George W. Bush Approval... Wow

[moda0306]

Wait... did someone just get called a buttwipe?

I don't usually enjoy ad hominem online banter, but when I do, it instantly reminds me of 5th grade recess.

[moda0306]

The main flaw with von Mises and Human Action lies in its title.

The action of a human and the action of thousands-if-not-millions of humans interacting with each other (called an economy or society... a system that is more than just a sum of its parts) are different.  Building a macroeconomic advocacy on micro-foundations is going to lead you to problems... including that of thinking that printing money will cause hyperinflation, or that deficits will cause a self-fulfilling interest-rate/default-risk spiral, or that we should have NO government at all because individual choice & the pricing that follows is more optimal and economically efficient.

This is why I love HB's work on individual philosophy so much, because he takes the principles of individuality down to there most bare essentials and builds up an individual philosophy on top of that.  On politics he takes those micro-foundations and IMO commits the fallacy of composition with them... though in spite of his Austrian economic/political leanings, he was able to take his uncluttered view of reality rather than ideology into building a pretty sweet portfolio.

It would be interesting to hear HB debate his Austrian bed-fellows back in the '80's and '90's on the topic of 50% of the portfolio being in government bonds... I really should listen to more of his radio show and read more of his investing books.

[MediumTex]

You're no longer on ignore, buttwipe,

C'mon dude. Be the better man if you have to reply at all.

I turned off the Ignore function because I was trying to do some forum tweaks that would make it run more smoothly.

So for now we can't ignore each other.  All buttwipery will be on display for all to see.

As I have always asked of everyone, please be cordial to one another.  Courtesy lubricates the discussion.

[Libertarian666]

You're no longer on ignore, buttwipe,

C'mon dude. Be the better man if you have to reply at all.

I turned off the Ignore function because I was trying to do some forum tweaks that would make it run more smoothly.

So for now we can't ignore each other.  All buttwipery will be on display for all to see.

As I have always asked of everyone, please be cordial to one another.  Courtesy lubricates the discussion.

Hmm, the combination of lubrication and buttwipery reminds me of someone...
Oh, I remember: Rick Santorum!

[LC475]

Hmm.  I thought the replies would be more interesting.  Oh well.

Harry is the exception that proves the rule. If you'd like to see an example of "the rule," look at Peter Schiff.

Where did Peter Schiff get his economics degree?

The main flaw with von Mises and Human Action

Ahh, wonderful: with a statement boldly starting like that, you clearly have read and studied the book thoroughly (and likely many of his others?).  I'd love to discuss it with you.  What would you like to discuss?

...

In a rare act of condescension, His Holiness reminds us that we are not worthy to wipe the dust off His feet, and that's certainly true.  Thank you for trying to correct and humble me.  A word of chastisement from the Divine is like a feast to the wise.

...And that you see any government use of any real resources as a burden on you, and thus a tax.

Nay, its resource use is a cost to the society at large from which it drew it, not to me personally.

...calling this a tax is to confuse the very people with whom you're trying to have a discussion.

...until you explain it, and then they understand.

Look, I'll give you more than one line because you're the only one who seemed to devote any mental energy my direction towards actually understanding one of my posts.  I said what I meant in my follow-up.  It wasn't complicated.  Saying someone "lowered taxes" could possibly sound like he lowered the total cost of the state to society.  (Not that one person very likely could do such a thing alone in a complex state like the US's, but we lay that aside.)  I was not contradicting you.  Where did I scream "you're wrong!"?  Didn't.  I was just bringing a thought to the table from a different angle.  Orthogonal.  I thought it was an interesting thought.  If I initially expressed it in a strange, non-standard way: all the more stimulating!  Others perhaps thought I was trying to attack their favorite politician or undermine their treasured but fragile worldview or something else similar, and so they got defensive.  But I wasn't.

You tell me "redefining common words to mean non-common things is an effective rhetorical strategy" as if I am using rhetoric.  I'm not, did you want me to start?  As if I am here to try to win debates.  I'm not, that's not why I'm here.

[Pointedstick]

...calling this a tax is to confuse the very people with whom you're trying to have a discussion.

...until you explain it, and then they understand.

Look, I'll give you more than one line because you're the only one who seemed to devote any mental energy my direction towards actually understanding one of my posts.  I said what I meant in my follow-up.  It wasn't complicated.  Saying someone "lowered taxes" could possibly sound like he lowered the total cost of the state to society.

I understand, I just disagree.

You are using the word "tax" interchangeably with "cost." I will agree that everything government does represents a cost inasmuch as it requires resources that become unavailable to other actors. However, this describes most voluntary transactions, under whose umbrella the government's purchasing falls, since private actors have a choice to sell or not to sell to the government. Nobody is forcing them to sell stuff to uncle sam.

A tax, to me, is a forcible, non-voluntary taking of money or resources under pain of punishment that is made by a government (the latter part is how we determine to call it a tax and not a theft).

[LC475]

I understand, I just disagree.

I don't think you even do, because I agree with you that my use of the word "tax" was non-standard.  In other words: totally wrong.

As you say:

A tax, to me, is a forcible, non-voluntary taking of money or resources under pain of punishment that is made by a government (the latter part is how we determine to call it a tax and not a theft).

This is, I think, the correct definition of the word tax (or at least a correct definition).  It seems quite precise.

You are using the word "tax" interchangeably with "cost."

Bingo.  Thank you for understanding.

I will agree that everything government does represents a cost inasmuch as it requires resources that become unavailable to other actors. However, this describes most voluntary transactions

That is true!  That is absolutely true!

Let's say it's Apple, Inc. instead of the Corporation of the United States of America.  Let's say Tim Cook announces, "We at Apple are going to cut revenue next year by 5%, because this is going to help the economy, or create jobs, or make Democrats mad, or something."  And so next year he cuts the price of iPhones by 5%.  Now let's also say that Apple, just like the government, has many creative and esoteric revenue streams.  By cutting the price of the iPhone by 5%, it sure seems to the customers that they have 5% more money in their pockets.  That money was not taken out of their pockets.  Last year it was.  Pretty straight-forward.

However, if Apple's balance sheet shows that they in fact had *more* incoming revenue than the previous year, well.... is the straight-forward impression true?  It cannot be.  AT&T must be subsidizing the phone a little more.  And so maybe they're charging a little bit more each month for service.  One sneaky way or another, money is making its way from its only ultimate source, the customers' pockets, and into Apple's coffers.  There's just no way around that.

But let's change and complicate the scenario.  What if Apple's balance sheet shows they really did have less revenue,  their revenue did, really truly go down, and yet their spending did not?  What would that mean?  Well, they must have issued some bonds, went into debt in some way.  By doing that, they take resources away from other potential loanees and affect the overall market interest rate.  Everyone who borrows money pays more to do so.  That's a cost.  Same sort of effect, incidentally, even if they're just drawing down their cash reserve rather than going into debt.  They will contribute to inflation, with more dollars now chasing the available goods and labor.  Whether through more debt or less reserves, that particular year Apple is putting in less realized productivity than they are taking out.

So yes, the exact same principle applies whether the org is a state or not.  The cost to society of the organization is in what they expend, what they use up, not what they take in.

This is just all on the cost side.  In the case of a private business, if it is profitable, presumably it is providing benefits that outweigh the costs, at least in the subjective judgment of its customers.  In the case of a state, it too may be providing all of its citizens with wonderful benefits far outweighing any costs.  Certainly most people seem to think so.  Who are we to tell them they're wrong?

[LC475]

Warning: possible straw man alert!

Oh, I'll go along with it...

If that was the case, then when a person who robs me and then uses the stolen money to purchase a playstation, the act of him purchasing it represents a cost to society. I would disagree with that; when he robs me, that is the act that represents the cost to society, not when he uses his ill-gotten gains to buy something. In the same way, government steals our money and purchasing power through taxes; that is the cost to society, not the spending of our taxed (stolen) money on useless crap.

Let's say this lowlife pickpocket steals some money from you.  When is it actually a cost to you?  When you try to buy something (or do whatever it is you wanted to do with the money) and find yourself unable to do so.  Until you experience this loss, it is still an unrealized loss for you.  If you think the money is still there, the loss has yet to be realized -- it has not caused any effect whatsoever in your life.

So that's the loss for you, from your individual perspective.  What about society as a whole?

Let's say this guy never spends the money.  He just loses it; it disappears.  His act then becomes deflationary.  It is not a cost at all -- in fact he has removed the cost that would otherwise have come about due to you redeeming your money to "society" for whatever goods or services you wanted.  To society at large excluding you, it is a net gain.  However, you are part of society, too, and so the cost to society equals the cost to you, of you not getting what you want, minus the cost to the rest of society of providing it to you.  Because of reverse valuation by the actors in each voluntary trade that occurs (I value B more than A, you value A more than B, so we trade), the cost of his act is not zero, but is the gap between the psychic benefit and the psychic loss to you in whatever trade(s) you would have engaged in, plus that same gap for your trading partner(s).  This sum is subjective and non-quantifiable, other than to say it is not zero.

[Pointedstick]

If Apple cuts the cost of iPhones by 5% and people pay less for iPhones, and yet Apple has more money next year than they did last, it's entirely possible that the lower prices encouraged a bunch of people people to buy their products who did not before at the higher price point (e.g. a private application of the Laffer curve). And if Apple's revenue fell, they could very easily eat that without having to sell bonds because of how profitable they are. Right now Apple has gajillions of dollars in capital saved up and is highly profitable every quarter. I'm not sure your examples show what you're trying to show.

But I think I understand your point, which, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that every economic decision is interconnected to the whole economy such that nothing happens in a vacuum, and ultimately households bear the true costs of everything, which must take into account the economic actions that firms do (forgetting the government for a second), which include price-setting, spending, borrowing, etc.

Am I right so far?

[Mountaineer]

If Apple cuts the cost of iPhones by 5% and people pay less for iPhones, and yet Apple has more money next year than they did last, it's entirely possible that the lower prices encouraged a bunch of people people to buy their products who did not before at the higher price point (e.g. a private application of the Laffer curve). And if Apple's revenue fell, they could very easily eat that without having to sell bonds because of how profitable they are. Right now Apple has gajillions of dollars in capital saved up and is highly profitable every quarter. I'm not sure your examples show what you're trying to show.

But I think I understand your point, which, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that every economic decision is interconnected to the whole economy such that nothing happens in a vacuum, and ultimately households bear the true costs of everything, which must take into account the economic actions that firms do (forgetting the government for a second), which include price-setting, spending, borrowing, etc.

Am I right so far?

Except for the part about the Laffer curve and gajillions - should be Laugher and i-bazillions (square root of -1 times bazillions consistent with Apple terminology) since you cannot price cut indefinitely your way to prosperity. 

All in jest.

... Mountaineer

[LC475]

ultimately households bear the true costs of everything, which must take into account the economic actions that firms do (forgetting the government for a second), which include price-setting, spending, borrowing, etc.

Am I right so far?

The cost is just the spending only, just the stuff the firms do that take up resources.  Price-setting and borrowing are just two ways the firms get the resources.

My point boils down to a dead-simple statement, which I think I said before, which is that the cost to society of the activities of a state, or a firm, or a person, is the total amount of resources expended by that activity.

[Pointedstick]

ultimately households bear the true costs of everything, which must take into account the economic actions that firms do (forgetting the government for a second), which include price-setting, spending, borrowing, etc.

Am I right so far?

The cost is just the spending only, just the stuff the firms do that take up resources.  Price-setting and borrowing are just two ways the firms get the resources.

My point boils down to a dead-simple statement, which I think I said before, which is that the cost to society of the activities of a state, or a firm, or a person, is the total amount of resources expended by that activity.

This is obviously true, but conflating this with taxes still seems odd to me.

A private firm's price to society is all the money and resources people voluntarily give them exchange for production. The government's price to society in resources is extracted involuntarily, through taxes. And under Bush, the taxes that people were required to pay to sustain the federal government's endeavors fell. Even if the amount of actual resources being used was the same or increased, the (mandatory) price fell. That's all I was saying. No comment about the sustainability of this enterprise or the fact that it led to a lot of borrowing--by people like us, I might add, who happen to hold 25% of our assets in their debt! No comment about any of that! All I was saying is that the sticker price of government fell under Bush. That's all.

[LC475]

A private firm's price to society is all the money and resources people voluntarily give them exchange for production. The government's price to society in resources is extracted involuntarily, through taxes.

We can italicize it all we want, but people other than libertarians do not find such a distinction particularly meaningful nor important. 

My point boils down to a dead-simple statement, which I think I said before, which is that the cost to society of the activities of a state, or a firm, or a person, is the total amount of resources expended by that activity.

This is obviously true,

Yes, make a point too simple and it suddenly becomes uninteresting.  Fascinating how the brain works like that, eh?

And under Bush, the taxes that people were required to pay to sustain the federal government's endeavors fell. Even if the amount of actual resources being used was the same or increased, the (mandatory) price fell. That's all I was saying. No comment about the sustainability of this enterprise or the fact that it led to a lot of borrowing--by people like us, I might add, who happen to hold 25% of our assets in their debt! No comment about any of that! All I was saying is that the sticker price of government fell under Bush. That's all.

Once again: Orthogonal.  Once again: Not in any way contradicting your point.  I don't see why you feel the need to defend yourself, nor to repeat points both you and I have already made and about which we have already agreed that we agree.

Once again: the "sticker price" in one sense (a shallow, nominal sense) fell.  And once again: the sticker price in a different sense -- one I think is meaningful, and in fact more meaningful than that first sense -- actually rose.  This second sense could be called the sticker price of the state in real terms.  You see the metaphor?  Just as two investors or investment advisers could argue right past each other, both making seemingly contradictory statements, and yet both be factually correct if one were speaking about nominal returns and the other about real returns, so too in this case. 

1. Certain specific rates of certain specific US taxes definitely went down during the time George W. Bush was the US President; that much I am aware of.  2. The overall cumulative rate of taxes in general may even have gone down -- I am not informed enough to know.  3. The total sum of money received by the national state from taxation (in real terms, of course!) per year may even have gone down.  If that last is true, that would mean that people, on average, did pay less taxes to the government per year than immediately previously.  However, 3. being true does not make 4. true.  4. The total cost of the national state to its society went down.  This last statement was actually not true for the time period in question.  Instead, the total gross cost of this particular state went up.  That means that people, on average, had their well-being drained more per year than immediately previous.  They were being hit harder, their well-being being drained more, than previously.  The average man was sending in a smaller check to the state, true (if 3. is true, that is), and yet his wallet was nevertheless being drained not less but more, via subtler ways.  More indirect.  More hidden.  The task of economics is not just to deal with the seen (that much is easy) but more importantly with the unseen.

Resources don't come from nowhere.  If the state was spending more, those resources were coming out of the wallets of, as you put it, households.  Now that doesn't speak to the case of any particular individual household -- it's just an average.  The total burden for your particular household, including any and all hidden costs, may indeed have gone down, and that's extremely relevant and meaningful to you, I am not saying that it's not.  Maybe the burden went down for Tenn, too.  And that's the bottom line: "what happened to me, what's in it for me;" and anything else is just academic mumbo-jumbo, I totally get that.  But if we do want to look at the big picture: the average was different.  For every household being less burdened, there were more households being more burdened.  That's just mathematically and logically unavoidable.  Resources don't come from nowhere.

Now, those with suspicious and detail-oriented minds should have noticed a word in my discussion of 4.  Namely: gross.  Yes, to go still one more step down the path of full meaningfulness for a metric of the cost of a state: 5. we should make it net, not gross.  We must take into account all the fabulous benefits, prizes, and joy that the state rains down upon its people every day.  From the mundane: providing roadways and cellular phones; to the magnificent: keeping the elderly from dying in the gutters, providing national pride and sense of purpose, preventing a constant war of all against all, and making society possible in the first place; the state does provide benefits.  What these benefits are and how you value them, or don't, will depend upon your ideology.  To make a true calculation of the cost of the state we must include these benefits.  If my tax bill has gone down and yet I must now step over piles of elderly in my gutter on my way to work, to which I walk because all the roads have disappeared due to lack of a state, and while I'm gone a roving gang burns down my house, well then the cost of the system of governance I'm under has increased, not decreased, overall, in real terms.

Thus we have an ascending continuum -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 -- of increasing meaningfulness to arrive at the real, net cost of a state.

[Pointedstick]

I understand your point, and it seems we do agree. I guess all I'm trying to say is that I think it makes sense, especially when talking to non-libertarians, to distinguish between the cost of government in real terms (resources consumed) and nominal terms (taxes collected). Since non-libertarians are unused to thinking about the former, referring to it using terminology used to describe the latter seems to confuse them and derail the discussion (which is what happened here). Instead, if we want to call attention to the real costs, we can help them understand our point by explicitly talking about that hidden, real price in ways they understand: that valuable human labor and natural resources has been used to fund and build bombs and prisons and boondoggles and police brutality and well-meaning social programs that trap people in poverty, that those resources were not available to households and private firms for their productive use, and that the economy was distorted to produce a lot of goods and services that people don't really want.

[Mountaineer]

It seems the discussion about spending and taxes should be more specific as to who did what to whom, when, how, where and why.  Spending when, constant dollars or actual dollars?  Taxing when, to whom, constant or actual dollars etc.?  It feels like we are watching the next Presidential debate and the discussion is taking place at the 50,000 foot level where everybody can be right and nobody wrong.  Maybe it's just me! 

http://www.metrolyrics.com/nobody-right ... ranti.html

... Mountaineer

[LC475]

Instead, I get LC475 bearing witness to the libertarian gospel of the evils of gummint, and I'm lectured to about how, as a non-libertarian, I don't understand this and that and the other thing, and how confused I am.

Since I have not asserted anything about "evils of gummint," since I have not asserted anything regarding any failure on your part to understand this, nor to understand that, nor to understand the other thing, and since I have not asserted anything as to any state of confusion you may or may not be in, I think my best advice would be: try reading my posts if you want to understand them.

Then again, since you have no interest in what I think, this would actually provide you no benefit whatsoever.  It would waste your time.

So I have no advice for you.

[LC475]

It feels like we are watching the next Presidential debate and the discussion is taking place at the 50,000 foot level where everybody can be right and nobody wrong.

Everybody is right, nobody is wrong, and there is no debate.

[MediumTex]

Guys, don't be shitty to each other.  Being right isn't that important.  In our minds, we all believe we are right.

[sixdollars]

It feels like we are watching the next Presidential debate and the discussion is taking place at the 50,000 foot level where everybody can be right and nobody wrong.

Everybody is right, nobody is wrong, and there is no debate.

There is no debate...wait a second! I think I've actually heard this one before...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAXtO5dMqEI

[LC475]

Here's an article that says what I said but perhaps says it more comprehensibly.  Not too high a bar, since no one but PointedStick showed any evidence of understanding what I said at all.  Not that it matters in the least.  But here anyway:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2 ... ertarians/

Second, while deficits aren’t the burden we’re leaving our grandchildren, a less evolved economy is. Deficits are finance, and as evidenced by the willingness of investors to line up in order to buy U.S. Treasuries, they’re an easy form of finance. The burden that deficits signal in not always vivid color is all the investment in real economic ideas that is not taking place thanks to all the government spending vacuuming up limited capital. Our grandchildren will inherit a much less evolved world in terms of technology, healthcare, and transportation advances precisely due to government waste occurring in the present. That’s the burden, and as a professed libertarian, Amash should intimately know that it is.

If this is doubted, it should be asked if readers would prefer an annual budget deficit of $500 billion amid $1.5 trillion in annual spending, or a balanced budget of $3.5 trillion. Basic economic logic of the libertarian kind calls for the former. Government spending is the burden on the economy, and whether it occurs in deficit form or through taxation is of little economic consequence.

We live in a global economy, and a dollar is a dollar is a dollar whether it’s taxed or borrowed. Either way the economy suffers if politicians are allocating the capital.



Now, the article does make ideologically-based statements, basically assuming that trillions of dollars in government spending is a bad thing, a waste, the economy suffers from it, and that politicians are inferior to others at allocating capital.  These are pretty standard Forbes magazine assumptions. I did not present any of these assumptions in this thread, and I may or may not hold to them.  I just wanted to make that disclaimer, because I wouldn't want to hurt Tenn's feelings or have him feel as if he were being unfairly exposed and evangelized to distasteful ideas with which he disagrees.

[LC475]

Harry is the exception that proves the rule. If you'd like to see an example of "the rule," look at Peter Schiff.

Where did Peter Schiff get his economics degree?

Still wondering if you could help me out with this bit of trivia.

The main flaw with von Mises and Human Action

Ahh, wonderful: with a statement boldly starting like that, you clearly have read and studied the book thoroughly (and likely many of his others?).  I'd love to discuss it with you.  What would you like to discuss?

Also looking forward to your thoughts and insight about Human Action.  What would you like to discuss first?

[moda0306]

Harry is the exception that proves the rule. If you'd like to see an example of "the rule," look at Peter Schiff.

Where did Peter Schiff get his economics degree?

Still wondering if you could help me out with this bit of trivia.

The main flaw with von Mises and Human Action

Ahh, wonderful: with a statement boldly starting like that, you clearly have read and studied the book thoroughly (and likely many of his others?).  I'd love to discuss it with you.  What would you like to discuss?

Also looking forward to your thoughts and insight about Human Action.  What would you like to discuss first?

Since a quick Wikipedia search would have informed you that Peter Schiff didn't get a degree in economics, but instead accounting/finance, I'm assuming you're asking the question rhetorically, trying to make a point passive-aggressively rather than stating it outright (not a problem... a little snark is fun).

I didn't realize it was a forgone assumption that only economics majors were worth following on this stuff.  I actually agree that we should probably try to tighten things up a bit to keep the duds out of the debate pool.  Generally... good call.

One thing that isn't so clear to me, however, is where Harry Browne's focus was in college, or where he even went to college.  If you could help me with THAT, and seeing if he got an economics degree from (if he even did), that might drive you point home a bit further.  However, it sorta makes your point, and weird way of trying to state it (or not state it), moot if he didn't get an economics degree somewhere. 

If we are talking about ACTUAL economists... people with that specific educational focus... and specifically those with Austrian leanings, we're talking about a smaller and less visible pool.  Perhaps you'd like to point us all to a few that you feel have consistently raised good arguments over the past decade or so, rather than focusing on all these relatively moot quasi-points.  I really don't like the lowest-common-denominator to be used as a straw man, so if Schiff qualifies as that, then help us find the best current thinkers on the topic... especially since we've been waiting for years while having numerous arguments about our monetary system to have one viable modern-day Austrian voice that has lent much more than scattered value on the topic (on this forum, anyway).

Do you recommend following John Tamny, the author of the article you posted?    I've never found him to be anything but a Peter Schiff type.  Does HE have an economics degree?

With regards to human action, I haven't read the book.  I have heard a lot of summary arguments based on his and it caused me to review the main points of the book, which focus very much on individual human motivation, and how that links (in his view) to an economic system as a whole.  It isn't so much with individual human motivation that I have a problem with Austrian thought, but how it links itself to how the SYSTEM behaves with regards to maximizing overall well-being.  I think his link is broken, largely due to the fallacy of composition, where someone does a REALLY good job of describing individual economic motivation, and then applies that to everyone in a system to determine that this MUST be the most universally beneficial arrangement as a matter of logical certainty.  Sure, examples are often used to help prove their point... pointing to successful capitalist scenarios vs collectivist disasters, but this is empirical evidence that has plenty of counter-points if we don't look at such ridiculous extremities on one side (collectivist disasters) while calling mixed economies "capitalist," in spite of huge government protective/infrastructural apparatus).  Combine that with bad logic moving from individual to macro-level forces, and you are simply going to have an incorrect economic analysis.

While Austrian thoughts, largely based on Mises' work, make a ton of sense at the individual level, on the macro level they simply don't work, because they are built on a fallacy of composition.  Further, there is almost no evidence of purely capitalist societies out there for a TRUE empirical analysis to be done, which throws a lot of their convenient examples to the wind, as the (admittedly alleged) stability of the state is a constant in most of these scenarios.  Perhaps I should actually read the WHOLE book, rather than snippets and analysis built on top of it, but it's really stuff I've heard summarized by Harry Browne and others.  I wouldn't ask someone to read "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" to comment on Keynes' thoughts on economics.  Perhaps we should both have higher standards, though.

[LC475]

Do you recommend following John Tamny, the author of the article you posted?

I know nothing about who John Tamny is, nor do I care.  He writes articles for Forbes, apparently.

Peter Schiff didn't get a degree in economics, but instead accounting/finance

Oh really!  Imagine that.

Indeed, Peter Schiff is an investment advisor (and bank president, author, and television personality).  He has no credentials as an economist.

Harry Browne as well had no credentials as an economist.  He too was an investment advisor.

Both apply principles of economic science as they understand them to their field.  They may even provide useful elucidations of economics themselves, as I personally think Harry Browne did in his first book, How You Can Profit.  But they themselves are not the scientists, they are technologists if you will.  They apply the science, just as engineers apply the science of physics to their work.  They are consumers of the science, or at most popularizers, and not creators.

If we are talking about ACTUAL economists... people with that specific educational focus... and specifically those with Austrian leanings...  Perhaps you'd like to point us all to a few that you feel have consistently raised good arguments over the past decade or so

Yes, let's talk about those people, or actually, about the ideas they have presented.  That is, after all, what Austrian economics is.  That is how one judges things: by looking at the actual thing.  If you want to know about a science, read the actual science.

Or, one could do what you've done:

With regards to human action, I haven't read the book.  I have heard a lot of summary arguments based on his

I would think that one would be embarrassed to write long paragraphs claiming to expose "the problem" with a book one has never read and a thinker with which one has only cursory third or fourth-hand familiarity.  But, that's just me.

Your pontifications about Human Action and Mises seem to me to simply be expressions of your own thoughts, about matters of your own interest.  They do not seem to bear any relationship whatsoever to what I am reading in Mises.  They don't refute it, they don't address it, they don't have anything to do with it.

I would recommend, to answer your request, the following as strong thinkers and economists generally considered to be in the Austrian School:

Ludwig von Mises
Murray Rothbard
Peter Klein
Walter Block
Joe Salerno
George Reisman

[moda0306]

Do you recommend following John Tamny, the author of the article you posted?

I know nothing about who John Tamny is, nor do I care.  He writes articles for Forbes, apparently.

Well if you don't care "who he is," then academic qualifications seem pretty irrelevant to someone weighing in on the topic of economics.  Why such a focus?

Peter Schiff didn't get a degree in economics, but instead accounting/finance

Oh really!  Imagine that.

Indeed, Peter Schiff is an investment advisor (and bank president, author, and television personality).  He has no credentials as an economist.

Harry Browne as well had no credentials as an economist.  He too was an investment advisor.

Both apply principles of economic science as they understand them to their field.  They may even provide useful elucidations of economics themselves, as I personally think Harry Browne did in his first book, How You Can Profit.  But they themselves are not the scientists, they are technologists if you will.  They apply the science, just as engineers apply the science of physics to their work.  They are consumers of the science, or at most popularizers, and not creators.

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Yeah... not to hard to "imagine that."  A lot of accounting/finance guys think they know economics.  I didn't realize we were sticking with just academics.  I'm fine with that.  Most Austrian-minded folks I debate love to refer to Schiff more than academia.  I'm glad we're digging deeper.

If we are talking about ACTUAL economists... people with that specific educational focus... and specifically those with Austrian leanings...  Perhaps you'd like to point us all to a few that you feel have consistently raised good arguments over the past decade or so

Yes, let's talk about those people, or actually, about the ideas they have presented.  That is, after all, what Austrian economics is.  That is how one judges things: by looking at the actual thing.  If you want to know about a science, read the actual science.

Or, one could do what you've done:

With regards to human action, I haven't read the book.  I have heard a lot of summary arguments based on his

I would think that one would be embarrassed to write long paragraphs claiming to expose "the problem" with a book one has never read and a thinker with which one has only cursory third or fourth-hand familiarity.  But, that's just me.

Your pontifications about Human Action and Mises seem to me to simply be expressions of your own thoughts, about matters of your own interest.  They do not seem to bear any relationship whatsoever to what I am reading in Mises.  They don't refute it, they don't address it, they don't have anything to do with it.
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I feel I've gotten a pretty good idea of the foundations of Mises work, but if you insist that I haven't, I'll read the book.  I've been meaning to, anyway.  I guess I can't speak to how accurately I'm describing his points until I do.

Similarly, have you read "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money?"  If not, don't you think you should if you want to refute Keynesianism, or do you feel that your studies within the Austrian field are all that is warranted?  Have you trolled any "Monetary Realism" analysis to see if they can help hone your view of our monetary system?

If not, you'd probably serve your arguments better to lay off the whole "reading actual science" bit. 

Reading the "actual science," if you want to call economics a strict science, is good and all, but getting empirical evidence to back your findings is usually a must in science.  So it's not just about their "ideas," it's about specific predictions about how things will ACTUALLY play out.  I mean that's what even got us into this discussion... how WRONG Austrians have been about what the economy is going to do (an assertion you disagreed with without supplying any names, at which point I mentioned Schiff).  If your conclusions don't match reality, usually your "science" screwed up.  And in my experience Austrians have been abundantly wrong about reality at the macro level.  Further, if you can easily identify that the people trying to lay out the general points backed by the "science" are full of hot air, then it does make one pause a bit to want to read a whole book about what seems to be an obviously flawed ideology.  And we haven't all read books on interesting analysis that we've paraphrased here.  I haven't read the whole bible.  I haven't read the General Theory.  I haven't read Human Action. I haven't read Nassim Taleb's books on risk.  I haven't read books on health by Chris Kresser or Paul Jaminet.  A lot of times I use the "digesters" to get the high-points of what they're sayin before diving in, and even then only diving in on a limited basis.  I'm just saying that every Austrian argument I've ever heard uses bad logic and bad empirical analysis.  Everyone points to Mises as their main motivator.  I've read some of his work and thought I was assembling his points correctly based on the digestion of Harry Browne and everyone else I've read/heard speak in defense of the Austrian mind-set.

I have to be pretty intrigued to dive into someone's work on a topic, or exploring a certain philosophy on something.  Pretty quickly Austrianism appeared to be an extreme ideology built on bad logic & empirical evidence at the macro level.  But perhaps I'm wrong.

But I'm glad to see some of those academic sources.  I'll do my best to search through their work, but if you know of any articles specifically that they wrote that alluded to things working out the way they say they should, I'm sure all here would benefit from a little help.  Sometimes it's hard to pin down the right article.



Further, if you want to make a point, or question analysis, or drill down to the best arguments vs the worst ones, just do so.  No need to make us dance around the fact that we both agree Schiff is an idiot.... and then come back and re-ask the question alluding to it.  It's inefficient to arguments getting anywhere.  Just state that you don't think non-academic quasi-economists shouldn't count in the debate and name some alternative modern minds to listen to.

[MediumTex]

Human Action is a masterpiece.

To me, it's not so much about economics as about the windows through which humans see the material world and how they create institutions to allocate, manipulate and accumulate material goods.  It's philosophy combined with economics in a seamless package.

Mises had one of those 19th century big brains.  Mises' world was in many ways simpler than the world that came along in the 20th century.  To me, Mises was to economics what Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. was to law.  They were brilliant men who saw basic principles that explained pretty much everything when properly applied.  Their solutions weren't bad for their time, but the increasing complications of human society gradually made many of their solutions seem quaint and outdated.

I don't think that Mises discussion of money fully comprehends the expansion and contraction of credit, and the way that military force can act as a substitute for gold when assigning value to money.