We should pool some money together and offer prizes to people who can genuinely refute Austrian school books like Callahan’s Economics for Real People or Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. Or maybe we could pay people to write a summary of every single chapter.
Something like that could really open some people’s minds and bring them into the fold.
EDIT: I will delete any and all posts that are not relevant to the thread topic. It’s good to be the king.
I tried bringing up this idea not long ago, I had the idea that people on the forums should use the wiki to collaborate and make study guides for important Austrian works.
I would pay for translations to spanish, french, japanese, chinese, hindi and german.
If we pool money, why not use it to make a profit? There has to be a way to do this, and make money off it. Then the incentive to invest is stronger than just an ideological indulgence, and the potential for success goes up when we can measure the value of what we are doing.
Not to mention, that a profit encourages continuity ofthe project.
Cite studies showing the minimum wage laws, and other such non-free market economics failing, and studies that show free market economics working.
Mary Ruwart’s Healing our World in an Age of Aggression comes to mind here
I was converted when I tried reading Keynes’ General Theory and it didn’t make sense to me, but then I read Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson and it made total sense.
Sage made a list of articles about converting Minarchists to Anarchism. I thought that was rather productive.
Bingo!! Fact and Logic … those are the only two element upon which arguments can be substantiated. Everything else is balderdash or BS or Hogwash. Too many times we are confronted with an emotional outpouring of an illogical thought process, voiced by a raving lunatic. Onlooker try to portray the intercourse as an argument.
I read the General Theory a while back. It was one of the most poorly written books I ever read. I had to read it multiple times before I fully understood it. The book contradicted it’s self many times…But that is what you expect from A Keynesian.
As for Economics in One Lesson…That is a true classic. I converted quite a few people with thanks to that book. The more people we can get to read that book, the better.
I totally agree. And in my opinion, the reason it converts people is because it explains, very simply and easily, concepts that were convoluted by Keynes. It also offers a very optimistic, individualistic view of economies whereas Keynes basically says that only a few people can understand the economy and they all work for the government, best to trust them. Which is obvious nonsense.
The real power of AE, is in its capacity for telling simple truths.
This.
As a practical matter I don’t think this is workable because of the lack of clear criteria in determining whether a refutation is valid. It’s one thing to offer a prize for a proof of a mathematical theorem, but involving actual money in a debate about Austrian economics seems like way to make a sincere exchange of ideas even more difficult. Whatever anybody says, somebody else will accuse them of only saying it because of the money at stake.
This is what I’ve been thinking of myself. We could start out by buying books in bulk from Amazon and Mises.org and getting a discount due to volume. Then, we could create a separate website with an easy to remember domain name like “econbooks.net,” and sell the books with a comparable price to Amazon and Mises.org. We could buy a couple advertisements on talk show radio and create pamphlets and pass them around in order to attract attention.
This sounds like a good plan…how many books are you guys looking at?
Or more specifically, what size investment are we talking about here?
Better yet, we invest in capital goods. i.e Print on demand system…
Actually I don’t think competing with mises.org is a very productive idea. But something advertisement related may be smart. It would probably have to be internet based, though.
Agreed, I don’t think it’s worthwhile competing unless you were considering establishing in a different country to save on shipping costs (for example in Australia it’s ridiculously expensive to ship from Mises.org). Plus this thread is about “converting non-Austrians”, I have a feeling you would have to convert them – or at least get them questioning their current stance – before they would consider purchasing and then reading a book on Austrian econs.
You want to start an AE revolution? Find a way to get High School kids into it. It’s friggn sad that many people graduate high school without having taken an Econ class. How about scholastic outreach to hich schools. I’m sure you can convince a high school civics teacher, I mean coach, to give you a few weeks to open some eyes. Well, if you can get by the school board that is…
Oh snap, screw the school board. I scholarship program! Submit essays on AE. Check out the Ayn Rand scholarship program. That was my into into Rand and I got hooked on her in highschool.