Why isn't the Austrian School of Economics more mainstream?

[I_Ryan]

@hayekianxyz

Once again, I can’t say I find this particularly persuasive. I find the whole idea of a “power elite” to be very dubious, but even disregarding this, if a “power elite” really did exist and were buying off the economics profession, presumably one would expect to see that economists would be more in favour of state intervention in general than intellectuals other “neutral” disciplines. Yet, economists are far more in favour of the market and free trade than other scholars.

I responded to that here:

@I. Ryan

@hayekianxyz

Valject, my point about economists being inclined towards the market is that public opinion matters, when libertarians such as Hans Hoppe and Murray Rothbard discuss the corruption of the intellectuals they say that the state uses academics to control public opinion. Presumably if this were true, and given the importance of economics, one would expect the state to make a greater effort (however, they might do that) to ensure that economists are less free market than, say, sociologist, who nobody listens to. Yet the opposite true, economists come closer on average to libertarian views than any other discipline with groups such as Marxists and Post-Keynesians being shunned.

It might just be easier to find to employ anti-market non-economists than anti-market economists.