective upon politics and economy. The only somehow economic books i read so far are “Economics in one lesson” and “40th centuries of price control” or something like that.
For my impression austrian economics are at most good arguments, therefore im not fully convinced.
But what irritates me most, is that often it seems like stating the obvious. For example taking a whole book to argue, that smashing windows to increase the wealth of the community could be a stupid idea, looks a bit overblown. And that price fixing can ruin nations - well obviously if the price for all food is fixed at 1 dollar per 1000 tons and the price for diesel is fixed at 100 dollars per gallon legal food trade will be reduced to something close to 0, which means, that if enough black marcket crack down happens a lot of people will starve, which will ruin any nation. So not some rocket science.
Ok, the detail part could be complicated. (which window smashing does what economic damage? Can there be a kind of window smashing, which trhough some unknown psychological mechanism increases wealth in the long run? dito for price fixing)
But as far as i know, austrian economics does not offer the details, simply because it claims, that these details cannot be determined.
But now that i looked at detiled arguments of other economics, i fear, that stating the obivous is a very necessary task and that looking into details only confuses.
Take this “argument” by a “economist”:
“In the absence of financial intervention by the government, if one agent desires employment in order to increase his holdings of financial assets, another must decide to reduce his net financial assets for a transaction to take place. If no agent is willing to reduce his net financial assets, the desired sale of labor does not occur. This is defined as involuntary unemployment.”
" Thus, whenever the government engages in deficit spending, aggregate private sector H(nfa) is increased, with H(nfa) including offshore holdings of dollar denominated assets. Furthermore, the level of government deficit spending determines private sector H(nfa). Should the private sector desire to increase its H(nfa), this desire can be satisfied only by an increase in government deficit spending.
Unemployment can therefore be summarized as follows:
Involuntary unemployment is evidence that the desired H(nfa) of the private sector exceeds the actual H(nfa) allowed by government fiscal policy."
Can they be that stupid?
I mean, the only possible cause of unemployment is that, some people want higher number on their bank accounts and the government doesnt provide the deficit necessary for this?
I can think of a lot of other reasons, most notably, that the unemployed person offers a service no one wants. If i and nobody else buys burgers with truffle instead of slad pieces and very hot chilli sauce instead of ketchup for 50 dollars, then the reason could be, that nobody thinks the combination tasty and everybody prefers to eat truffle in a different kind of meal or none at all. If the truffle burger producer does not change his product he and his employees will end unemployed. And the cause is not that people desired higher numbers in bank account, but because they do not like such burgers.
Can anybody realy be that stupid to forget something like this?
And the quote at the start of the article also looks so stupid:
" In other words, real economies that do not use money and money labor contracts to organize production (e.g., feudalism, slave economies, South Sea Islanders discovered by Margaret Meed, etc) may possess important nonlinearities and even an uncertain future — but there is never an important involuntary unemployment problem."
Maybe because dead people are per defintion not unemployed?
Because before the wealth boost of 18th to 20th century pople with too little income simply starved or died of diseases they were suspectible to due to undernutrition.
As money is a boost to wealth itself, the reason that societies without money dont have unemployment problems could be that these societies are not wealthy enough to feed unemployed people, who are able to work. So either they find work or die, in both cases they are not unemployed.
Could be other reasons, but this alone could already explain a lot.
Are other economic branches realy that stupid?