Jonathan, my apologies but I was just about to say I’m getting out this debate. In spite of the good intentions on behalf of posters such as yourself, Physiocrat, zefreak, Dondolee, Nitro and Angurse (apologies to anybody I’ve missed) this has largely descended into a display of how unreceptive and hostile people can be, manifesting itself it the various ad homines being thrown around. If you wish to continue the discussion by all means send me a message and we can speak through private messages (same goes for other participants) but I suppose I’ll give a short answer to your post lest it otherwise go to waste.
Indeed, that is what it comes down to. Ultimately I and the other posters here have differing conceptions (although some posters seem to slide between the two positions) concerning of what it means to advance “Austrian economics”. The thing is, I can provide a fairly clear set of criteria, others have thus far been unable to do so (besides “getting it out there”). My clear criteria would probably be something like adding to the body of theoretical knowledge or using that knowledge from historical research. Or, of course, passing this knowledge to students who will presumably go along and do the same thing.
Do you have any similar set of criteria? Of course, getting it out there to the people is a nice vision, but ultimately it doesn’t do much good for science unless those people are going to add to the body of knowledge (you’d most likely disagree that adding to the body of knowledge or passing it on to those that will is the only way to advance science, but I’d like to see some justification for that position) it doesn’t matter. And given that the burden of proof is on the RP fan and they’ve failed to deliver, I’m still going to have to weigh down on the negative side.
I think this ultimately comes down to you providing justification for statements such as these “You assume that advancing this particular school of economics can be done by improving upon the theory. No, you’re wrong. Advancing this particular school of economics also includes widening the amount of people that are aware of its existence.”.
One more point, there’s nothing condescending about my argument. Look, I wish Keynesian economics and socialism worked, if they did the world would be a far better place. Likewise, I would like it to be true that the layman could contribute to science, the world of ideas would be far richer and to be honest I think bad ideas would be seen for what they are far more quickly. Now, in this day and age most of the low hanging fruit in economics (and almost all other sciences) has been taken. Economics is a difficult science, far more so than people here (myself included) sometime recognize. If I say that the layman can’t contribute it’s not because I’m planning to be an academic (which I am) and I want to limit the competition but because that’s what I think and that’s how I see the world.
whipitgood, let me say this once more. At the moment, I am one of these “laymen” we’ve been discussing, it’s not that I have it in for the layman or anything like that.
I don’t think I need to say anything more because my response to you is largely as it was to Jonathan. Although, one more point concerns this:
To offer you an analogy, I would hope that no WWII scholar looks back at the Holocaust and thinks “Wow, good thing Hitler killed 6million Jews, otherwise I’d never have got this job at Cambridge”. On the same token, in my opinion it’s perhaps somewhat unfortunate that Ron Paul has presumed to be competent to speak about the issues he does, the fact that this historical accident is responsible for me being brought to Austrian economics is a moot point.
Or, to offer you an analogy perhaps somewhat closer to home, consider the careers of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both economists, whilst truly great in a numerous areas, were brought to fame with their attacks on socialism and their predictions of its consequent collapse. Hayek even states in Individualism and Economic Order that he is not happy about the failures of socialism, he wished ,since the world was moving in the direction of socialism, that it could indeed work for the sake of humanity. Nonetheless, it turns out that it doesn’t and cannot work and he was famous because of this. I daresay Hayek would have chosen to be wrong if it had meant saving millions of lives.
Edit: In case the reader is confused I never meant to imply that Ron Paul was similar to the Hitler or anything along those lines. My point was merely that despite ones convictions concerning the status of an event, moral or otherwise, there needn’t be anything immoral about benefitting from it. In other words, sunk costs shouldn’t enter into analysis concerning the future. I wish to neither disresepct the victims of the Holocaust nor those of Socialism by comparing them to “damage” caused by Ron Paul’s campaign and the subsequent movement, but I think the analogy holds. Despite my opinions concerning his relationship with Austrian economics I very fond of Ron Paul and appreciate the work he has done (and I have said as much on this topic). However, that I appreciate the work he has done needn’t mean that I am entirely uncritical of his campaign.