I pretty much agree with this. There’s a bit of a line to be drawn since it’s not completely the same thing, but I liken the suggestion of learning modern macro to studying how to cut and splice physical celluloid film, or reading science books from the 1920s…so that you can “fully appreciate” how far we’ve come and “understand the foundations” or some other nonsense like that.
Yes, it is helpful to understand a lot of mainstream macro, if for no other reason than that’s what so much of the world’s policy is rationalized by (despite the nonsense that it is), and of course most micro is essential…but those are generally concepts that will be included in any Austrian analysis (e.g. law of supply and demand, law of unintended consequences, etc.) But to try to claim that someone should waste a considerable amount of time learning that the universe revolves around the Earth, just because that’s what a lot of other people believe…or that you should learn about the mathematization of government regulation and useless concepts like GDP and CPI just because that’s the way economics is currently done by the mainstream, is rediculous.
There is something to be said with being at least somewhat familiar with the opposing side’s view…but I’m not about to dedicate any time reading The Flat Earth Society handbook.