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50 sats \ 16 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Jan \ on: The Cultural War in Economic Science Politics_And_Law
As with Bitcoin, it's important to remember how early we are and how revolutionary the insights of economics are.
There's a great quote from Milton Friedman (that I couldn't find) about how even if all that has been accomplished by the sum total of economic work was reducing tariffs by 0.1%, then our entire profession has paid for itself many times over.
There's still a lot to do, but the world does appreciate markets and free exchange more than it used to.
I just posted a speech by an Austrian that puts Friedman into his proper place in the world of Economic science, at least in the view of the lecturer: #862635
He says that Friedman was a thorough statist, although, as a “useful innocent” (a Mises quote).
The free markets will set people free, eventually. People can now see what free markets and voluntary arrangements can do for prosperity.
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Yeah, as a utilitarian, Friedman was only ever weakly attached to the cause of freedom. I don't think we should go out of our way to detract from or ignore the good he did, though.
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<scarcasm>OK, I think he did great when he promulgated the idea for withholding taxes during WWII. That was really a step forward for freedom and liberty! </scarcasm>
He did do good after he took a step back and thought about what he had done in the past, though.
I still can’t get past monetarism, though.
BTW, did you manage to read the whole speech? Amazing!!
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I haven't had time to read the whole thing.
I started reading through it and saw you had posted it, but then got distracted with other stuff.
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Yeah, I saw someone else had posted it when I was halfway through posting it and reading it to find the core nut. @Roll posted it about 13 minutes before I did but did his usual job on it, so I decided I had enough value added to post over him without compunctions.
The lecture was really amazing! It tore down mainstream economics in the best way possible and gave reasons why praxeology is the true economic science.
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There's a great quote from Milton Friedman (that I couldn't find) about how even if all that has been accomplished by the sum total of economic work was reducing tariffs by 0.1%, then our entire profession has paid for itself many times over.
Yeah but how much damage have we also caused with bad and half-baked ideas, lol.
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I can think of at least 100,000,000 people damaged by half-baked ideas that are still flowing through societies like viruses.
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Why you say we, Kimosabe?
It was the state that did the damage with its half-baked ideas on interfering with the free markets. The state, not we.
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Presumably, because "we" are members of the profession.
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Ah… but did we promulgate these ideas or spread them? I only do Austrian school economics since I learned of it. I don’t think the Austrians are doing damage to anybody, especially Rothbard.
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A ton, but still probably not enough to offset the positives of say China or India even partially embracing market liberalization.
Are you familiar with some of the horrifically failed misadventures in development economics? They've got a fair amount to atone for.
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I was in India just when they started moving from their controlled economy to a freer market economy. There were adjustments and people grumbling, but the grumbling seemed to be about how some of the formerly price controlled goods were having rising prices, but were available. Like everything else, it hurt some people and helped others. That was when the Indian economy started to break out.
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Are you familiar with some of the horrifically failed misadventures in development economics? They've got a fair amount to atone for.
Haha, no. Got a list somewhere? I'd love to bookmark it
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It's been a while since I took my development courses, but the ones I can remember would probably make a decent post.
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Perhaps the largest mistake would have been state directed development. MITI in Japan directed industrial and trade development until their big blow-up in the late 80’s. Since then, there has been a constant slump and drain on the Japanese economy, I think, due to that previous direction. The state was choosing the winners and losers, which, according to Mises in Bureaucracy is an egregious mistake because bureaucrats work to rule, not to efficiency and profit.
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As with Bitcoin, it's important to remember how early we are and how revolutionary the insights of economics are.
I think this only works with, as the author says, the Science of Economics, not the pseudoscience of the macroeconomists or the state-religion of Marxists. He was looking at what Austrian Economics or praxeology was doing for the science of economics.
There's still a lot to do, but the world does appreciate markets and free exchange more than it used to.
Yes, but most of the world is locked up in some other vision and/or version of economics. Until they see that the state is the problem and volunteerism is the solution, not much will happen. When the statists have the power and guns to coerce everybody else, they will get away with what they are doing. When that changes, everything will change.
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