So I have repeatedly bumped into Victor Aguilar’s “Axiomatic Economics” which he claims completely overthrows Austrian Economics. I’ve read some of it and, to be honest, his jargon and method of exposition make it terribly difficult to comprehend and further, it’s utterly dry. I was just wondering if anyone has made complete sense of it as I have not the patience for his incredibly boring writing style. I’m no slouch in mathematics either as I’m currently taking graduate level mathematics courses. I know Murphy wrote a rebuttal and Garrison’s rebuttal is soon to come out. Aguilar claims he made mince meat of Murphy’s criticism. His style, by the way, is overly arrogant and always seems to dance around everything rather then go right at.
Just looking for thoughts and interpretations of it, the background on Aguilar, etc.
I tried reading his critique a while back and it did my head in. Maybe he is the Copernicus of economics (as he claims) but I’ll never know it. At least not until he finds a Hansen to translate his ideas into a more digestible form. It will be interesting to see Garrison’s response. I thought it was odd that he refers to Skousen’s The Structure of Production as the last great Austrian treatise, and he says that Ron Paul is the current leader of the Austrian School.
He’s clearly not a liberterarian as he makes it clear a number of times that he thinks government intervention is most obviously required and necessary for the welfare of people. These sort of comments make me far more dubious of his work. He clearly lacks an understanding of the free market.
I am a mathematican, so the dry notation doesn’t faze me. Well, I tried to parse the “Axiomatic Economics” and it simply does not make much sense.
Impenetrable jargon is usually a sign of obscurantism; I have yet to see anyone saying aything worthwhile who’d engage in this kind of writing. The complexity tends to get better of the author’s own wits, rendering the whole formal argument rather useless.
if he’s claiming axioms, then he ought to have listed them - and then the fundamental assumptions of his grand paradigm are exposed (and from the sounds of it, they’re likely nothing more than the antithesis of Austrian reality). The rest is fluff to justify a faulty foundation - since the truth is derived at with simple, concise arguments.
Ha! Ha! But on a serious note, while it’s great sport to poke fun at children like TomG, let us remember that they are just that: Children. The real issue is: Where are the professors?
If Roger Garrison were a leader, he wouldn’t leave these misguided children alone to flail at Aguilar in such an ineffective and obviously leaderless fashion.
Instead of cursing at Aguilar (or making up lies about him, as edward_1313 did), why don’t you guys wipe your noses and compose some nice, polite e-mails to Roger Garrison asking him to please – pretty please, with sugar on top – rebut Aguilar’s Critique of Austrian Economics.
I found the following under Part I Section VIII of “Critique of Austrian Economics”
“In light of the recent scandals, we should point out that there is no invisible hand that prevents dishonest businessmen from cooking their books. For that we need government regulators. And we needed regulations like the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented conflicts of interest.”
Dishonest businessmen cooking their books is criminal in the same way (though with less violence) as robbers holding up convenience stores. Do you also consider it “government intervention” when the police respond to a liquor store heist?
Trying to weasel out of your bet? Pay up Victor. Both are examples of government intervention. You didn’t specify any particular kind.
P.S. The state is illegitimate. I’d rather have private service providers handling both sorts of cases. And the Glass-Steagall Act isn’t libertarian even by minarchist standards.
The shareholders are the victims when a company cooks their books. They were deceived into buying the company’s stock after reading about non-existent profits.