The Washington Post provides something of a shout out to the Austrians, written by the U.S. economics editor of The Economist. Truly, he doesn’t seem to get it.
Among Keynes’s leading opponents were economists of the “Austrian school” such as future Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Austrians considered recessions a natural feature of capitalist economies, and efforts to suppress them via monetary or fiscal policy were apt to distort investment, worsen booms and busts, or lead to inflation. No government planner could know enough about a complex, dynamic economy to competently manage it, and their interference would ultimately lead to a bigger state and socialism.
Recessions a natural feature of the market? Far better to describe them as inevitable responses to the unnatural and artificial boom created by cheap money. As for anti-Fed thinking and its growing prominence, it is seriously doubtful that anyone would be talking about this stuff but for the intellectual influence of Ron Paul.
{ 11 comments }
Ron Paul needs to collect all of these mistakes from editors and authors in newspapers and magazines (and prominent blogs) into one huge list and in his next speech simply correct them all, one by one.
Now is the time to do this before this list grows too big!
He’ll need to take out a two hour prime time special just to take care of the mistakes thus far.
Maybe Ron Paul supporters need to figure out how to get him a two hour prime time special then.
Well…he did have a one hour slot. Granted, it was on an expanded cable network, but it was prime time…
It’s a shame that the third page immediately turns around and defends central banking and Keynesian economics.
Through all the discussions and readings I’ve done over the past few years, I’ve yet to find a single individuals who understands and denies the basic teachings of Austrian Economics. I’ve met people who understand them, and people who deny them, but never do the two meet in one person. That alone makes me more confident of their truth, though their a priori nature is enough.
Good point! The most common objection I hear is “but people *are* irrational, they do stupid stuff all the time!”. The reason markets won’t work is little more than an instance of snooty gossip.
That’s why I need that pocket edition of Human Action, earmarked on the page where Mises literally addresses this concern, ready to bust out whenever needed.
If people are irrational and do stupid stuff all the time, why risk giving them monopoly power and call it government?
Very good observation. I have yet to see a refutation of Austrian theory on an epistemological level (or on any level really).
My rule of thumb:
In 38 years, no non-Austrian or anti-Austrian EVER has the slightest familiarity with basic Austrian School concepts. EVER.
So don’t be surprised when you discover the state of “knowledge” and “understanding” of the next non-Austrian.
To be fair, Tyler Cowen was the only man I have ever seen who wrote a blog post criticizing ABCT and actually understanding it. The article was called “If I believed in Austrian business cycle” then he top-tens a list of items (it’s not really 10 items).
It’s funny because he wrote it in 2005 and it later came to be true
Comments on this entry are closed.