Y’all are paying way too much attention to the dismissiveness and ignorance of the comments. That’s not the point. Someone needs to get a blog post up saying WELCOME, LEFTIES! THINK WE’RE NUTTY RIGHT-WINGERS? WE’VE SELECTED A FEW OF OUR ZANIEST ARTICLES FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE SO THAT YOU HAVE EVEN BETTER AMMO TO MOCK US WITH WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR CRAZY ADVENTURES ON THE AUSTRO-CONSERVATIVE MILTON FRIEDMAN-WORSHIPPING CULT-LIKE MISES.ORG
And the selection of articles would obviously be good “101”-type articles that offer an excellent introduction to freedom ideology and Austrian economics.
Regardless of what Milty believes, I find it troublesome when his name, or some other name, is envoked instead of an actual argument.
The same could be said for Rothbard. Just because Rothbard said something, doesn’t make it true. You have to refer to the actual argument and what it actually says unto itself, not the owner of the doctrine.
Also, secession is not an economic policy. Nor anything Dilorenzo promoted the other day. Dilorenzo did not even promote the policy in the article he quoted. He just came as an economist.
It’s really stupid, as well as slander, to say ‘johnny reb economics’. But it’s to be expected. Krugman never uses any of his own economics training in his public statements, so he assumes other economists don’t know how to apply economics training either. He uses simplistic ideology. So other economists must as well. It’s really his own projection.
WELCOME, LEFTIES! THINK WE’RE NUTTY RIGHT-WINGERS? WE’VE SELECTED A FEW OF OUR ZANIEST ARTICLES FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE SO THAT YOU HAVE EVEN BETTER AMMO TO MOCK US WITH WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR CRAZY ADVENTURES ON THE AUSTRO-CONSERVATIVE MILTON FRIEDMAN-WORSHIPPING CULT-LIKE MISES.ORG
That a good idea. I kind of wish I had time to play around with it in my head, but it’s off to work now.
“I wonder how many of those commenters knows what Economic Socialism and Economic Fascism is?”
I read most of those comments and I don’t think anyone defined either term, but man were they hung up on that. Funny how people who make such a big deal over a dang word almost never seem to define it themselves, which should be easy if they’re so sure it’s wrong.
Doesn’t socialism = total state ownership over the means of production and facism = private ownership but state control?
EDIT: I did see a few definitions from the progressives posting there, socialism = sharing and facism = conservatism.
Yea. Furthermore Fascism suffers from the exact same economic problems as socialism. An inherent inability to properly economically calculate. The exact differences ranging only in the degree of state intervention. If the state managed all corporations, but called them “Private” we’d have the same exact problems as if all of those corporations were “Public”.
The difference between fascist organizations, and socialist ones, like The USPS, and AIG, can only be found in superficial termonology. The mechanical distinction between these two enterprises cannot be found, they are both directed by the hands of the state. Calling them private is just a strawman, they aren’t entirely private at all. That is the whole reason the word “Fascism” was invented, to point that particular distinction from free-market Capitalism.
I think I get it. So most conservatives and probably all progressives are actually facists. The whole bail-out mentality would be an example, perhaps privatizing gains and socializing losses is a better definition for facism?
I would say they’re both socialist, with fascism being a type of socialism.
The Fascist group wants the state to control private business.
The Socialist group wants the state to own the business.
Both of them fundamentally and mechanically do the same thing. The difference being only being formal.
There are various types of Fascism but the most acurate losely used term is a close State/Private industry relationship. The type of Fascism that Dilo refers to in his texts is most acurately defined in Corporatism. Explained in the second statement of the Fascism wiki page.
In other words, you have large corporations and government, each influencing each other. Using the governmetns monopoly on force to influence the state of affairs in their favor.
Of course those who think that laissez-faire is good for big business and that big government restrains big business, think that free markets are corporatist and therefore fascist. Socialism is the opposite because it’s “for the little people”.
Yea there exists this knee-jerk reaction of contempt for “Big Business” on the left. I can’t help but feel like the conservative movement contributed to the construction of that fallacy.
You see it in the comments on that Krugman post. People are incapable of thinking outside of the Liberal/Conservtive dichotomy. “Obviously if soandso is referring to market’s he must be a conservative, and obviously if he’s a conservative he’s a white nationalist.”
No one ever stops to critically analyze each issue as it is, by it’s own merit. Instead they judge things based on the political ideological club they belong to.
I think the point Mike Konczal (the person that inspired Krugman’s google search on Dilorenzo) was making in his original post was that Tom Dilorenzo is not an expert on monetary policy (and in fact most his writing appears directed toward totally unrelated topics like arguing lincoln was a tyrant). So that is kinda odd that he is being called to speak on the subject.
As for the witnesses, Thomas J. DiLorenzo is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He’s got the Lincoln stuff down pat…
He writes less about the Federal Reserve and monetary policy. He writes about central banking policy at the founding of our country as a debate between Hamilton and Jefferson, but post WWII central banking gets mentioned only as “the Fed and its legalized counterfeiting operations” and that TARP was just like “appointing the US Treasury secretary as the nation’s first financial dictator.” This should make for an interesting conversation on monetary policy.
The response was that DiLo has written 3 seperate books regarding the history of banking, his primary profession is teaching as an economics professor, and as an academic he writes countless articles on the subject as well.
none of that makes him an expert in the economics of monetary policy.
on a quick google scholar search i can’t even find a single peer-reviewed article or even book that he is has written on the subject. and his mises institute fellow website doesn’t even list monetary policy explicitly as one of his research interests (un.http://mises.org/fellow.aspx?id=16
i mean there is really nothing that would suggest he is the best (or even among the best) person to talk to on modern U.S. monetary policy (from the Austrian perspective or any perspective).
Is he an academic that occasionally writes about monetary policy for a public audience? sure. but what kind of credentials are those?
paul krugman writes much more frequently about monetary policy than dilo does, but that doesn’t make him an expert. i would find it very very strange if he was ever called to testify on the subject at a congressional hearing. it is simply not his field of focus.
You take what you can get and he was what could be gotten. But, let’s not pretend that this is a real criticism. Clay was taking shots and so are others on his side opining on it. Krugman’s real criticism is that Austrian economists should not be heard.
What ever happened to that news of Krugman himself possibly being appointed as Fed chairman? I’d love to see that day. There’d be no backing out of his policy prescriptions or being captain hindsight then. Even if he was against the Fed, it could be he is like Allen Greenspan… he knows it is The Ring. But he can’t resist. He knows one day he’ll be called up there.