Discussion of the Austrian School

[Rshermr]

Actually they believe in capitalism. East/West Germany, Cuba/Florida. Did you hear that China just switched to capitalism and instantly eliminated 40% of world poverty? Does that tell you that the Koch brothers, Jefferson, Locke, and Friedman are right or wrong?

The Koch brothers got their fortune from their father, Fred, who was one of the founders of The John Birch Society. And Fred was a business partner with Stalin.
You like the koch brothers??? I thought you disliked Stalin.
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald Tells Truthout How the Koch Brothers Endanger Democracy and Our Health

Back to the meds, ed.

you win $1 billion for being billionth person on internet to use that insult and think it was very clever!!

Actually the Koch brothers believe in capitalism. East/West Germany, Cuba/Florida. Did you hear that China just switched to capitalism and instantly eliminated 40% of world poverty? Does that tell you that the Koch brothers, Jefferson, Locke, and Friedman are right or wrong?

So you do like stalin. Commie.

 

[Shanty]

I have been reading some stuff mainly about Rothbard, which has got me to thinking. Is there any interest in a somewhat technical and nerdy discussion of the "Austrian School" and should it be here or in the CDZ? My first choice would be to put it here. What say you?

Sure. How much of their failed school of thought should we poke fun of?

 

[Rshermr]

And right on queue, shallow insults and no evidence to present for prior assertions.

From here i wont bother. You're arguing from a no evidence, no validation fallacy and then resort to insults that, at best only come off as weak projections based on your love for authority and control over others. "We need models so we can be more confident in our failures in utopian economic control! All else is just crank right wing flat earthery!"


OK, you're not here to discuss this topic, so neither am I.

The trolls get the thread.

So, you are leaving. How can the trolls get the thread if you are leaving.

 

[Rshermr]

The core conceit of economic central planers....The belief that because a lot -or even a majority- of people have done something in the past they'll do it again, despite the context of the times and the fact that humans are quirky, capricious and sometimes tempestuous.....The notion that you really can in fact push a rope.

Your argument is that social sciences do not exist. Since you seem not bothered that this is a counterfactual, then it logically follows that all of those hard-headed business types that spend good hard money on consumer research, political polling, and,yes, economic forecasting are wasting their money on a delusion.

I find it hard to believe that you truly feel that no human behavior is sufficiently predictable in an aggregate behavior to make it useful to apply statistical modeling.

"Social sciences" are less scientific than race track odds making.

Aside form the emotional component -which makes predictors of human behavior worse than the weather, which cannot be accurately forecast beyond a couple of days- when the research and subsequent decisions of business types don't pan out, it's only their money that is on the line and potentially lost.

This is vastly different from economic central planners, who will put political investments and calculations ahead of the financial risks/benefits...Of course, we're also supposed to presume that the emotions of the central planners just get put on hold, and that each and every one of their predictions and "investments" contain no emotional components whatsoever.

So, since you reject human behavior as being sufficiently predictable. or predictable at all, then we may as well give up. We can make a priori assumptions, which is another way of saying WE CAN BELIEVE WHAT WE WANT TO WITHOUT CONSIDERATION. Good deal. Makes things so much easier. We can assume, for instance, that it is much better to have the money changers determine the natural rate of interest.
I think I will pass on believing what I want. Cheap way to live.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

And right on queue, shallow insults and no evidence to present for prior assertions.

From here i wont bother. You're arguing from a no evidence, no validation fallacy and then resort to insults that, at best only come off as weak projections based on your love for authority and control over others. "We need models so we can be more confident in our failures in utopian economic control! All else is just crank right wing flat earthery!"


OK, you're not here to discuss this topic, so neither am I.

The trolls get the thread.

So, you are leaving. How can the trolls get the thread if you are leaving.

Drinking early today I see.

 

[Rshermr]

I don't drink, but maybe I will start. Could make it easier to read your posts.

 

[william the wie]

At the core, economics is a model of certain types of human behavior, the creation and distribution of wealth. Humans are individually quirky, but in large numbers become more predictable in a statistical sense. On a continuum this makes economics the hardest of the social sciences and somewhat less precise than the softest of the hard sciences (to what extent is weather and climate a hard science?). This argues for a need for more tools that mathematical models, not for the avoidance of such models.

The core conceit of economic central planers....The belief that because a lot -or even a majority- of people have done something in the past they'll do it again, despite the context of the times and the fact that humans are quirky, capricious and sometimes tempestuous.....The notion that you really can in fact push a rope.

Your argument is that social sciences do not exist. Since you seem not bothered that this is a counterfactual, then it logically follows that all of those hard-headed business types that spend good hard money on consumer research, political polling, and,yes, economic forecasting are wasting their money on a delusion.

I find it hard to believe that you truly feel that no human behavior is sufficiently predictable in an aggregate behavior to make it useful to apply statistical modeling.

Two caveats that I think y'all are ignoring involve:

The ongoing task of assembling data that is disproving causality in regards to say the Great Depression.

If you take the Shiller-Case analysis of housing which demonstrated at least some causality from the 1923-6 housing bubble and add in the 1930-9 drought that caused the Dustbowl the whole policy witch-hunt that followed looks absurd. Economic policy does not cause climatic black swans.

The 1930-9 drought and cumulative damage from the 1921-40 farming crash severely damaged banks over two-thirds or more of the country prior to the 1931 banking panic.

The growing evidence that technology changes the expression of behaviors including reproductive behaviors.

The various housing bubbles that followed the invention of the latex condom in 1920, 1943 mass production of penicillin and hormonal birth control in 1960 all had major effects on real estate markets in the US.

Of the six nations that permit more or less unregulated Assisted Reproductive Technology: the US, India, Georgia, Russia, the Ukraine and more recently Thailand; have also had major effects.

Therefore I tend to see W. Brian Arthur's extension of the works of the Austrian school's Schumpeter being rather important.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

The core conceit of economic central planers....The belief that because a lot -or even a majority- of people have done something in the past they'll do it again, despite the context of the times and the fact that humans are quirky, capricious and sometimes tempestuous.....The notion that you really can in fact push a rope.

Your argument is that social sciences do not exist. Since you seem not bothered that this is a counterfactual, then it logically follows that all of those hard-headed business types that spend good hard money on consumer research, political polling, and,yes, economic forecasting are wasting their money on a delusion.

I find it hard to believe that you truly feel that no human behavior is sufficiently predictable in an aggregate behavior to make it useful to apply statistical modeling.

Two caveats that I think y'all are ignoring involve:

The ongoing task of assembling data that is disproving causality in regards to say the Great Depression.

If you take the Shiller-Case analysis of housing which demonstrated at least some causality from the 1923-6 housing bubble and add in the 1930-9 drought that caused the Dustbowl the whole policy witch-hunt that followed looks absurd. Economic policy does not cause climatic black swans.

The 1930-9 drought and cumulative damage from the 1921-40 farming crash severely damaged banks over two-thirds or more of the country prior to the 1931 banking panic.

The growing evidence that technology changes the expression of behaviors including reproductive behaviors.

The various housing bubbles that followed the invention of the latex condom in 1920, 1943 mass production of penicillin and hormonal birth control in 1960 all had major effects on real estate markets in the US.

Of the six nations that permit more or less unregulated Assisted Reproductive Technology: the US, India, Georgia, Russia, the Ukraine and more recently Thailand; have also had major effects.

Therefore I tend to see W. Brian Arthur's extension of the works of the Austrian school's Schumpeter being rather important.

consumer research, political polling, and,yes, economic forecasting are wasting their money on a delusion.

well much of the money is wasted so far but this does not mean none of it useful. Its like drugs that may extend your life by 3 months, so that the next generation drugs will extend your life by 6 months

 

[william the wie]

And right on queue, shallow insults and no evidence to present for prior assertions.

From here i wont bother. You're arguing from a no evidence, no validation fallacy and then resort to insults that, at best only come off as weak projections based on your love for authority and control over others. "We need models so we can be more confident in our failures in utopian economic control! All else is just crank right wing flat earthery!"


OK, you're not here to discuss this topic, so neither am I.

The trolls get the thread.

I’m not insulting anyone.

We’re talking basic philosophy since Kant differentiated between synthetic, synthetic a priori and a priori propositions. A priori propositions are either true from a tautological standpoint or false from a contradictory standpoint. A priori propositions are deductive by their very nature. On the other hand, synthetic propositions are based on inductive probability and tend be empirical.

Edit to add:

By the way, I simply pointed out how the very foundation of the ABCT is problematic, since it's based on the fictitious natural rate of interest. Even Robert Murphy admits this doesn't help the Misesian and Hayekian versions of the ABCT. It has nothing to do with central planning or authority, nor was I trying to insult anyone.

The ABCT as used by Mises, Hayek and Rothbard is based on individual selective behavior instead of kin selective behavior, which is a major error. That said kin selective economic behavior should lead to something resembling a "natural" rate of interest based mainly on the cost of securing breeding territories as with housing bubbles. The target interest rate should be a function of:

The costs of children and grandchildren.

The degree of certainty of those costs.

The discounting of kinship, which is the big problem.

Women in China and the Eurozone are breeding themselves at a rate consistent with a maternal inheritance of 66.7% in China and 62.5% in the EZ. That is consistent with the pricing of mares in the horse market at 60% maternal inheritance. Using the 50% number that economists are more acquainted with is based on biologists commingling the behavior of birds (ZW sex selection) and mammals (XY). So there should be two natural rates of interest based on gender.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

I have been reading some stuff mainly about Rothbard, which has got me to thinking. Is there any interest in a somewhat technical and nerdy discussion of the "Austrian School" and should it be here or in the CDZ? My first choice would be to put it here. What say you?

Sure. How much of their failed school of thought should we poke fun of?

what is the most substantive failure in the Austrian school?

 

[Rshermr]

I have been reading some stuff mainly about Rothbard, which has got me to thinking. Is there any interest in a somewhat technical and nerdy discussion of the "Austrian School" and should it be here or in the CDZ? My first choice would be to put it here. What say you?

Sure. How much of their failed school of thought should we poke fun of?

what is the most substantive failure in the Austrian school?

That ed believes in it???

 

[JimmieD]

Can you provide evidence that the business cycle theory is "basically false"? It's a pretty well known understanding of market intervention today. Even the federal reserve understands the principles of the business cycle.

I can help you start with your assertion by providing a comparison:

Do you think short term interest rate shocks are the only cause of the business cycle?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Can you provide evidence that the business cycle theory is "basically false"? It's a pretty well known understanding of market intervention today. Even the federal reserve understands the principles of the business cycle.

I can help you start with your assertion by providing a comparison:

Do you think short term interest rate shocks are the only cause of the business cycle?

Milton Friedman of course did not believe in the business cycle at least when I heard him speak about it.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Sure. How much of their failed school of thought should we poke fun of?

what is the most substantive failure in the Austrian school?

That ed believes in it???

a liberal changing the subject because he lacks the IQ for the subject

 

[JimmieD]

Milton Friedman of course did not believe in the business cycle at least when I heard him speak about it.

What on earth does this have to do with my question?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Milton Friedman of course did not believe in the business cycle at least when I heard him speak about it.

What on earth does this have to do with my question?

your question about short term rates and business cycle becomes meaningless if there is no business cycle

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Better start in in the CDZ or the cement-headed progressive socialist trolls will take it over.

Hmm...

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Stephanie will straighten this out. Where is that rw genius on all matters economics?

How often do you hear the "right-wing" discussing Ludwig von Mises, Carl Menger, or Murray Rothbard, honestly?

far too often, but not here @ usmb

yet many right wing positions are premised on the -- ahem -- theories of the achtung! -- Austrian School

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

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Kevin_Kennedy (07-18-2013)

Paul Ryan (R) promotes von Mises. He is also a Randian & a high ranking, Repub, washinton-insider. Are the two mutually exclusive?

Of course they're not, but, in reality, how many are there? I've never heard Paul Ryan mention Mises, though it's possible. Bachmann of course said she reads Mises on the beach, but do either of them advocate a return to the gold standard or ending the Federal Reserve? Do they promote the Austrian theory of the business cycle which was perhaps Mises' greatest contribution?

The simple fact is that the Austrian school is not popular within the circles of power, right or left, because the Austrian school doesn't support government power.

There's that and the fool assumption that just because Ryan has his employees read Rand, that it's how he governs...Which, judging from his track record, he clearly doesn't.

But that expecting the blind partisan demagogues to notice such things is just too much to expect.

Hmm, [MENTION=11774]Kevin_Kennedy[/MENTION] -- I wonder if people think those who say Obama studied Alinsky (yet he obviously doesn't govern like Alinsky would. that's for sure) , are hypocrites when reality is pointed out?

 

[Rshermr]

Milton Friedman of course did not believe in the business cycle at least when I heard him speak about it.

What on earth does this have to do with my question?

your question about short term rates and business cycle becomes meaningless if there is no business cycle

ANOTHER totally senseless post. Jesus. This guy is a waste of space. Which is normal for him, of course.