Do People Say Silly Things About Monetarism, New Institutionalism, and Public Choice as well?

The comments sections throughout the blogosphere, especially excited over issues related to Ron Paul, are filled with silly statements about Austrian economics. Both pro and con.  I get a little sick over some of the pro statements and want to scream NO that isn't how we defend our position.  But I get outraged over many of the con statements and want to kick and scream NO, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.  Don't believe in science; have no scientific impact; not part of the economcs profession; possess neither theory nor empirics; a bunch of crackpots; etc.  However, rather than let my outrage get the better of me, this latest episode once again made me think "Do people  say silly things about Monetarism, New Institutionalism, and Public Choice as well?"

I really don't know, but would appreciate pointers.

Why do I ask that question?  Well, because it seems to me that people feel very free to say things about Austrian economics that they would never say about other schools of thought.  And, I cannot really understand why.

Austrian economics has in America always experienced a large lay-audience following.  While that is great, it also gives a false impression to some that Austrian economics is not a technical scientific body of thought, but a set of public policy opinions.  Also, there is a natural tendency for laymen to present the broad-brush argument, not the finely painted one.  For example, Misesian apriorism can be presented in a common-sensical fashion (we need eyeglasses to read) or it could be presented in a philosophical manner (Duhem-Quinne type critique of naive positivism).  Or, ATBC can be presented as a hang-over theory resulting from artificially stimulating the boom through easy credit, or we can talk about capital heterogeneity and capital structure, Cantillon effects and monetary non-neutrality; intertemporal coordination and plan compatibility, etc.

Why is it that that the least sophisticated form of Austrian economics is what is always under attack, and not the best in the tradition subject to criticism?  When people critique Milton Friedman do they focus on his op-eds, or do they actually try to criticize his work in A Monetary History, or Price Theory?

How about Keynes; Samuelson; or even Galbraith?  Do their critiques on the internet focus on the weakest presentation of the argument or the strongest form the argument is presented in?

In fact, this recent episode once again reminds me of a quote which I was told of when I started studying Austrian economics and libertarianism seriously (attributed to Fredric Bastiat): "Never be concerned about a harsh criticism of your position, but always fear the weakest defense of it."  My students have heard this quote numerous times from my mouth because it was an important motivator for studying on my part when it was stated to me.  The other word of advice that was influential on me was that when criticizing someone imagine that they are right in front of you, so that you will present the criticism as carefully as you can.  In other words, do a charitable reading on your intellectual opponent, take on the strongest presentation of their argument, and state the criticism in terms of logic and evidence and NEVER in personal terms.

But the Austrians are rarely treated in that fashion.  The critiques focus on the least sophistated presentation of the argument under examination; the readings are often the least charitable possible; and the attacks are often personal.

Why is that?  Or am I just delusional and in fact economic criticism often takes this form across the spectrum of schools of thought?  So lots of silly things are being said about monetarism, new institutionalism and public hocie as well throughout the blogosphere, but I just am not as alert to these instances.

Comments

[Steven Horwitz]

Three comments Pete:

1. I DO think there are plenty of internet criticisms of Keynes, for example, that offer versions of his ideas that are unrecognizable as anything he ever wrote. And the lovely irony, of course, is that such "weakest defense" comments can be found on libertarian and free market sites.

2. The reason you see both weak defenses and criticisms of the worst Austrian arguments is, IMO, the historic link between libertarianism and Austrian economics. When those two are viewed as so strongly overlapping (e.g. "austro-libertarianism," perhaps the most damaging neologism to Austrian economics in recent times) that they can't be disentangled, you get people who haven't studied Austrian economics with the professional mindset that practicing economists have presenting watered-down and often incomplete understandings of what AE has to say. It's not as if we haven't seen this on this very blog, not mentioning any names of course...

(Horwitz also dons his special outerwear that protects him against the predictable charges of elitism that are sure to emerge.)

And because those weaker versions of AE that are often put forward by libertarian activists are the ones that, ironically, get the most public attention, especially on the Net, it should not be surprising that even reasonably serious commentators seize on those for their criticisms. It's much easier to criticize the flawed presentations of supposed Austrian economics on Joe Doakes' webpage than to actually read Mises, Hayek, or the post-revival generation.

3. This problem is also a consequence of our outsider status in academia for most of our history. Our history is a samizdat one. Until the 1980s, we simply didn't have a foothold in academia really anywhere, so AE WAS a set of ideas communicated by and to a very different group of people than NIE or Public Choice. Neither of those have the equivalent of having the majority of its adherents being outside academia, and often outside the intellectual world, for decades before they had any academic respectability. The result is that libertarians even smart, intellectual ones, who haven't studied AE in any formal way and/or in the context of a more general graduate level education feel an ownership over the ideas that probably has no equivalent in PC or NIE. The perception is that one can be a "self-taught" Austrian in a way one can't be a self-taught PC or NIE, and that perception has validity in the sense that since the 1930s, people who made Austrian arguments pretty much HAD to be self-taught. That populist link serves us well sometimes, but this is its downside. And the reality is that we're just gonna have to deal with it for the forseeable future.

I think this is also the source of the oft-repeated charge that "no one" in academic economics takes Austrian economics seriously. Well if you mean the AE that you read on the web, sure, and that remains the most visible form for public intellectuals.

As much good as Ron Paul has done in bringing AE into the public debate, the downside is that it's not going to be the best of our work that gets seen. Then again, it'd be shocking if the media and the intelligensia ever really did take the time to read the best of ours, or anyone else's.

[Daniel Klein]

One reason:

The economics of Friedrich Hayek at its most charitable is not the economics of Mises, Rothbard, or Kirzner. It is more like the economics of Smith. Austrian economics charitably interpreted and represented is no longer that of the Mises-Rothbard-Kirzner project.

The M-R-K project: Erect a scientific foundation for laissez-faire economics.

The Smith-Hayek approach: Appreciate certain by-and-large verities, such as knowledge's richness, but, mainly, criticize the scientific pretensions and arguments of interventionist economics.

So when people think of Austrian economics as something distinct, they think of things that mostly deserve scorn.

[Peter Boettke]

Dan,

Would you say the same thing about Milton Friedman or James Buchanan's efforts to 'erect a scientific foundation for laissez-faire economics'? Do they deserve scorn?

It seems to me that we only can get the appreciation you attribute to Smith-Hayek because we engage in a scientific enterprise to explore causal mechanism at work in the economy, society, and the state.

As such the sort of vision that Rothbard had of a "science of liberty" is not to be scorned, but pursued --- though our pursuit of that vision may differ from the particular way he choose to do so.

Furthermore, Kirzner has a narrower vision and is concerned mainly with issues in technical economics related to the nature of market clearing. I think he is more or less completely free of any charge you might find him guilty of with regard to pretense of foundation building.

More food for thought between us.

Pete

[Matt C.]

Dr. Boettke-
It seems you have been fooled by the Golden Rule. I cannot comment on your questions about Monetarism, but I have seen a criticism on Public Choice that I will have to pull out. It was actually in a Public Policy text book, so that is not a surprise.

I want to get back to my comment on the Golden Rule. My wife often must calm me down, either in the car or in public in general. I seem to have been raised by parents who believe their son should be a gentleman. I therefore act as a gentlemanly as possible in all regards. But it irks me to no end when other's don't act the same way. Why do they do that? Because, in the end, it's easier; it makes them feel better. "Ah ha! I got through the door before that lady."

When someone makes generalizations about a position based on the one that knows the least is because it's easy. It's easier to attack the person or ideas in a personal manner rather than attack the strongest ideas. They do that because either they don't know what their talking about or they are so unsure about their ideas that they must attack low. It also makes it easier to characterize the whole. It's the same reason that Al Gore won't debate publicly the merits of his position, he just attacks those "non-believers" as being uncaring, etc. Why do left leaning individuals always make statements like, "You only believe that because you have never been poor." (Whatever the hell that is suppose to mean.) Always because it's the easy way out. People don't like changes in the status quo, they like believing that business men are evil and are trying to rip them off. They like believing that the Fed does have strict control over prices. They don't like to believe that individual decisions in that persons self interest help the whole. Why? Because that's not what they have been taught and that would destroy their world view. So they take the easy way out. They would much rather their life be easy than be the gentleman and hold the door for a few seconds to the lady.

[Bogdan Enache]

Prof. Boettke,

An rather off-topic comment : I haven't read Pierre Duhem, but I've read some Quinne and, sure he is a critic of empiricism, more precisely a critic of "classical" logical positivism, but he's no supporter of apriorism. His epistemology can best be described as conventionalism, or as he puts it an "empiricism without dogmas", including the dogmas of Aristotelian logic (i.e. that (in the same place and time), A is A, to use a Ayn Rand wording). This in turn engenders the fundamental paradox of hermeneutics : if all knowledge is rather conventionalist, then can the the status of "the knowledge of the conventionalism of knowledge", in other words the formal reflection provided by the hermeneutic appraisal (of any variety) or science as an application of hermeneutics, can it be anything else than a different type of conventions, just a sophisticated point of view of the cognitive subject?

Anyway, I will greatly appreciate any leads regarding debates on this sort of epistemological foundations and the methodological approach derived from them within the field of Austrian Economics.

I too think that a naive view of apriorism is a problem. But maybe a more fruitful approach is to abandon the neo-kantian flavour of apriorism, in favour of a consistent application of Aristotelianism which make possible, at the same time, to emphasise the primacy and objectivity of knowledge as well as its contextual nature and the intricate relation between theory and practice. I would be very interested to now what do you think about this.

[Dee Williams]

Yes. As Steven said, people say silly things about Keynesian economics all the time. For example, check out Murray Rothbard's discussion of the Liquidity Trap in "America's Great Depression" (Link at Bottom, page 41). He said that Neo-Keynesians like Modigliani argued that only an infinite demand for money could “block return to full-employment equilibrium in a free market” with flexible prices. Rothbard said that this was non-sense because no one could have an infinite demand for money because they would also have to consume (and therefore produce) something besides money to stay alive (food, clothes, etc).

Of course, this wasn't what the Neo-Keynesians argued at all. Instead, they argued once nominal interest rates fall to zero, the demand for money becomes infinitely elastic. Their argument referred to one’s portfolio decision, not one’s decision of how much to save/consume. That’s a BIG difference. That isn’t to say there wasn’t problems with their position. For example, Milton Friedman poked holes in the very idea of separating the two decisions to begin with. But Rothbard totally flat out did not know what he was talking about with regard to the Liquidity Trap.

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

[Dee Williams]

Dr. Boettke,

I would also add that I think Rothbard may be a good chunk of the answer to the second question you pose in your post. He was loudly saying that the entire mainstream profession was idiots, but then failing to present many of thier arguments correctly (example: Liquidity Trap mentioned in my previous comment). That isn't going to win Austrian Econ many friends in Academia.

It's too bad AE didn't have a better front man in the '60's and '70s. Lachman and Kirzner were much better economists, but didn't have half the readership Rothbard had. Maybe things would have turned out differently if they did.

[Daniel Klein]

Pete: I reproduce passages of your comment and reply, dialogue style.

Pete: Would you say the same thing about Milton Friedman or James Buchanan's efforts to 'erect a scientific foundation for laissez-faire economics'? Do they deserve scorn?

Dan: I'd say that Friedman's main laissez-faire works (1962; 1980) do not pretend to scientific demonstration or depiction. Friedman himself would agree. As for Buchanan, I'm not sure, but, again, I don't think it pretends to be a scientific foundation for laissez-faire econ. Ultimately, I think Buchanan is a lot closer to Smith than to Mises/Rothbard/Kirzner.

Pete: It seems to me that we only can get the appreciation you attribute to Smith-Hayek because we engage in a scientific enterprise to explore causal mechanism at work in the economy, society, and the state.

Dan: There is science in the sense of relatively high quality discourse among committed scholars--making virtually any organized scholarly enterprise a "science"--and there is science in some narrower sense aspiring to foundations or core doctrine, exemplified by chemistry, physics, etc. What you say is true only in the former sense. The problem is that Mises/Rothbard/Kirzner have an anxiety to be scientific in the latter sense. They are modernist, as is George Stigler.

Pete: As such the sort of vision that Rothbard had of a "science of liberty" is not to be scorned, but pursued --- though our pursuit of that vision may differ from the particular way he choose to do so.

Dan: Not sure what you mean by a science of liberty. If you mean a focus on liberty as an analytic device, and on issues like the scope of desirability of the liberty maxim, then OK, and you are talking Smith's language. But you understate the departure from Rothbard. He makes categorical claims, supposedly deduced, supposedly constituting some scientific edifice.

Pete: Furthermore, Kirzner has a narrower vision and is concerned mainly with issues in technical economics related to the nature of market clearing. I think he is more or less completely free of any charge you might find him guilty of with regard to pretense of foundation building.

Dan: I disagree. In the spirit of Mises, Kirzner makes categorical "scientific" claims--entrepreneurial discovery is always coordinative, unseized profit opportunities always imply the existence of error, and, in general, voluntary action is coordinative. Kirzner clearly subscribes to Mises, and displays the same will to depict the virtues of the free economy in a supposedly scientific, categorical way.

The changes I would make to Mises, Rothbard, and Kirzner would be in the categoricalness and supposed scientific distinctiveness of their approach (praxeology). In a sense those changes are not that signficant. But once you take them away, what makes these guys so distinctive that they get to call themselves a separate school?

[Daniel Klein]

I second Bogdan Enache's criticism of Pete's invocation of Quine as a way to salvage Mises. I read Quine's famous essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" as critical of those who emphasize the induction of truths from the empirical facts, and of those who start with supposedly axiomatic truths and deduce from there. Quine says both are naive and dogmatic.

Quine is essentially in the spirit of Polanyi, Kuhn, Rorty, Wayne Booth, and McCloskey. We judge whole fields of thinking, and that judgment cannot be reduced to any kind of algorithm or logic. Again, I believe that Smith and Hayek are very congruent with this intellectual attitude, while Mises, Rothbard, and Kirzner are not. Pragmatists versus modernists.

Again, if one salvages Mises by resort to Quine, one has essentially taken away the pedestal by virtue of which the Austrians find specialness in Mises.

Pete likes to have it both ways.

[Daniel Klein]

I second Bogdan Enache's criticism of Pete's invocation of Quine as a way to salvage Mises. I read Quine's famous essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" as critical of those who emphasize the induction of truths from the empirical facts, and of those who start with supposedly axiomatic truths and deduce from there. Quine says both are naive and dogmatic.

Quine is essentially in the spirit of Polanyi, Kuhn, Rorty, Wayne Booth, and McCloskey. We judge whole fields of thinking, and that judgment cannot be reduced to any kind of algorithm or logic. Again, I believe that Smith and Hayek are very congruent with this intellectual attitude, while Mises, Rothbard, and Kirzner are not. Pragmatists versus modernists.

Again, if one salvages Mises by resort to Quine, one has essentially taken away the pedestal by virtue of which the Austrians find specialness in Mises.

Pete likes to have it both ways.

[Peter Boettke]

Bodgan and Dan,

Don't read my essay in the Handbook of Economic Methodology then, because I try to reconstruct Misesianism along the lines of Duhem-Quine's critique of naive testing. Rizzo earlier reconstructed Mises's argument through Lakatos.

I am not asking what is the most "accurate" reading of Mises, but rather what is the most "productive" reading. I am completely in favor of 'opportunistic' readings in the history of thought --- see my essays "Why Read the Classics" and "F. A. Hayek as an Intellectual Historian."

If Dan wants to call my reading of Mises, Rothbard, Kirzner to be "forced" in that I am putting them into what he calls the 'Smith-Hayek' framework --- then I plead guilty. I am willing to use any argument by any economists or social thinker that I think helps us understand the world around us. I tend to think the Austrians have made several very important contributions to that framework --- they don't have an exclusive claim, but they have a claim.

Ultimately, I am a political economist --- no hyphen needed.

Pete

[Martin]

For silly non-comprehending criticisms of others Peter Boettke could do not better than look at his own work on the socialist calculation debate. As Professor Doug Mackenzie has conclusively demonstrated in a brilliant pathbreaking series of papers, pretty much everything the GMU Austrians have written about Lange and the other market socialists is seriously wide of the mark.

Professor Mackenzie's work can be found on the Mises Institute website for anyone interested.

[Alec]

Well Dr Boettke, compare your reaction to DG Lesvic with that provided by Dr Horwitz and you may be on your way to answering your own question.

You appear to encourage the goofballs to call themselves Austrians and seemingly have a desire to massage their egos and flatter them.

Dr Horwtiz, by contrast, rightly called Lesvic a crank who lacked any comprehension of basic undergraduate intro economics.

So maybe blame yourself for these self-styled austrian kooks. And perhaps try to learn from the superior wisdom of your esteemed colleague Dr Horwitz.

[Gus Carvalho]

Dr. Boettke,

Personal or weak criticism of one's theory is not only a sign of ignorance, but also an ancient rethorical device or 'debate technique', so to speak. The usual way to avoid debating anything - specially against a stronger opponent or theory - is to caricature, discredit or disqualify his/her/its main points right from the start. Terms such as 'sophist', 'facist', 'nazist', 'elitist' and the more recent 'neo-liberal' and 'neo-conservative', are examples of such technique - which, of course, are not restricted to the 'left', but are widely used in and out of academia and across the political spectrum...

Another common problem and source of much confusion is the need to summarize and simplify someone's arguments to a more general audience - a problem which in my opinion is increasingly acute in our times, with the growth of the internet, instant news, knowledge specialization and compartmentalization, etc. I don't want sound 'elitist' - here we go again - and that is certainly not my point. But it is easier and faster to rely on 'folk' renditions of theories than to do your won research on a subject or theory.

[G]

Profs,

As a n00b to AE and a lay-supporter of it, I think there are two places most lay critics and lay supporters get their information:

1) Mises.org
Don't get me wrong, I love Mises.org, but sometimes it doesn't come off as being terribly scientific or without bias. Some of their articles are great, and others are less so. I don't know why Lew doesn't keep the more normative points to LewRockwell.com, but its his choice.

2) Wikipedia
Given AE's internet presence, I think its wikipedia pages should be better edited. This is really where most people get information about most everything. Most of the pages that contain Austrian insights (such as the Causes of the Great Depression) are alright, but others about AE itself (especially the page on ABCT and AE itself) aren't all that detailed. I've wanted to edit the later pages (the ABCT page could at least use some of Garrison's diagrams, and the main AE page says AE rejects the scientific method), but as a self-taught layman, I don't feel qualified to do so.

I think wikipedia is the first place most people go to for information, and getting it right would pay huge dividends to lay critics and supporters of AE.

[Steven Horwitz]

G's point about Wikipedia is WELL taken. It would be a valuable project for someone to do a thorough revision of that page - expanding it and bringing in more contemporary stuff. I wonder whether it isn't something one could get some grant money for. Otherwise, one of us tenured middle-aged doofus with a low opportunity cost of our time will end up working on a project that wouldn't count toward tenure or promotion (though I'd argue it SHOULD if you did it right).

[Rafe Champion]

There is a thesis on the Duhem-Quine problem at this address. (slow loading word file)
http://www.the-rathouse.com/files/the_duhem_quine_problem.doc

Two items of interest are the speed with which Quine retracted the strong implications of his initial restatement of the Duhem problem, and Duhem's own response to the problem that he defined. The concluding chapter of the thesis is an outline of Duhem's positive position. He speaks to our condition!

"Duhem did not see his exposition of the ambiguity of falsification as a major problem for the progress of science. His aim was to rehabilitate the role of theory at a time when positivists and subjectivists were trying to avoid the complexities of abstract theories and the problems of interpreting experimental results in theoretically advanced sciences. At the same time he wanted to protect the less abstract sciences such as biology (at that time) from premature attempts to force it into the abstract and mathematical mould of physics."

[G]

I often wonder if the media's stance could ever be changed to actually respect truth and science. They'll never be able to go into proper detail on complex topics, but if you can't cook you need to get the hell out of the kitchen. Other tools, such a prediction markets, can be used to mine data without the need to understand specifics.

If only more people would see Friedman's pencil speech.

On the subject of laypeople (like myself) miss-representing Austrian positions (as I'm sure I do), am I correct in saying that the aforementioned speech is a great way to explain Hayek's knowledge problem?

[Robert]

Strangly enough, I created and wrote the first version of the Wikipedia page on Austrian Economics. Some of what I wrote is still there, but much has changed.

I also created and wrote the first version of some other Wikipedia entries, including the ones on Joseph Schumpeter, on the IS/LM model, and on Post Keynesians economics.

I think Austrian economics attracts a lot of anti-intellectual types.

I think it debatable how much influence Austrian economics has in academia. It seems plenty marginal to me in U.S. economics departments, just like other varities of heterodox economics.

[G]

"I think Austrian economics attracts a lot of anti-intellectual types."

I think there are strong incentives for libertarians to use Austrian economics as a tool of argument, in a similar manner to how communists might use Marxist economics. Neither circumstance says anything about the explanatory power of each school, of course.

For me, Austrian economics was simply the most intuitive and interesting school of thought, and it offered the most clear explanation for the housing bubble I have seen. All other works of non-Austrian economists I've read seemed to reject subjective value on some level (either explicitly or implicitly, especially with regard to market "success" and "failure"), which turned me away from them. I know this has more to do with the economists themselves than their school of thought, but Austrians seem to use supposedly-objective metrics of value far less often than other economists.

[Bill Woolsey]

Blame Rothbard.

It is the Leninist "plumbline" approach.

Of course, to libertarian public policy. But since Austrian economics has been chosen to be the economic element of the science of liberty--that is rationalization for Rothbard's plumbline on public policy, there is a plumbline on economic undestanding as well.

Here is the "Austrian" position on this or that. And everything anyone else has ever said is foolish and wrong.

The Mises Insititute continues with Rothbard's tradition.

The layman reads this stuff, and then "knows" what the "Austrian" view is. And, of course, that it is unique and special and completely different from the foolish ideas of everyone else.

And so, McArdle makes some rather over-the-top statements about the gold standard being insane.

And people make various foolish comments that show little undersanding of the gold standard.

And then the devotees of the Mises Insitute reply with the "austrian view" (really plumbline) on this or that. Personally, I only find it exceptionally grating when I think it is dead wrong.

I know, I know... I have been very down on the "fractional reserve banking as fraud" postition for 30 years now, and I hate it when I see it in these comment threads, along with the claim that it is the "austrian position."

I have not heard Ron Paul promote this view during his campaign. (I hope I don't.)

[Gus Carvalho]

Maybe one of the reasons behind some of the radical views coming from people associated to the Mises Institute is their rather dogmatic approach to Economics. They seem to have really internalized Carl Menger's dispute with the German Historical Economic School, to the point of brushing aside - and discrediting - many interesting critiques to, and views of, Economics that are more skeptic of the field's claim to a positivist scientific status.

I'm not advocating total relativism here; but some measure of skepticism should be the base of any scientific enterprise... and, in my opinion, history, contingency, and culture can and should be brought back to the study of Economics. I think that there is much to be gained from interdisciplinary research involving History, Philosophy, Political Thought, Political Science, Law and Economics. That is the tradition of thinkers such as Hayek and Mises. And some economists must understand that that does not mean preponderance, but dialogue, including inside Economics.

Finally, an anecdote: it seems that Mises stormed out of the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society shouting that Hayek and the other participants were really collectivists and socialists...

[Mitch]

Coming back to Mr. Boettke's original points, I would recall how much vilification and distortion of his points of view Milton Friedman suffered (and withstood with admirable stoicism and bonhomie). One only has to look for Jeffrey Sachs' simplifications on monetarist positions in his 'Macroeconomics in the global economy' textbook, or to Paul Krugman's articles on Friedman to see misrepresentations or oversimplifications of his theories and work.

Any libertarian (or even 'economically orthodox') point of view has been subjected to ferocious criticism, even way before Adam Smith. I believe libertarians should be aware that it used to be worse... Defences of usury in the Middle Ages (and almost any merchant activity could be considered 'usurious') were considered heresy -and punished either by prosecution or socially.

By contrast, positions defending interventionism and socialism, such as Marx in Das Kapital, or Keynes in his 1936 'General Theory' have received exceptionally charitable readings -that remind in some sense the interpretation of religious texts. Marx's first chapter of Das Kapital or Keynes' last chapter of this General Theory are examples of lousy economics thinking (in my opinion), but that have received ultra-charitable reading due to their socialist and interventionist character. I commend any reader to check H.Hazlitt non-charitable reading of Keynes in his 'Failure of the New Economics' or Rothbard's 'Classical Economics' on Marx and decide for himself whether this is right or not.

By contrast, Austrian economics exemplifies classical liberalism and the economic point of view at both its most sophisticated and most consistently jealous of liberties in all fields. As such it is vulnerable to attacks not only from socialists and interventionists, but also to usually rough attacks from 'centrist' and moderate economists who share some points but try to avoid appear being "extreme" at all costs in an environment deeply hostile to classical liberals and economists in general.

[Peter Boettke]

Robert,

I don't consider myself "marginalized" in the least bit. I have published papers and reviews in some of the general journals (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Literature), referee papers for journals and top university presses, I am the editor of a series with University of Michigan Press, and I teach in a PhD program, and I have had appointments at NYU, Stanford, and LSE.

Now do I have some unconventional views --- of course. Does this make some people dismiss my work --- of course. Is it hard to publish in the top tier outlets --- of course, but no harder for me than anyone else. This is just a very competitive business.

Israel Kirzner taught at NYU for his career, same with Mario Rizzo, Larry White taught there for years as well. David Harper has been teaching there and heading up the MA program for close to 10 years. So again I am not sure that NYU counts as a marginalized program.

Younger Austrians are publishing in the JPE, JLS, JLE, and with presses such as Princeton and Stanford. Again, I wouldn't say this is marginalized.

I refused to accept that status and I also tell my students to not allow themselves to be viewed that way. Instead, declare victory and move forward.

Now, that IS somewhat delusional, but not as delusional as some may think.

So it is not academia where I find the most obnoxious barriers, and it is not in the policy world, but it is in the "intellectual world" and especially the subculture of the intellectual world that exists on the internet. There you have two groups --- one group cheerfully accepts its marginalized outsider status, the other group denounces the Austrians as outsiders. Neither group has a grasp on the reality of the economics profession I would argue.

Pete

[G]

I don't mean any offense when I type this, but I don't think most economists are really interested in being politically neutral. At least, most economists that I read (Stiglitz, Mises, Hayek, etc) do not seem to be at all.

I wonder if economics ever becomes applicable to the real, business world (beyond rarely-followed policy recommendations), it could loose some of its bias?

[Rafe Champion]

G, it is possible for economists to have political views and also to practice value-free analysis of economic issues. Or are you suggesting that there is no such thing as value-free knowledge about the way the world works?

[Zack]

Peter Boettke's basic problem is that he is mad than too few people (other than his own GMU students) think that he isw a genius who they should worship.

Lesvic was right about Boettke's desire to be the high priest.

And it is obvious why fractional reserve banking is immoral? I am appalled that people on a supposedly Austrian blog would not immediately agree with that simple Austrian point.

[G]

Rafe Champion,

I think its probably possible, but it just seems like so few economists are interested in doing it.

Zach,

I don't think AE refers to anything as "immoral". I guess you could say fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, but thats really about the wording on a depositor's contract.

[Steven Horwitz]

Fractional reserve banking is neither fraudulent nor inherently inflationary. Assuming Zack was being serious, that position has had serious traction in Austrian economics only since Rothbard (you won't find the first in Mises at all and you won't find the second as long as you put "inherently" in front of it, and you won't find either in Hayek, for example.)

Even today, there are plenty of Austrians who are fine with fractional reserve banking. It remains a matter of debate within Austrian circles and neither side can claim that their position is "uniquely" or "truly" Austrian, given how many there are on each side.

Actually, claiming that opposition to fractional reserve banking is "a simple Austrian point" is an EXCELLENT example of the point Pete was making with this post: it dramatically oversimplifies the internal debates and complexity of Austrian economics, it tries to claim one view as the "true" view despite those debates, and it comes off to the public as sounding cranky and conspiratorial.

And, not surprisingly, it is wedded to a personal attack on Pete. Dogmatic assertions of what is and is not "obvious" and "Austrian" tend to end up demonizing the apostates who reject the dogma.

[Zack]

The 'Austrians' who are fine with fractional reserve banking are not really AUSTRIAMS but neoclassical wanabees.

We have yet to see their rebutall of the conclusion that such banking is a fraud derived by apodictically certain reasoning (derived from the action axiom) of real Austrians and real scholars like Dr Rothbard, Prof Block, Dr Hulsmann, Dr De Soto, etc.

Has Stephen Horwitz actually written anything on monetary theory or is he just another GMU dabbler who claims to know everything but - unlike the serious scholars and thinkers at the Mises Institute like Dr Hoppe and Dr Batemarco - knows little?

[Steven Horwitz]

Okay Zack, I can't decide whether you're serious or engaging in some very subtle parody here. The sad part is that either way, it's bad news for Austrian economics. If you're serious, well once again, dogmatism and ignorance raise their ugly heads and that's bad. If you're engaged in parody, the fact that I can't detect it says that dogmatism and ignorance is way too common among self-proclaimed Austrians and that's bad too. Maybe worse.

And I'm not sure either is worthy of a serious response at this point.

[Zack]

Stephen Horowtiz's dogmatic comments (and his clear refusal to rebut the brilliantly argued scientific points made by Prof Rothbard) do not merit any comment.

And I am outraged that he attacks Dr Ron Paul. Dr Paul is the only hope this country has. Only Dr Paul can save us from the fractional reserve advocating, abortion advocating, homosexuality preaching, enforced integration advocating, libertine anti-austrians.

[Sinclair Davidson]

The exchange between Rafe and G is interesting - but not on topic, I suspect. First, I suspect most economists are neutral in their academic work. Second, I don't see any difficulty in being neutral in the classroom/journal but opinionated in the popular press. Each of these markets has its own demand/supply characteristics and academics should and (the better ones) can taylor their output for each market.

I was recently told by a corporate leader (in Australia) that they would like to see more Austrian type work especially in the area of regulation and theory of the firm. No doubt this was short-hand for saying they'd like more pro-market economists doing work that they can use to beat up the "market failure" economists who infest the regulatory agencies. Nonetheless there is a market for Austrian economics beyond academia and the internet.

All of that is mostly OT - sorry.

[Bill Woolsey]

Surely, Zach attempted to make it clearer and clearer that he is doing parody.

What is most funny... and sad... can anyone really be sure?

[Victor Aguilar]

I will pay Roger Garrison $1000 for a rebuttal to my Critique of Austrian Economics.

www.axiomaticeconomics.com/critques.php

[Victor Aguilar]

I will pay Roger Garrison $1000 for a rebuttal to my Critique of Austrian Economics.

www.axiomaticeconomics.com/critques.php

[Victor Aguilar]

I will pay Roger Garrison $1000 for a rebuttal to my Critique of Austrian Economics.

www.axiomaticeconomics.com/critiques.php

(The URL was misspelled in the previous post.)