Wow. Create an account to bump an almost three year old thread. That is something.
I must admit, I actually got through a good number of posts before I realized just how old this whole discussion was. Although I did find it odd Thedesolateone would come out of nowhere to respond.
That being said, I offered my take, similar to this one:
I tend to agree with Conza on this. As I said here,
I think libertarians don’t have a lot of interest in analyzing Marxist theory for the same reason few people find it useful to read science books from the 1840s. Sure it can be interesting to see what uninformed assumptions people are operating under, and it can give you a greater appreciation for your own understanding, but outside of a purely historical or anthropological interest, I see little value in it. Again I think time would be better spent testing your theory against reality, and spreading the ideas of liberty.
And here:
…as I said elsewhere, I liken the suggestion of learning the kind of modern macro taught in most classrooms to studying how to cut and splice physical celluloid film, or reading science books from the 1920s…so that you can “fully appreciate” how far we’ve come and “understand the foundations” or some other nonsense like that.
Yes, it is helpful to understand a lot of mainstream macro, if for no other reason than that’s what so much of the world’s policy is rationalized by (despite the nonsense that it is), and of course most micro is essential…but those are generally concepts that will be included in any Austrian analysis (e.g. law of supply and demand, law of unintended consequences, etc.) But to try to claim that someone should waste a considerable amount of time learning that the universe revolves around the Earth, just because that’s what a lot of other people believe…or that you should dedicate scores of hours schlepping through The General Theory and other incomprehensible tomes so that you might better learn the foundations behind the mathematization of government regulation and useless concepts like GDP and CPI, just because that’s the way economics is currently done by the mainstream, is rediculous.
There is something to be said with being at least somewhat familiar with the opposing side’s view…but I’m not about to dedicate any time reading The Flat Earth Society handbook.