Roger W. Garrison delivers a lecture on “capital-based macroeconomics” at the 2010 Mises University.
Between that and me finishing the first chapter of Rothbard’s MES, I’m learning to respect Austrian theory.
It’s about frecking time. 
You really want to read his ‘Time and Money’. You’ll love it, I think.
good ol’ Roger Garrison
You must read this paper, it’s awesome:
It may be an interesting experiment to revisit some of your early threads in light of your new perspective.
A good idea if you walk alot is to download all the mises U 2010 lectures on to your MP3 and listen to them while walking places. it’s great until someone tells a joke and you start laughing and everyone looks at you and ask “what are you listening to?”…
Strangeloop,
Since you are apparently reading MES and Garrison’s work, do you have any thoughts about the apparent contradictions in their presentation of business cycle theory?
For example, Garrison clearly believes that investment and consumption should rise in tandem during the boom phase. By contrast, Rothbard believes investment should rise relative to investment and that it is in fact a subsequent increase in consumption that reveals the investments in early stages of production to be bad investments (see quote below).
First, the money supply increases through credit expansion; then businesses are tempted to malinvest—overinvesting in higher-stage and durable production processes. Next, the prices and incomes of original factors increase and consumption increases, and businesses realize that the higher-stage investments have been wasteful and unprofitable. The first stage is the chief landmark of the “boom”; the second stage—the discovery of the wasteful malinvestments—is the “crisis.” The depression is the next stage, during which malinvested businesses become bankrupt, and original factors must suddenly shift back to the lower stages of production. The liquidation of unsound businesses, the “idle capacity” of the malinvested plant, and the “frictional” unemployment of original factors that must suddenly and en masse shift to lower stages of production—these are the chief hallmarks of the depression stage.
http://mises.org/rothbard/mes/chap12f.asp#11B._Credit_Expansion_Business_Cycle
Note: I think this actually why Boettke recently said “And keep in mind that in the standard textbook presentation of the Mises-Hayek story we do not see comovement, but the distortion of the structure of production, which is then corrected during the bust phase.”
Oops. I re-read your original post and noticed you said you were finishing the first chapter of the MES. I thought you said the whole thing. 
Well, be sure to post when you finish chptr 2. I would like to hear your opinion on Rothbard’s description of how partial equilibrium in a single market is accomplished. it is actually nothing at all like mainstream equilibrium process stories (walrasian auctioneer, cobweb model, etc). so it would be neat to hear your thought.
All of the Mises University videos are great.
When you’re a really nerdy Austrian, the Austrian Scholars conferences are very good too. They really broaden the dicsussion.
What did you like so much about the first chapter of MES?
Thanks! I filed the link away for when I can print it off and dedicate some attention to it (later this week).
Unfortunately, I’m entirely autodidactic in my learning of economics, so while I’ve read about the Walrasian auctioneer, I’ve never heard of the cobweb model. The mathematics I’ve learned for economics (e.g., linear programming, etc.) is, likewise, entirely self-learned. So, I’m sure I miss out on plenty of worthwhile content available through commonplace lectures, etc.
I can already tell that my fundamental beef with Austrianism holds: verbal logic isn’t more “meaningful,” but rather more inexact than mathematical formulae. When Rothbard invokes “uncertainty,” for instance, I expect more rigorous treatment, but he always leaves these concepts at their most commonsense level.
I believe Rothbard is very deliberate and very thorough in his exposition of Austrian economics; for instance, I’m not sure anyone could fail to understand what the law of diminishing marginal utility is after finishing chapter 1 of MES. However, he also glosses over other topics or too easily presumes higher ground in scholarly debates (e.g., his appendix bashing mathematical economics was incredibly weak).
But, it’s easy to see that Rothbard has mastered his field, and he conveys that knowledge skillfully. In fact, I checked the index to see what other topics he addresses, so that I could copy sections of his book to help others understand key economic concepts. I figured Rothbard would be the source for the ultimate “dumbed-down” explanation (and I mean that as a compliment), but I was surprised to see “comparative advantage” missing (I find this idea instrumental when discussing protectionism, etc., but I never articulate it convincingly).
Any comments on this?
Chapter 2.
And comparative advantage, all though important, really isn’t that big of an idea. Rothbard’s main contributions are in chapter 5 through 10.
I can’t judge on 11 and 12. 12 seems more like a copy of Mises (besides introducing his own typology) and I’m not familiar enough with the economics of money and banking to judge if chapter 11 is new or a good repetition of other people’s works.
Didn’t that already happen (with Human Action)?
Well, I have always had admiration for Ludwig von Mises. Reading HA can only affirm his brilliance. But, after sifting through mainstream economics, I lost more and more appreciation for Austrian economics. At this point, though, I’m more willing to give Austrians credit on their scholarship. (But don’t count me as a convert just yet.)
Now that you’re reading the material though, your critiques and issues will have a quality to them. I don’t expect people to agree with Mises and Rothbard, but only to be knowledgeable enough to make a critique based on their work than a second hand perception or regurgitation of it.
It might be under the title “Law of Association”, which was what Mises also referred to the law as. Admittedly, I did find Rothbard a little shallow on comparative advantage. What do you think of the following as an exposition of the law?
WTF?! The law of comparative advantage is probably the most surprising and important conclusion reached in all of the social sciences let alone economics. It is kind of a big deal.
Subjective value statement versus subjective value statement?
Yes, yes, Ricardian law of association makes society possible, but when Rothbard wrote MES comparative advantage was a well settled idea. No need to go on and on and on about the reason why it is true. (As opposed to his chapters on production.)