I’ve already posted 2 other questions and I thank you for the response to them. You’re giving me lots of great things for my paper! [:D]
How did you come to subscribe to Austrian Economics?
I started getting into it when someone told me to watch the Zeitgeist video and I became aware of how the Federal Reserve operated…and here I am today!
-Tyler Jewell
By using my brain and refusing to take garbage seriously.
I came to AE via Ron Paul.
I bet you are a lot of fun at parties. [:D]
HA! Well put! [:D]
My interest in transhumanism and Extropy led me to Rand, which led me to Mises and Rothbard.
For me it was my studies in complexity and emergence, and AI theory that led me to the Austrian School (and Rand as well).
Ron Paul.
I’d never heard those ideas formulated before seeing Ron Paul, and they just clicked with me instantly. The book ‘Market for Liberty’ lead me to mises.org where I found this incredible wealth of information, and I’ve been devouring it ever since.
Fun is anti-reason.
(I probably am though)
My subscription was gradual, yet unintentional.
RP mentioned it a few times, & in the beginning I was indifferent to economics as a whole, mainly because I never could understand what the hell it all meant (aside from general concepts like supply & demand, but then only well on a micro level), & yet I considered myself reasonably intelligent, so the paradox further stymied me.
It wasn’t until I actually consulted wikipedia on economics while @ work that I begun to understand some important things:
1.) There was more than one school of economics (check)
2.) Economists don’t even understand Economics half the time (check)
3.) Keysnesian Economics was never supposed to make sense in the first place (check)
It gradually clicked when I read up on the AE specific entry, and I realized I understood AE & the STV far more than I did with Keynesian Econ & the LTV (Labor Theory of Value), probably because it made far more sense to me, & without using overtly complicated jargon & graphs (AE doesn’t need either, but I’m sure in some way they might help).
AE was also more established (older than Keyenesian Theory), did not generalize vauge fantasies about previous events (such as The Great Depression), had a certain apolitical (insofar as not especially siding with either two major parties, at least when the Old Right died) bent to it, & did not force me memorize absurd mathmatical formulas that went over my head anyways because I found no use in anything beyond basic algebra (one of my aims is/was to be a writer, so consumer math in high school pretty much did it for me).
AE was also not inherently collectivist, unlikes Keyenesian Econ, & while AE greatly sides with the individual, I do not see it explictly favoring the atomized individual over society or other individuals at all (which is what I would imagine many AE detrators would whine & complain about on their newspaper “blogs”).
Same with me.
Came across http://www.campaignforliberty.com/
Peter Schiff
I came to AE by reading economics (smith,cantillon, bastiat, and turgot specifically) and thomistic theology. It is interesting to note how the methods of thomism are equal to the methods of AE. AE is also a more systematic and complete rendering of old classical economics and deserves to be truly called neoclassical.
This was a big turning point for me. One of the first things I did at Mises.org was stumble on a Rothbard presentation MP3, and he was explaining the STV vs. the LTV. And it just made sense. Like a lot of what Ron Paul said, just made sense. I probably listened to that MP3 three or four times.
And I am one of the least well read and educated people on this forum, but the practical nature of AE makes it so easy for people to learn. It’s very attractive because (I think I might be paraphrasing Lew Rockwell or Tom Woods here), AE has the ability to explain the world in a simple logical manner and its truth telling power is very attractive.
And I suppose that is what happened to me. So much of my doublethink and confusion just dissolved once I started seeing things as they were, not as I was told to see them. I can honestly say that AE has improved my life, by empowering me through an epistemological approach to understand Human Action (praxeology).
Insofar as it is an extension of Aristotelianism, right? There is a lot of overlap then, I agree.
By reading Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, and seeing my worldview on how money, banks, and credit works do a 180. This was after studying a lot of Keynesian and Monetarist crap in undergrad, and after years (wasted) reading the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, the Economist, and other supposedly informed (about economics, at least) business publications.
Then it was further reading in Austrian economics and Mises.org that made me realize many other liberal views I held were wrong.
But it was a pretty fast journey after realizing the extraordinary chains placed on us by fractional reserve and central banking.
Got interested in Economics when I listened to the market and political news in early 07. Began reading. Am a mathematician and engineer. The Keynsian and Neo-Clasicists math is terrible, unbelievably bad, unworkable. It make me furious. There absolutely has to be something better. Something that won’t make me mad and that I enjoy reading and learning.
Ever since I was young I enjoyed some aspects of politics; as I got older, that interest grew.
Later on, in my adult years, I took more and more of an interest in it, large, in part, thanks to a close friend who a physicist and amateur Austrian economist. Anyway, I eventually started studying some of it on my own, but, it’s really only in the most recent years that I’ve taken an interest in it.
Ultimately, Austrian econ just makes sense to me, and is also the most liberty-based economics system I’ve seen to date, and it’s a system that most coincides with my Biblical beliefs.
I was actually gradually led into AE through the Firefox extension StumbleUpon. Zeitgeist made me interested in economics after its discussion of the FED and FRB, and after that it was only a matter of time before I’d found Libertarianism. I added some more pro-liberty sites to my favorites, and one day StumbleUpon brought me a Mises Institute article. It made sense, and was well written so I favorited it, but it quickly fell out of my mind. Over a month or so, though, I’d racked up 15 Mises articles and I finally realized they were all from the same site (I’d never paid attention to the banner, really, and ran through the text) so I decided to bookmark the Mises homepage and ever since I’ve been reading the daily articles and spreading the good news of AE.
I read Callahan’s Economics for Real People and Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson to introduce myself to economics, still I didn’t really have much of an idea what AE was about, or what seperated it from other schools of thought, so I suppose it was only after reading Hoppe’s Economic Science and the Austrian Method that I became an adherent to AE.
I would read the paper, “you suck” and so do you. You both suck. Despised politicians in general. I knew no labels fit me properly, I was on my own - though I didn’t know what I was. I thought I was the only one. “None make any sense.”
Whilst overseas, I had time to read. I wanted to read the classics. So I got The Republic - Plato, Ethics - Aristotle, Machiavelli - The Prince…
Loved Ethics. Looking at the modern day I became a Chomskyite (not fully fledged, but I was well on my way), he made sense on Foreign Policy - US was an Empire etc. I was listening to one of his videos (his voice literally points you asleep / into a trance) and someone had spammed “Ron Paul - America’s Last Hope”.
Who is Ron Paul? I asked. And then I found out. About 3 days of trying to find something overtly wrong with the guy, I couldn’t.
Slowly shed fallacies, but also pushed me into all his positions. Regulation is bad, interventionism is bad etc. I believed him, he was honest, integrity, he got ridiculed by the Republicans - must be good right?
Then I knew the positions and soundbites, but not the underlying why and how. I think Rally of the Republic, Woods speech - “Austrian Economics getting cheered”. - So I thought I need to see what the fuss was all about.
5 months listening to basically all the Mises Audio etc. [:)] Reading pdf’s, articles on here and LewRockwell… and viola.
I think I hated the politicans and political parties enough, all I was looking for was a reason / justification to get rid of them hah.. I found it.