But who’s to say whether or not anyone is properly representing another school’s positions? Who gets to judge?
if you are going to debate Person X, he should agree that you have summarised his position correctly before you attack it. And if he says you haven’t , he should correct you. Then you restate his position. If he now agrees you have got it right, you now know enough to criticise it meaningfully.
This is not a tough standard to meet. This is the bare minimum required for meaningful discussion. Can you criticise the theory of relativity without knowing what it says?
Of course, if by criticism we mean name calling and insulting, well, anyone can do that.
How much research is “necessary?” Since none of us are omniscient, we all arrive at out conclusions based on incomplete research.
Lol, good luck with that.
EDIT: Based on these standards, it’s safe to say that you’re not going to meet anyone who “truly understands AE” who isn’t also an advocate of AE. Therefore, this defense is foolproof.
That depends on your aptitude and the topic of discussion. Self-appointed math wizards oblivious to the existence of addition & subtraction obviously don’t make the cut. The same rule applies to the Marxist I used as an example in my thread post.
No, my post refers to people, who base their first and final conclusions on nothing but straw men.
This is just wrong. If you can’t even reproduce the Marxian theory of crises, then you shouldn’t be debating a Marxian–it’s that simple. In fact, many try to debate Marxists by attacking the LTV, but get ripped into pieces because they fail to understand the complexity of his analysis. Before you enter a debate, there is a certain amount of information you must possess, that is, if you don’t want to embarrass yourself.
Most people don’t go to university to learn anything. They go because social pressure tells us to raise our credit status in society, to get a bigger paycheck. College is the worst because it is purely vocational training. Yet that evidently doesn’t stop the many laughable scrubs that go through it from inflicting intellectual damage on everyone around them before or after graduation.
I’m not saying you’re wrong in the strictest sense. I know you’re right. One shouldn’t engage in debate unless one truly understands what one is debating. But then again…
Who are debates for? The two people having them or the people watching the debate? In other words, I could debate a Marxist on this website and I would certainly win. Not because I know their ideas better or even really understand them nor can I necessarily make a good argument against theirs. I would win because the people on this site are decidedly anti-marxist. So I’ve already won the fight. Whatever I miss out on will be made up by other people on this forum. It works the same way in real life. I could watch a Republican debate a Democrat IRL and even if the Democrat technically “won” the debate, they’d still lose my vote. Why? Because I’ve already made my mind up going in.
I’ve already made my mind up because I accept certain premises as true and others as false. AE, just like Keynesian arguments, are based on premises. I just happen to lean more towards agreeing with certain AE premises rather than certain Keynesian premises. Therefore, I tend to side with AE on things. Not all things, but many. This is why I don’t think too many people are going to meet the criteria this thread demands for a worthy adversary. You’d have to find someone who at once accepts the premises of AE and at the same time doesn’t accept them. It could happen, but it seems like not many are going to live up to that standard.
I also think that I interpreted this thread in a public policy light. Whereas I know many may be speaking of pure economics. We may end up talking past each other for this reason, I don’t know.
QFT. And I’m a bit amazed that anyone should think otherwise.
I’ll quote Bloomj31 here as well and comment a bit:
No, you’d have to find someone who KNOWS but does not accept the premises.
Here is a sample debate:
“If I understand you correctly, you are saying that 2+2=5.”
“Yep.”
“I am pleased that we agree on what your premises are.”
"Aha, you lose! You know my premises.’
“Not so fast. I know them, but I disagree with them because bla bla.”
As for arguing with someone who has already made up his mind, I agree there is no point in that. But there are still a few people out there who will change their minds if shown logically [and politely] that Side A is flawed and Side B is not. [As you have, Mr Bloomj31]. And when debating in a forum, say, that should be your target audience, not the slavering fanatics whose minds are made up anyway.
I’m not sure what “public policy light” means. If it means “How to convince the unthinking masses”, no need at all to know what the other side is saying. Constant slander and name calling will do.
Im a little confused, can you elaborate on the complexity of the LTV?
I thought it was easy to disprove.
So basically, you’re saying that AE is just horribly misunderstood and horribly mischaracterized?
The complexity of economics, in general, is severely underestimated. Neither boiler plate arguments nor appeals to enforcement will get you around that .
Nozick offers a more or less informed critic of AE in his article:
Nozick, Robert (1977): On Austrian Methodology, in: Synthese, Vol. 36, p. 353-392.
Since his normative position is rather close to the Austirans he only refutes AE in some particular points, but its still interesting to read.
Especially interesting is the argument that Mises value theory is contradictory to his conception of opportunity costs.
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for someone on this thread who actually does have a good working knowledge of Marxism/Keynesianism/Neo-Classicalism/etc. to lay out a concise list of their (accurate) primary beliefs and arguments. Not all of us have had the time or the training to dig into the primary sources.
You calculate the value using the average socially necessary amount of labor needed to produce the good.
Can you define “socially necessary” operationally? How does one know how much labor is “needed” without using references to how much labor is used in a competitive market?
I think the existence of a term like “socially necessary” in the definition should automatically disqualify a theory from serious consideration.
You don’t “calculate” SNLT; it’s expressed. Value, for the Marxists (most of which are now Neo Ricardians), is some abstract force determined by production and distribution relations (the division of labor, and bargaining power amongst various classes, which own specific productive forces). They claim that value is a long run frequency which hovers around costs, but is never at its “true value” because market demand (utility) and supply conditions cause divergences. Essentially, it’s a stochastic process. Now, it’s true that prices and profit will fall towards the cost of production, but this has little to do with value, and more to do with the profit/loss and price mechanisms. Essentially, they conflate market processes with a theory of value, and claim that the former is imperfect (exploitative) and therefore disturbs the latter. They want to eliminate the “chaos of markets” so that the “true value” can be expressed (eliminate exploitation).