I agree.
It’s not that these are supercilious or frolicsome assertions; I just wouldn’t know where to start. Maybe this is why most individuals tend to argue within their own sector of knowledge; the investment in defining premises is too great once you leave a certain sect of thought.
First off, I agree with the ownership principle of those who transform untouched land. not state proportioned land. Though I do not understand why you would be in support of ‘common property’ (ie state owned property).
Is not ‘common property’ really property owned by the rule makers then? What angels would you find that would not be corrupted into utilizing that property for their own self interests? Why is it better to place this property into the hands of some political elite rather than someone who has rendered value from nature?
If you are hoping for some “small local group” to proportion land to others, have you considered the immense difficulty and technical know-how one must understand in order to change natural land into something usable? Have you considered the difficulty of getting even a small group to agree to anything–or do you plan on utilizing mob rule on those who disagree?
That’s what it sounds like to me. And if that’s the case, I really don’t see how he can form a sound critique of the Austrian school. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an Austrian that thinks WWII ended the Depression.
Now reading part two with a little more scrutiny I’m beginning to see the trend in thought. This individual makes huge leaps in his conclusions, with the fill of lofty words and arrogance (I keep pausing with a dumbfounded huh?). He seems to be decently versed in topics but weak in delineation.
For example, he claims that our dogmatic hatred against the state is dwarfed by the fact that deregulation (via the Glass-Steagall Act) expedited the bubble burst…or that we concentrate too much on sub-prime mortgages versus derivatives (has he even read Meltdown?). Does anyone else notice the illogic? He is mingling Austrian economic theory and prosperity, as if one discredits the other. We support an anti-state regardless of the outcome; who is claiming that deregulation will not lead to a bust? In fact we support the bust as a means to reallocate the mal investment caused by inflationary credit and moral hazard. Then he goes on to assert that we believe a mystical, God-like entity known as the “free market” will arise from the ashes of our destroyed economy and give birth a gold-based money system, and all will be well with the world.
Who is speaking in absolutes like this? What is this hogwash arrogance?
I hadn’t seen that until now.
I won’t relay anymore responses from him unless it’s requested from here first.
I think you need to make new friends.
From his rebuttal of this thread;
As they say at the Ludwig von Mises Institute forums, “Marxists love to use slander. Therefore, anyone who uses slander is a Marxist.”
HA! And he has the audacity to put that in quotation marks!
the correct paraphrase is: “Marxists love to use slander. Therefore, anyone who uses slander is BEHAVING LIKE a Marxist.”
The reason I looked at his post was because I like to see if i know enough AE to be answer arguments against it. Well thatblog is not worth the effort of sifting through the ad hominems. So slugmises, for my part, no need to bring in his new comments.
Why does he attack monetarism? I’m so confused.
Ok, look you guys, you don’t know how they feel. I got a background in conspiracy theory so let me intermediate this.
The new world order is a bunch of international bankers who have all these fancy ideologies trying to explain the world. But truth is, no one knows anything. How do I know that? Well, there’s the left, and there’s the right. Since it’s a dichotomy, they both must be wrong, because the NWO loves fooling people with those. But it’s not just left and right, there’s Keynesian and Austrian schools. Well, too bad, they’re both wrong too. You see, the only right thing we can be sure of is to go the opposite way that the NWO is going. If they like deflation, inflation, we just gotta go somewhere else. If they use well-intended minarchists and socialists alike to enslave everyone, we just got to do something different.
The deal here is, no one knows what’s right in the world, we only know what’s bad, what’s the worst, and to go opposite of that is usually best. So, it can’t be free market, that’s been tried, right, deregulation business? That’s no good, the corporations and the bankers will have a free time with us. But we can’t trust the dirty state either, so… we just got to think some overly complicated business to go against them all and become free from… some Rothschild dudes that live in Europe.
There, that’s the mentality. Or at least how it was for me. It should give you an idea of what goes on there? That’s the problem when you try to boldly assert things from a top-down, inductive perspective, especially coming from a CT POV… you just get in a ton of different places which may or may not be… uh.. self-defeating.
In less words, how do I know I’m right? Because I’m against the NWO status-quo. And how do I know you’re wrong? You’re for it.
Etc.
I am happy that we are the new world order group though. It is cool to be the bad guys. Oh damn, anyone notice all of the connections between AnCap and Austria? I bet we are all being funded by the Hapsburg dynasty. That would be awesome.
Yeah, it would be so cool to have a “Von” in my name! I’d be like the coolest kid in school!![8-|]
In all fairness to the conspiracy theorists, I think there are probably a lot of people in the world with alterior motives who are well aware of the ATBC and Cantillon effects, since they are making a tidy sum of wealth and consolidating power using it. In an interview with Mark Skousen, David Rockefeller admitted he was an Austrian School follower, yet at the same time I think the end of central banking would probably be his worst nightmare come true.
I don’t expect those guys to go against their self interest. Its not like men like David Rockefeller is some evil monster because he profits off our system. The problem is the people who defend and believe in it intellectually. As far as I am concerned I have no beef with the elite, they wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for all of the mindless cops, soldiers, school teachers, and such who believe in them and uncritically spout out what they say.
Traditionally, the “von” specified that you were from a certain house and certain estate. Today however those things are much less relevant that what corporation or organization you belong to. What you might see would be Lew of Mises Institute, or Steve of Apple.
I can’t imagine people being named after their capital, or the brand name that they are associated with through labor. People switch companies and sell capital so often it would be very very impractical.
This is silly - it’s like saying “there’s the caloric theory of heat and the thermodynamic theory of heat… we know that the scientific elites back one or the other, so we must choose neither since either way we’re being fooled.” It seems you reduce reasoning to a matter of herd observation… truth in any subject is wherever the herd is not going. While contrarians play a valuable role in the progress of human knowledge, it is a vast overestimation of the power of the elites to suspect behind every dialetical opposition an elite puppet-master pulling the strings.
Given that knowledge is possible, the machinations of elites are irrelevant… 2+2=4 no matter what the Bilderbergs or anybody else thinks of it. The scientific endeavor in every field of knowledge is equally immune to the imperial aspirations of the elites. Economics is just one among many scientific disciplines and the knowledge which can be had through the study of economics is as immune to the wishes of the elites as any other scientific discipline.
Clayton -
No one has suggested it does. However, prior to the global triumph of fiat money, currency was a commodity or commodity substitute (title to a commodity stock).
Natural fluctuations in the supply and demand of money (the price of money) are no more theft than the natural fluctuations in the supply and demand of any other good or service. The calculated contractions and expansions of the money supply precipitated by central banks to the end of the profligate enrichment of their controlling members, is theft and is criminal. We should string up Ben Bernanke, Jean-Claude Trichet and the rest of the banksters who are holding the entire world hostage in destitute poverty with their paper-money schemes.
It also prohibits anything but gold or silver coin from being legal tender. Regulation of the value of money means establishing the ratio of gold or silver - or whatever is the prevailing monetary commodity - to dollars.
Are you serious? You do realize that the free market is not a “thing” which has “duties” any more than the Earth’s ecosystem is a “thing” with “duties”…
So are water, breathing air, food, and clothing. Land is unique, but it is not uniquely necessary for survival, it is just one among many ingredients.
Bullshit. Artificial land is created constantly along Manhattan island, breakwaters and dykes create land, pole-housing creates land and - most obvious of all - skyscrapers in effect “create land” by multiplying the usable floor space in a give piece of real estate dozens or hundreds of times over. Land has a price like any other good or service. Statutory protections and subsidization of land-owners is theft and a crime but property rights in land are not essentially different than property rights in any other good or service.
Clayton -
I tried reading Menger’s refutation linked on the second part, but I was lost… it seemed they were just nitpicking on definitions, and saying “money doesn’t come about that way because there’s always been a state or priesthood to interfere on it”… Well, that’s not refuting anything, the evaluations on liquidity and volatility (the 7 time limits all seem to deal with volatility IMO) by each person in the market still happen regardless of whether a state has branded a coin or a priest urged its followers to pay him with it, isn’t that right? So it’s not that the premises aren’t applicable or invalid, but that a free market wasn’t allowed to exist?
What came first is irrelevant to me, even though Menger could have been concerned with that, I surely don’t. Does it matter if a government agency by chance developed the Internet before the free market did? Not at all. The state may very well sometimes (rarely) provide something useful for its taxpayers, but it doesn’t justify it’s initial theft. The incentive structure that can be deductively analyzed points to the fact that when something violent occurs, it is most likely for the sole benefit of one party, and the loss of another one, for if it benefited both, it would be voluntary instead. Praxeology, etc.
It wasn’t a bad critique but it’s no refutation at all. Why not instead of nitpicking on one or another thing Menger said wrong, you build a better theory yourself… whoever wrote that must have been wanting to say that a central planner is needed for money to exist so bad, but he just couldn’t spill it out…
Edit: Also, central planners are needed for transportation, hospitals, school… man, someone needs to read some Rothbard.
Or:
Tucker, Spooner, Mises, Auborn Herbert, Thomas Hodgskin, David F. Friedman, to name a few from light Googling.
Thomas Hodgskin was a socialist. [:P]