I ask this question, because I have not met one opponent who even planned to pick up a book/pamphlet on Austrian Economics. The naked emperors I encountered online would confidently slander it in front of an audience. Term/name dropping ("LOL I’m not impressed with marginal utility/economic calculation/Ron Paul) was the best they could muster up, yet no one was left with a single explanation of the subject. I had no coherent idea of AE, until I found the Mises Institute. This lead to the discovery that the naked emperors had no idea what they were talking about. The propaganda they spew is in spite of what is actually written.
After I had learned the basics of AE, I asked a couple of ridiculers their thoughts on AE. As I had expected, the responses I received were as follows:
Old Australian: “Yes, I know of the Australian Business Cycle, and it bottomed out this year.”
(Actually, that one was an interventionist who thought he had economics all figured out)
Young Marxist: “AE has devolved into neo-liberalism, and nobody takes the economic calculation problem seriously!”
I asked the young Marxist to explain ABCT and the calculation problem to me. He was utterly unable to do this and admitted to not having done his research. I was astonished someone would risk destroying his credibility for intellectual dishonesty, until I discovered this Rothbard quote:
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
Then it hit me… The average person thinks he is justified in making conclusions (believing them to be final and infallible) without doing the necessary research.
I wish this post was less tangential, but I wanted touch up on the implications of the first paragraph. The question still stands though.
Who are these people you are talking to??? Are they undergrads or faculty?
If you actually have Marxist faculty members I can only guess you are going to school outside the United States and so I can’t say anything about what you might be experiencing.
If your complaints are based on conversations with undergrads, then I’m not surprised. The quality level of the discussion is determined by the quality of people you are talking to regardless of intellectual school of though. Look at mises forum. There are plenty of people on this board shooting their mouths off about “Keynesian Economics” without any apparent understanding of its basic tenants (just check out the “Keynesian Economics Refutation Thread”). Yet, most of these people that don’t bother trying to understand Keynesian econ are not trained economists. So I am not surprised when they make mistakes.
Similarly, if you are talking with undergrads, you will likely run into a lot of people that are cocky and dismissive that have no right to be. It has nothing to do with mainstream economics, its just the curse of being young.
Like I said in another thread, if you want to find educated critics of Austrian Economics, look for trained economists that are willing to submit their criticisms to peer-review. Reading journals may not be as fun as late-night dorm bull secessions, but it is probably more educational.
The user: “Student” on these forums seems to be unconvinced although he knows what he’s talking about.
However usually no, the critics of the buisness cycle have little to no real clue.
Although to be fair, alot of Austrians seem to be ignorant as to a fair amount of Neo-classical and Keynsian devices. I think that everyone should study economics either along side or after reading a classical economics textbook.
In the UK it makes little difference, at least where I study, for the professors are relatively oblivious of the Austrian School (and if they know of it it is mostly with regards to arguments regarding the positive traits of monopolies and vaguely the “Hayekian” business cycle theory; if it’s a philosophy/social science department it’s critiques of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.) I’ve yet to meet a student who knows of the School by name, though they know some of its arguments and counter with the usual socialist (or conservative) retorts. The exception is the professor I mentioned who’s authored some books on Hayek as well as Keynes (G. R. Steele.)
I don’t think I’ve ever met a very informed critic of AE. The only people I ever seem to be able to find to engage in economic debate are either Marxists or people who don’t really have an understanding of rationality or economics, but instead take positions based on emotional irrationality. Debating or engaging either is, in a word, painful more often than not… if only because it seems repeatedly smashing my head into a wall might produce the same results. Though admittedly, every now and then, I’ve been able to get through to a ‘non-believer’, as it were.
I am an informed critic of AE, but I accept the economic calculation problem as part of the explanation for the failure of socialism and that a modified form of ABCT can explain some business cycles (but not all). It is the mostly the AE methodology that I reject: I think there can and should be exceptions to methodological individualism. Overall, I think Constructive Empiricism is a better methodology of economics.
You are mistaken. I attended a state university in the US and had several Marxist professors (although to be fair, I am lumping Classical Marxists, Analytical Marxists, and Critical Theory Scholars into “Marxism”). On the other hand, none were in the economics department.
Student, your arrogance-to-knowledge ratio is JUST as high as any of the people you’re complaining about. You just happen to have more of both, but fundamentally you have the same basic problem as they do. You want to talk econ principles and specifics? Great. But enough with the incessant meta-arguments about the alleged generalized deficiencies in the attitudes of pro-Austrians-in-general. It just makes you come off as petty and non-constructive.
Well, I think I only seem arrogant because my charm and good-natured smile don’t always travel well across the internet. [H] So I apologize in advance, old boy, if I ever seem rude or petty.
But I really should correct you on one point. I did not make any argument about the general attitudes of pro-Austrians in this thread. All I said was that the quality of a discussion will be determined by its participants. If you don’t find serious people, you won’t find serious discussions and that is true if you’re talking to Austrians, Marxists, Keynesians, whatever. My comments were directly aimed at the OP’s complaint that he could not find any good critics of Austrian Economics (I even threw in the constructive suggestion that he look for criticism in journal articles instead of everyday conversation). So I don’t see how I was out of bounds.
Now, you are right that I was treading too far down that road in the thread on why ABCT is not more generally accepted. But I only jumped in that fire because I had read two full pages of petty meta-arguments about the generalized deficiencies of Mainstream Economists and was more than a little annoyed by the discussion. You could sum up half the comments in that thread as saying “ABCT is not accepted by the mainstream because most academic economists are either stupid, dishonest, or protecting the imbeded interests of central bankers.” Pretty constructive conversation, huh? Funnily enough, you didn’t vocalize any problem with those meta-arguments. [;)] I at least like to think I made a contribution in that thread by deflating the less convincing arguments.
In any case, you are right that these types of conversations generate more heat than light. That’s why I normally try to stay out of them. But, as someone that considers them self an (aspiring) member of the dreaded, bowler-hat-wearing establishment, I sometimes feel the need to defend the mainstream against glib insults and shot-gun complaints. Maybe I shouldn’t. Either way, I will endeavor to stick to substantive discussions from now on, but I must warn you that I am not always good at keeping promises. [D]
I ran into some stephen zarlenga fanbois once. They were terrible nothing but strawmen and copy pasta of pages from his (and others) books. They never formed their own arguments, and when they did they argued dumb stuff. One guy actually argued that gold is worthless as money because it “Has no intrinsic value” but he was arguing that greenbacks DID.
A critic of, say, Marxism, should be able to summarize the Marxist position in such a way that a Marxist will say. “Yep, that is what we Marxists contend.” After which the critic is free to declare what he considers the flaws in Marxism.
