The Austrian Deception - A georgist critique

Miscellaneous General
1

I happen to know someone who doesn’t like the Mises Institute and he wrote (or helped write I guess) a pretty lengthy critique. I skimmed through it, and in his defense it’s not really an official critique but more of a rough draft for one - but he and others did want me to post it here.

http://libertyrevival.wordpress.com/the-austrian-deception/

There it is. Read all 3 parts.

He also wanted me to to tell you to “shove Ceasar’s gold up your ***.” And to read his articles against gold..

http://libertyrevival.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/gold-and-regress/

Start there I suppose.

Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just trying to relay information.

2

Mises pointed out that the followers of the Marxist school of economics refute not the ideas and evidence of their opponents, but instead slander their opponents personally.

So what we have here is a Marxist rebuttal of the Austrian school.

The first attempt to actually come up with something relevant is this:

“This imperfect policy of non-intervention, or laissez-faire, led straight to a most hideous and dreadful economic exploitation; starvation wages, slum dwelling, killing hours, pauperism, coffin-ships, child-labour–nothing like it had ever been seen in modern times”

Another thread educated me about this, linking to:

http://media.mises.org/mp3/lefevre/127.mp3

http://media.mises.org/mp3/lefevre/128.mp3

http://media.mises.org/mp3/lefevre/129.mp3

http://media.mises.org/mp3/lefevre/130.mp3

Then comes:

“It is a royal libertarian notion, and not a classical liberal ideal, to treat land as state property, for if land did not rightfully belong to the state, how could the state have granted it to favored citizens?”

This is Austrian economics? That land is State property?

At this point I decided not to waste my time reading anymore. But I did find this nugget:

“the cost of silicon chips goes down as demand goes up”

Really?

Ah here we are. At the very very end:

"In the following essay in this series, I wll directly attack the logical fallacies of the Austrian School of Economics, starting with the Gold Standard."

An admission that this whole essay up to now is totally irrelevant. Why not tell us right away?

Stay tuned for part 2

3

Georgists aren’t marxists.

4

Who said they were? I said the methods of debate used in that article are marxist, i.e. mere personal slanders.

5

Well first of all there are more than just personal slanders in that article. The point which I gather went straight over your head was that land is a resources which is qualitatively different from regular capital and that it should be treated as common property rather than a resources like any other to be homseteaded. It also makes the point that in the past land was monopolised by the state and then portioned out instead of allowing free homesteading which lead to such travesties like the industrial revolution. A point which is often ignored by vulgar libertarians.

Also it isn’t a Marxist tactic to use personal slanders except perhaps to indoctrinaires who haven’t read a word of Marx.

6

Libertarian communism, it never goes away.

7

land is scarce and rival ergo you are wrong.

if you wish to amuse us by asserting that land is super-abundant and/or non-rival you could try it in our thread graveyard maybe?

8

Maybe you should give the newbies a chance to argue their point before threatening to silence them.

9

What in that post would give you the impression that I was any sort of communist? You know that you can support free markets and still advocate possesion/use based ownership in land right?

10

How exactly was the industrial revolution a travesty?

11

Paging Dr. Laughing Man, paging Dr. Laughing Man.

12

Don’t feed the trolls. These people just want attention and hits to their site.

13

The idea that land must be owned in common.

14

Are you calling me a troll?

15

Sorry, I don’t think that came across properly. I agree that you can own land since it’s a scarce resource. I just disagree on the nature of the ownership. For starters I think that a tax on unimproved land values would be legitimate although not desirable since it would imply some kind of state which would probably lead back to corporatism. I also disagree that absentee land ownership is legitimate.

Well despite the improvement in productive forces it only benefited a small wealthy minority of the population. The lower classes were hung out to dry by various barriers imposed by the state including it’s monopoly on land.

16
17

Your friend is.

18

Although the state did hurt the lower class, as it always hurts everyone, the Industrial Revolution absolutely benefited everyone. The lower classes improved their wealth both in relative and absolute terms.

State ownership is bad. Private ownership of land is not and has not been detrimental to anyone.

19

Goddamn those Capitalist pigs for giving the poor and marginalized an opportunity to voluntarily apply their labour in a profitable way that had hitherto been unprecedented. That the land was state owned and portioned off to connected interests, while vulgar indeed, was irrelevant in sparking the IR. You may as well be railing against technological advancement.

And land as common property? So recently human nature has fundamentally changed and the tragedy of the commons is no longer an issue? Neat. How does one determine the use of such common property? Do we have to check with everybody as to what the appropriate use is? What if later generations disprove? If merely existing is license to restrict the actions of other freely associating people then we’d better wait until people stop being born so we can make sure we reach a fair consensus.

20

Although the poorer classes probably found State-imposed barriers to the acquisition of land, they were hardly “hunt out to dry”. Real wages increased considerably during the Industrial Revolution, largely thanks to increases in production. The industrial revolution benefited everybody, not just the rich.