AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS: THE PROBLEM IS NOT ONE OF MATHEMATICS, BUT OF MORALITY 1) If

AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS: THE PROBLEM IS NOT ONE OF MATHEMATICS, BUT OF MORALITY

1) If you look at mainstream economics as the study of human behavior demonstrated by the record of human actions, then I think it’s an excellent means of conducting research in social science. And, by and large, that is what the economic community engages in, and how most of them describe their work. Because the canons of science suggest that such a claim is all that they can make.

2) If you look at mainstream economics as the source of government policy which can be used to maximize all available opportunity for consumption, then some economists might argue that is true although a lot might also argue that their work is used for that purpose but should not be, since their science is too young to be used for that purpose.

3) if you look at mainstream economics as a means by which to justify ‘dishonest socialism’ under the Keynesian model of forcible redistribution without control of the means of production, and a tool by which to undermine western exceptionalism, then it’s really not hard to make that argument.

4) If you look at economics as the study of moral human cooperation, then austrian economics (or at least, praxeological analysis) exposes the immorality of political intervention in the economy and the consequences of that intervention over the long term. Unfortunately the progressive argument – which can only be settled empirically if and when we demonstrate that they are wrong by catastrophic failure – is that the short term good accomplished (the acceleration of the reproductive rates of the lower classes) compensates for any harm in the long term, and in the long term technology (and our supposed infinite wisdom) will solve that problem in the long run for us.

CLOSING

The problem is that under majority rule and monopoly government, we cannot allow the dishonest socialists, and moral and honest austrians to conduct their experiments in parallel. Were we able to divide our polity either internally (by class) or externally (by separate states) we could run this empirical test. I would assume that under that test the keynesian group would reproduce and generate consumption through reproduction that could not be matched by the innovation of the austrian group – since generating demand through innovation is more expensive a research program than generating demand through malthusian reproduction.

Cheers.