And neither scenario requires legislation, regulatory bodies, or any other form of government to resolve.
Does anyone want to take the time to explain (in terms that a reasonably intelligent though not formally trained person can understand) how this guy claims to overthrow Austrian Economics? I’d be interested to see what he has to say, he certainly seems sure of himself, but I won’t be able to wade through the math.
Or is considerable knowledge of math needed to understand how a market works?
I never considered legitimate response to crimes an intervention.
I also found this hilarious quotation on page 42 of “Critique of Austrian Economics From 1930 To 1990” by Victor Aguilar, and just thought I’d share it.
I submitted this paper to the QJAE in March of 2004. Seven months later I received the following referee comments. The envelope was postmarked 20 October 2004 though the letter inside had been back-dated to 16 April 2004.
Referee Comments:
“Critique of Austrian Economics From 1930 To 1990”
I can in no way recommend publication of this paper. Although purporting
to be a critique of the Austrian tradition since 1930, and while citing a
number of prominent Austrian economists, the paper reveals tremendous
ignorance of the Austrian tradition the author is supposed to be criticizing.
The notion that there was no Austrian tradition before Hayek published
Prices and Production, and that the big split within the tradition occurs
along Menger-Mises vs. Böhm-Bawerk/Hayek lines reveals that the author
knows not of what he is speaking.
The author grossly errs in equating the Austrian tradition itself with
capital theory, thus ignoring the core of Austrian economics: praxeological
price theory. The author further spends an inordinate amount of time
parsing details regarding which direction capital structure triangles lie and
which way arrows on diagrams point. Although these may be important
regarding pedagogy, they hardly define who gets the theory right and who
gets it wrong.
Finally, while making relatively grandiose claims as to the success of
his own axiomatic system as opposed to Mises’, the author merely asserts
that his axioms are right and that Mises’ are wrong. A critique must be
more than a tissue of assertions. It must reasonably demonstrate the problems
of the object of the criticism. In order to provide such a critique, it is
customary to know a reasonable amount of the object in question and to
provide sound reasons for the critique. The author of this paper does neither.
The writing is also way below the standard for acceptance in the
Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. The paper is at times rambling,
at others incoherent, at others unscholarly both in its form and content.
For all of these reasons, this paper does not merit publication in the
QJAE (correspondence from Judith Thommesen, Managing Editor).
I think I have a couple of hard copies of Victor’s critique of Austrian economics in a box somewhere. Somehow he got a hold of my university mailing address and sent them to me with his $1,000 challenge, calling for someone to write a rebuttal to his paper. It is my understanding that he’s mailed this package to a lot of people. I wonder, did he ever pay former professor Bob Murphy for refuting his critique?
I just finished his piece of junk, “Simplified Exposition of Axiomatic Economics.” Unlike the Austrian methodology he doesn’t ground his axioms in reality. Instead, it appears that they are chosen to make mathematical manipulation possible.
He assumes a cardinal value scale, rather than an ordinal one. That is, Mises and Rothbard both emphasized that ends are ranked on our value scales as greater or less than other ends, but there is no such thing as a measurable distance between them. Action only reveals that one state of affairs is preferable to another, but not how much it is preferred over the other.
He assumes continuous utility functions, expanding on the earlier mistake and makes other assumptions to allow mathematical manipulation.
And finally assumes that the value we attach to goods (phenomenon is the term he uses) is a random variable which can be described by probability distributions.
He spent a great deal of effort deriving several theorems from these axioms. I believe all of the mathematical proofs are correct. I haven’t checked them all, nor will I at this hour. He seems competent at math. I’d say he has taken at least a first year university course in calculus and a second year couse in differential equations. But models of the world only desrcibe it to the extent that they are grounded in reality. His isn’t so and doesn’t do so.
And after all that work, he starts making arguments about the banking system and money. His arguments here are essentially austrian, though he does none of the theoretical work to lead up to his conclusions. He makes only brief reference to his theorems, practically demonstrating their uselessness. As for overthrowing Austrianism, he says in his critique that misesian methodology fails (whereas his suceeds) because the action axiom is just platitude. Other than this he gives no reasons why mises is wrong.
I really wish I had done something better with the last few hours.
Thanks Stephen Forde. Better your time wasted than mine [;)]
How cute! I can visualize you sitting on a stack of telephone books to reach the keyboard of your mother’s computer so you can weigh in with these important questions.
Yes, Virginia, it is illegal to fabricate one’s quarterly earnings report. It’s called “fraud.” And, if you don’t believe me, ask Authur Anderson.
“The existence of a free market does not of course elliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the ‘rules of the game’ and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.” - Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, p. 15
Obviously, Aguilar is no more an advocate of government intervention than Friedman is. Edward_1313 was lying when he said that Aguilar is not a libertarian. Unable to defeat Aguilar, he attacked a straw man instead - a transparent ploy that would have gotten him laughed off any grown-up forum.
Lost children, left alone in the woods to fend for yourselves! You need a leader. If Roger Garrison will not (or cannot) lead you, then find a grown-up who can.
How about we just ignore cranks posing under fake accounts? Done deal? Good.
-Jon
Hhmmm…different IP address, but this is in the same style as the Shaka post which we know was made by Victor. In fact, Victor made two posts as Victor and the posts each have a different IP address. One of them has the same IP address as Shaka though. So it seems Victor knows how to change his IP address.
Well, listen up Victor. If you or any cronies of yours post any more trollish comments like those of your Shaka and Pickles sock puppets here I’ll delete them and ban you.
Got it?
Good.
It’s not actually difficult. It’s called dynamic IP addresses, and some ISPs use only those. My ISP assigns a new IP address out of a certain pool, and I imagine sometimes I get the same IP as before.
Doesn’t matter what you consider it, it’s still a government intervention.
Also, if it were indeed “legitimate” it would not be governmental, and in that case you would be correct.
No need for that. A proxy works fine.
It could very well be that he’s logging in at various locations, however.
Well hello Mr. Agulair, I’m glad you offer up such scholarly material as this. You’ve really raised the level of this discussion with you’re learned style. I suppose this too is an axiomatic statement? Or have you confused axiom with warentless assertion. It seems your essay suffers the same shortcomings.
Eh? Quoting Freidman must make you right.
That’s supposed to be good, I suppose?
Well he, you, certainly doesn’t uphold a principle of non-aggression, so I don’t see how that would figure.
No, he is not in the same boat as you.
Why is a grown up needed to defend against a deranged toddler?
First of all, whatever cooking up books means, how is it a crime to try to hold back what you have produced from being stolen by the state? Is hiding money from a racketeer a crime? Bookkeeping has two very distinguished purposes, one is to the benefit of the entrepreneuer or capitalist, the other is a coerced duty to enable the state to tax.
In the first case one would deprive oneself of the only way to see if a profit is made or not. So bookkeeping is totaly voluntary, even if highly significant. The second case is that the state wants to know how much wealth you gained to tax you accordingly. This is like a racketeer forces you to keep books so he can easily fix the amount of money he can take away without ruining you alltogether.
As you can see, your argument does not hold here, nor does it hold on other instances.
And for your second point, sure it is “government intervention” if the police responds to a heist, even if no liquor store is involved [:)]. The question is, does the government act on behalf of itself, or as an agent of the liquor store owner? If the liqour store owner wants the government to act on his behalf, the governement is covered, cause the liqour store owner has the right to defend himself against aggression. If the liqour store owner does not give the government the authority to proxy on his behalf, than the government itself has no right to intervene.
Right, so the shareholders, which is each individual shareholder, has now a right to ask for a compensation. This is a clearly a contractual issue (breach of contract) and not an issue the government has to be involved anyway.
It is not.
Is everybody here aware that Murphy capitulated?
http://www.gene-callahan.org/blog/2007/09/victor-aguilar-picks-his-next-victim.html
p.s. Please don’t ban me, Geoffrey! I’m quoting Murphy, not He Whom We Cannot Name.
p.p.s. If you’re really wondering whether HWWCN payed Murphy his $1000, why don’t you just ask Murphy?
LOL What a loser. Do you realize no one gives a damn? Go back to your cave, troll.
-Jon
All state action is the government interveneing in the affairs that be. If you want to play some semantics game, fine, it’s not that meaningful of a discussion anyways.