Again, and I find myself saying this a lot these days, but just because the market is imperfect does not necessarily or logically mean that government intervention is appropriate (the very point of this thread before it got derailed).
well i wasn’t offering an argument for intervention. i was simply filling in the huge hole you left in the discussion by inaccurately describing asymmetric information’s relevance for EIT’s comment (not to mention your total neglect of externalities). shrug
but its funny how some posters can never seem to stick to an economics discussion. apparently, by simply suggesting that asymmetric information problems can interefere with the price system, I was tacitly aiding the “enemy” by opening an argument for intervention. here i was thinking i was just answer an economics question in the economics question section.
normative arguments != positive arguments. maybe we should all work on that distinction.
It’s not the market’s fault that people are imperfect. And it makes no sense whatsoever to give certain elected (imperfect)persons privileges over others to allegedly address the issue.
Believe it or not Student, not everything is about you. You can’t just hijack threads and expect everyone to cater to your demands. The fact of the matter is that asymmetric information does not justify government intrusion in anyway whatsoever, as the OP suggested. The fact that you never made such a claim is entirely immaterial to this thread. And once again, Hayek’s coordination argument and Mises’ calculation argument are almost exclusively about asymmetric information and they are uniquely Austrian, especially the more technical aspects (which are debated to this day).
oh, sometimes it is hard to tell if you are talking about me or not. i mean, in your first response on this page were making these weird passive aggressive comments about unnamed “neoclassical economists”, so I just assumed you were referring to me. sorry for the confusion.
anyways, i did not set out to make this about “me” or derail the thread. in fact, i was just trying to make sure that EIT understood the full implications of asymmetric information and externalities for the functioning of the price system. i don’t think your post did that at all (as noted earlier, i don’t believe the insight that people can’t read each other’s minds is the most important implication of asyminf and you didn’t really address externalities at all). so i was trying to correct the situation for EIT’s benefit.
really my only goal was to address EIT’s “thoughts”. specifically, i wanted to make sure he saw the proper application asymmetric information and externalities to this situation and perhaps also to convince him that these concerns do not invalidate the central austrian insights from the calculation debate. and this seems pretty obvious if you read my first two posts in the thread (though flic’s “quiz” did take things way off course).
sorry you thought i was trying to derail things. i apologize.
Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Your disagreement with Austrian economics is evidence that you are ignorant about Austrian economics.
Don’t mind that your references to Stiglitz and Akerlof are met with silence. Rather than engaging you in debate, all Austrians need to do is quiz you on how well you know their knowledge! Even if you demonstrate sufficient familiarity with their beliefs, you are an unbeliever, and so that must mean you don’t know all of their perfectly convincing ideas.
Close. Ignorance about Austrian economics can mean disagreements are baseless. Surely you don’t think arguments based on ignorance are robust?
Ah yes, the famous Austrian critic Stiglitz!
I ask that people criticizing AE be familiar with Austrian methodology. I don’t think that is unreasonable.
I don’t have a problem with people disagreeing with Austrian ideas. I don’t have an issue with Bryan Caplan. The difference between Bryan Caplan and a wannabe critic, is that Caplan has some idea of what he is talking about.
When every debate with non-Austrians degenerates into, “You just dont know our arguments!” then I find it completely unproductive.
Rather than quizzing another person (a person, by the way, who is consistently polite and intelligent), just present your counterarguments. Rather than trying to highlight ignorance, offer better evidence.
In philosophical debates, once both people know what the other is talking about, there isn’t much room for disagreement anymore. It isn’t unproductive to say that somebody who is disagreeing with you about something philosophical just doesn’t understand what you are saying, simply because that is almost always the reason why there is a “disagreement” in the first place.
Wouldnt if be fun if an admission criteria was introduced?
“Guys you can criticize AE or ABCT, anything you want, but first you have to summarize what it says. That way we are all on the same page, ready to hear you. Then you may have at it.”
I find Esuric, for example, to be an informative commentator (even if he can be caustic at times). However, to be frank, you and I could never exchange words again, and I wouldn’t mind. Esuric brings knowledge to the table; you have only attempted to undercut non-Austrians as ignorant. That may or may not be true, but it would be much more compelling if you actually discussed ideas like intertemporal disequilbrium and other staples of Austrian thought–at this point, I’m not even sure you do know any more than me.
To claim that another doesn’t know is one thing, to prove it with counterarguments is another. I would readily concede, for instance, that Jon Catalan knows a heck of a lot more on ABCT than I do, and so I respect his opinion on the matter. However, it seems to me that most of the “You don’t get it!” arguments come from people that don’t usually demonstrate expertise, either. Furthermore, a debate is useful when all parties are exchanging information, not when it gets dead-ended by “You don’t get our methodology!”
Honestly, I’m not here to propose an etiquette for debate. Go ahead and say what you want to say however you want to say it. But, personally, if you’re attempting to enter this debate without addressing any of the points that EconomistInTraining was actually discussing, then I have very little respect for what you’re bringing to the discussion.
It looks like we are in agreement. I was just making sure that you understood that most philosophical disagreements do simply boil down to people misunderstanding each other. If you were just saying that you think that it is unproductive when somebody just tries to stifle the debate by saying “you don’t understand what we are saying, try again!”, without any further explanation, then I agree with you.
ls and others keep implying that i was or am ignorant about something, but as far as I can tell that has never been demonstrated.
and i don’t think “guess which counter argument i’m thinking of” is a particuarly good way of deciding who knows what they are talking about and who doesn’t. as i noted earlier, the entire approach is flawed. for example, flic didn’t at all mention the notion held by some austrians that the concept of market failure is flawed, which seems like an like an important objection some austrians would have to the way i phrased my question–does that mean he was unaware of the concept?
honestly, i am kind of annoyed we are even having this discussion. when i see someone saying something i believe is incorrect about mainstream econ, i try to correct them. i would expect others to do the same to me if i said something incorrect about austrian econ.is that really too much of a burden??? i wouldn’t think so. and thus far no one has said i actually said anything incorrect about austrian economics, they are just trying to infer if i am ignorant about one topic or another.
of course, the fact is you can’t demonstrate ignorance unless we actually has austrian “admissions” exams. but do we really want to even entertain that silly notion? how many of you would be willing to take similar mainstream econ “admissions exams” before running off at the mouth about the flaws of “neoclassical” or “keynesian” economics?
again, this is really all kind of silly.
PS* This isn’t to say I am not ignorant of somethings about austrian econ. I am sure I am. I just don’t think I have shown ignorance of any of the topics thus far discussed.
So basically, you were not accurate when you said you find these discussions COMPLETELY unproductive.
I have challenged a lot of people, Austrian and otherwise. Your issue (and also of your 2 peers in this thread) consistently seems to be, (as pointed out by Esuric, the informative commentator) that you think the discussion always revolves around you. You’re unable to de-personalize a critique, and when your arguments are weak, frequently retreat to victim mode. While it makes good theater, it is lousy debate.
Claiming I am mean or bad, or I have motives A, B or C do nothing to increase your veracity or capability in debate. You’re trying to stand on the shoulders of someone as you drown them. It’s a self-defeating endeavor.
Btw, there was a debate on staple Austrian thought, and you seemingly wanted little part of it.
Complaints about effort, time, others (what else is new, blaming others, deserved or not, is standard fare) and disinterest. This is what you brought to the table when there was a serious debate about methodology (praxeology) offered by arguably one of the most capable Misesians today.
liberty student, I willingly consented to a debate; of course, I had no anticipation that my fellow debator would be so long-winded. And, frankly, regurgitating arguments from John Searle doesn’t really captivate me. Furthermore, the argument had little to do with Misesian methodology. Searle, so long as he acknowledges third-person objectivity (which he does), never denies that economics can be approached from an empirical methodology. More than anything else, all Adam Knott was doing was arguing for qualia.
Furthermore, I have already engaged in that debate with Grayson Lilburne, so you can see my fuller responses from there.
it seems to me that liberty student is engaging in what looks like sincere trolling. like normal trolling, he isn’t actually contributing to the substance of the discussion, he’s just derailing the thread into personal attacks. but, unlike typical trolling, he seems to really care about what he’s saying. making snide comments about sl/eit/etc matters to him.