I’m going to have a stab in the dark: you haven’t read anything of Hoppe regarding epistemology or read any of the modern literature on why fractional reserves cause business cycles by Hulsmann or Block.
On a related issue, I know I’m extreme but, I can’t consider an economist who rejects praxeology as a truly Austrian economist.- the method was at the heart of Menger’s economics.
This is an assertion, sorry to say. Dunno which are these “most” Austrians you’re referring to either.
Please proceed!
I thought that Margaret Thatcher was a supporter of Austrian economics. She was in power for quite a while. Do people here approve of what she did?
I don’t think she was a supported of Austrian economics despite being influenced by Hayek. She was the first prime minister in decades who started trying to reign in inflation. She started the reversal of the trend of nationalisation with a broad programme of privatisation and she challenged and weakened the union stranglehold that it had on the British economy. But besides these things she wasn’t very “Austrian” in her policy making.
Ok, then, let me ask this question - which ruler in which country (since the 2nd world war) has been the most Austrian?
I find it odd that no one has mentioned to this point a very obvious problem for Austrian Economics: government control of the education system. Surely an issue when you consider that most kids are being taught all their cirriculum by people who essentially live off the government teet. Hw do you think so many of the myths and cliches of history, such as FDR ‘saving’ us from the depression, have been started and perpetuated? Without a doubt there are some escapees from the system, but by and large the government controlled school system has been raising good little drones for decades, most of them incapable of critical thought either by nature or permanent atrophy due to nonuse of the required organ: the brain.
This reason is very personal to me because ideological disagreements are often at the root of ended friendships and other relationships with me. Usually going along these lines:
Them: “You know, other people have other opinions about >insert subject<!”
Me: “Have you ever bothered to see if they were right or do you just think anything anyone says is of equal value or veracity?”
Them: “Why do you have to be so hostile…”
And it usually degenerates from there. I haven’t spoken to a friend of mine for a while now because he took major offense to the fact that I noted many roads were private at the begining of this country. I even pointed to some current ones, showed him some of Block and DiLorenzo’s work on the issue. It was a perfectly polite debate, but pointing out that he was factually incorrect about roads having been always provided by the government was taken like some major offense, like I wiped my rear end with his chosen holy book or something. And I often get that response. If someone brings up FDR and how he saved us from the depression, and I ask if he saved us from it why did it last more than a decade, and I get the evil eye like a heretic in the Vatican.
Bottom line is among common every day citizens you’re often debating with people who are speaking from a government education on any given subject, in addition to whatever they’ve garnered from the latest Hillary Clinton speech or episode of Hannity. And it’s paradoxical too. These people wear clothes manufactured on other continents, with raws sourced from yet other continents. They drink coffee daily that comes from thousands of miles away, drive cars with metal in them that came from mines opened decades ago. People today generally tend to sit amidst a pile of reasonably priced market provided plenty, atop a structure of production that spans continents and decades if not centuries of development, and pontificate from the depths of their tenth grade government educations on the matter of what the market is and is not capable of doing/providing. It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. They are in the middle of a virtual miracle of abundance and instead of noticing it they spend their time pecking for rationalizations like hens after seed in a barn yard.
And I say a good part of why is because they are raised to be good, government defending drones in internment camps often referred to as ‘public schools’. As such they live in a different reality where, without the government, the world would have come crashing down long ago. What we see as paradoxes they see as common sense. Like taxes being voluntary. Ask how it’s voluntary when, if you don’t pay, you get fined, detained, arrested, and ultimately killed, and you get anything from a blank stare to the evil eye.
Oh, and please note, I tend to find myself in what one would rightfully call UBER liberal company much of the time. Not by choice, they just seem to be here in NY in higher numbers.
This is as beautifully written as it is true. Bravo!
Gordon Tullock who is, by and large, a mainstream economists (and a Nobel prize winner) has noted that his work in rent seeking was published in neither the AER not the SEJ, simply because the editors of these journals prefer to accept highly “technological” works than innovative works. The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t pay for top journals, who are insulated from the price system, to accept pieces that challenge the mainstream, regardless of their ideological orientation.
The King of Luxembourg.(sp)?
Spelled right, but does he have power?
A few reasons:
Most of modern economics consists not of value-free research, but of shilling for the state.
Institutional factors in economics departments.
Many “Austrians” who present themselves in public as such are not economists and don’t explain Austrian economics.
A sense that the only Austrians people hear about are doom-and-gloomers. People don’t like bad news.
A fear of anti-semitism - they associate Austrian with Paul with anti-Fed with militias.
It just plain doesn’t look scientific.
Perhaps most importantly, it requires a fundamental shift in understanding as to what economics is - and if you want to get policy out of it, also as regard what society is.
What we can do about it -
Get real Austrian economists out into public more to explain our ideas.
Start pursuing Austrianism through other means if the economics profession isn’t receptive. I, for instance, am a grad student in math, planning on studying connections between Hayek and chaos theory.
Be unafraid to present premises, not soundbites. We simply must focus on subjectivism. (A study of past revolutions, by the way, suggests a pattern - first, the revolutionary ideas must be current among the intelligentsia, then events set off the mob. Appealing to the public first doesn’t seem to work for truly revolutionary ideas, only for minor changes. The French Revolution suggests to me that people looking to make fundamental changes in society had better be careful about why their friends are. So, forming temporary alliances with dangerous figures on the right could be, well, dangerous if we are ever successful.) So, there’s no need to avoid dorkdom - we need to appeal to the intellectuals. We already have popularizers - Paul and Schiff come to mind. Professionals need to turn inward and get friends in the academy. Not just economists, but in all subjects, particularly philosophy and politics, but also psychology, math, and so forth. As Israel Kirzner taught last week at FEE, Menger had a flash of insight - similar to seeing clearly, for a short time, when lightning strikes. That flash of insight was that, within the parameter of physical reality (there is no economy on the surface of the sun), everything that we see depends exclusively on the subjective preferences of the consumers. Consumer demands even determine, again, in the context of reality, what raw materials are available - availability depending on such things as the existence of machines to access it. When we say “much of Austrian thought has been absorbed into the mainstream” this is what we mean to leave out - but it is what is absolutely crucial to Austrian thought. The ABCT could be written in neoclassical, formal analysis terms, or in Marshallian terms, even though it wouldn’t be. What is unique about us, what is true about us, is subjectivism. Not just the subjective theory of value (Kirzner sees BB’s acceptance of subjective theory of value without understanding the all-embracing nature of subjectivism as the cause of BB’s mistakes in capital theory) but the subjective theory of everything.
Well, he’s a king…but anyway, wouldn’t not having power be part of being a good Austrian ruler?
Peter Schiff seems to be doing a great job promoting Austrian economics with his blogging / youtube / media exposure.
Ron Paul is not so good at getting his message across if you ask me.
Who else is out there?
Well Luxembourg is certainly rich… but I have two problems with holding up luxemburg as a great example of Austrian economics.
I know nothing about Luxembourg, so I’ve no idea whether it has Austrian policies or not.
I’m concerned about the size of its banking sector - maybe its like Iceland - all a big charade?
I’ll say it again: Jesús Huerta de Soto, Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles.
I’m almost certain that you could argue that praxeology is the natural result of Mengerian thought, but to say that it was at the heart of his method is wrong. Sorry to have to repeat this, but praxeology is a subject area, not a methodology. And praxeology only became a part of Austrian economics with Mises. Also, praxeology isn’t exactly well defined, both Lachmann and Mises used the term in relation to their own economics, but I’m sure you wouldn’t particularly want to be associated with Lachmann.
By the way, Block is an absolute joke at best.
To my knowledge Thatcher was a monetarist sympathizer like Reagan.
By the way, Krugman isn’t an economist: he’s a political shill. And if you ever dare to say that he’s an economist, I will remind you of this nonsense.
There’s no possible way that you can ever call him an economist, Giles. No way. He’s a shill for a big fascist government. Period.