So I'm researching the Austrians and...

Economics
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…I’m convinced there is almost no rationality under the sun.  Studying the Austrians is giving me a case of the malevolent universe, so to speak. 

 

Before beginning my studies, I knew the Austrians were generally a priorist, so I had my trepidations.  And from what I have read of Rothbard online, he appears to be a common quack; his market anarchy theory is so grossly irrational, rationalistic, unfounded and arbitrary that I cannot fathom how anyone takes it seriously.  In old videos of him speaking, he constantly refers to the men who built this country as “cartelizers” and he seems to have a rabidly anti-capitalist streak in his allegedly capitalist thought.  And as a dyed-in-the-wool Kantian rationalist, I have no idea how this guy gets away with calling himself an Aristotelian (or why Objectivists have let him get away with it); Aristotle gave us deductive logic, he most certainly did not give us rationalism.  But the influence of Plato on Aristotle’s thought might be the back door through which someone like Rothbard can sneak in.  I doubt I will read anything more from him, perhaps with the exception of his history of the Great Depression, which might be less irrational than his formal theories.

 

But in order to obtain a more fundamental understanding of formal Austrianism, I recently picked up Hoppe’s “Economic Science and the Austrian Method” and “Human Action” by Mises.

 

I haven’t cracked Human Action yet, and I haven’t been able to get very far with Hoppe; he’s so bad that I can hardly compel myself to keep reading.  Hoppe reads like an amalgamation of every essential description of rationalists that was ever made by Peikoff, Harriman, or other Objectivists.  In the course of explaining the Austrian method, he spends half his time arguing with himself over the proper structure of propositions, then he arbitrarily declares his propositional method to be axiomatic and irrefutable (by reference to the content of his consciousness?  wtf).  He’s all over the place; here he’s going over the nuances of propositional phrases, then he mentions the beauty of logic, then he talks shit about some guy who talked shit about the Austrians, then he mentions the geometric integrity of a triangle, then he reminds you that all of this is irrefutable.  If Hoppe existed in an Ayn Rand novel, rationalists would howl that Rand was beating up a straw man; in reality, this guy is a *bad* living caricature of rationalism, made so much worse by the fact that I know he’s being serious. 

 

We know that the rationalist epistemology is irresistably tempting to those who want to believe in god while pretending to be scientists, but irrationality begets more irrationality.  Among Austrians in-general, the mysticism and the quackery are inseperable; Thomas Woods seems to be a mostly rational economist (and I don’t know if he’s into this anarchy crap), but he’s also a raving mystic and an intellectual bedfellow of Lew Rockwell (lol).  I’m saying that the more I see of the Austrian camp, the more it appears to be a gang of quacks.

 

At the beginning of his book, Hoppe explains that Mises actually discovered a (one?) flaw in Kant’s epistemology, and that he solved it by positing the law of causality as a “category of action” (which is still dependent upon consciousness, I see).  This was Mises attempting to escape the obvious Platonism of Kant’s epistemology, no matter how many mountains of scholastic jargon Kant heaped on top of it.  After all this, I don’t know what to expect from Mises–or if I care to find it. 

 

 

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…I’m convinced there is almost no rationality under the sun.  Studying the Austrians is giving me a case of the malevolent universe, so to speak. 

 

Before beginning my studies, I knew the Austrians were generally a priorist, so I had my trepidations.  And from what I have read of Rothbard online, he appears to be a common quack; his market anarchy theory is so grossly irrational, rationalistic, unfounded and arbitrary that I cannot fathom how anyone takes it seriously.  In old videos of him speaking, he constantly refers to the men who built this country as “cartelizers” and he seems to have a rabidly anti-capitalist streak in his allegedly capitalist thought.  And as a dyed-in-the-wool Kantian rationalist, I have no idea how this guy gets away with calling himself an Aristotelian (or why Objectivists have let him get away with it); Aristotle gave us deductive logic, he most certainly did not give us rationalism.  But the influence of Plato on Aristotle’s thought might be the back door through which someone like Rothbard can sneak in.  I doubt I will read anything more from him, perhaps with the exception of his history of the Great Depression, which might be less irrational than his formal theories.

 

But in order to obtain a more fundamental understanding of formal Austrianism, I recently picked up Hoppe’s “Economic Science and the Austrian Method” and “Human Action” by Mises.

 

I haven’t cracked Human Action yet, and I haven’t been able to get very far with Hoppe; he’s so bad that I can hardly compel myself to keep reading.  Hoppe reads like an amalgamation of every essential description of rationalists that was ever made by Peikoff, Harriman, or other Objectivists.  In the course of explaining the Austrian method, he spends half his time arguing with himself over the proper structure of propositions, then he arbitrarily declares his propositional method to be axiomatic and irrefutable (by reference to the content of his consciousness?  wtf).  He’s all over the place; here he’s going over the nuances of propositional phrases, then he mentions the beauty of logic, then he talks shit about some guy who talked shit about the Austrians, then he mentions the geometric integrity of a triangle, then he reminds you that all of this is irrefutable.  If Hoppe existed in an Ayn Rand novel, rationalists would howl that Rand was beating up a straw man; in reality, this guy is a *bad* living caricature of rationalism, made so much worse by the fact that I know he’s being serious. 

 

We know that the rationalist epistemology is irresistably tempting to those who want to believe in god while pretending to be scientists, but irrationality begets more irrationality.  Among Austrians in-general, the mysticism and the quackery are inseperable; Thomas Woods seems to be a mostly rational economist (and I don’t know if he’s into this anarchy crap), but he’s also a raving mystic and an intellectual bedfellow of Lew Rockwell (lol).  I’m saying that the more I see of the Austrian camp, the more it appears to be a gang of quacks.

Whoa now. There’s a lot of insults in there. Wouldn’t it be more productive to give actual argumentation, without insults, to show where you differ from these scholars, rather than a stream of out-of-nowhere no-argument insults?

 

For example, there are plenty of ongoing threads where one can discuss market anarchy theory, including Rothbard’s contributions to that field.

 

Secondly, you refer to him as anti-capitalist because he refers to certain big businessmen as “cartelizers.” Note that this wouldn’t make him anti-capitalist, it would just making him wrong about history of these businessmen, if he were indeed wrong. But we don’t get an argument as to why. There are many scholars who have done research on the history of big business in the US. For example, Gabriel Kolko in his The Triumph of Conservatism, goes on to show that the US has never had a truly free market, it has always been a corporate state of cronyism at varying levels. It would be a mistake for an Objectivist or libertarian to conflate opposition to this as “anti-capitalism.” If “capitalism” is to stand for the free market, then rushing to the defense of elite corporations and prevailing business models and practices as though these were free-market phenomena would be mistakenly “anti-capitalist.”

 

As to your charge of Kantianism, it is certainly strange as Rothbard was the successor to Mises, who largely is responsible for extracting the Kantianism out of Mises. George Reisman, Roderick Long, and Stephan Kinsella have demonstrated already, for example, that Mises’ (and Hoppe’s to an extent) use of the concept of a priori can be reconciled with Rand’s rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. I await your comments on their work.

 

Also Prof. Woods is of course an anarchist. But also, it seems to be a misstep to call someone who is otherwise a rational, normal person a “raving mystic” simply because they are a Christian. Is every Christian automatically a “raving mystic”? I don’t know if that is fair, especially when Christianity has nothing to do with his work as an historian or economist.

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Whoa now. There’s a lot of insults in there. Wouldn’t it be more productive to give actual argumentation, without insults, to show where you differ from these scholars, rather than a stream of out-of-nowhere no-argument insults?

 

For example, there are plenty of ongoing threads where one can discuss market anarchy theory, including Rothbard’s contributions to that field.

 

 

As to your charge of Kantianism, it is certainly strange as Rothbard was the successor to Mises, who largely is responsible for extracting the Kantianism out of Mises. George Reisman, Roderick Long, and Stephan Kinsella have demonstrated already, for example, that Mises’ (and Hoppe’s to an extent) use of the concept of a priori can be reconciled with Rand’s rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy. I await your comments on their work.

 

Also Prof. Woods is of course an anarchist. But also, it seems to be a misstep to call someone who is otherwise a rational, normal person a “raving mystic” simply because they are a Christian. Is every Christian automatically a “raving mystic”? I don’t know if that is fair, especially when Christianity has nothing to do with his work as an historian or economist.

 

 

I do not owe the sanction of serious consideration to mystics who believe in god and irrationalists who tell me that anarchy is freedom; in both cases, they are rationalizing reality to fit their whims, and it is only in light of the abysmal state of modern inquiry that people like this expect to be taken seriously or to deserve a rational answer. 

 

And NO, you cannot reconcile rationalism with objectivism.  If you stop calling it a priorism, you are still using concepts, language, and logic detached from any reference to percepts and sense experience; that is the problem with rationalism, you use logic detached from reality and claim your theory is valid because it all fits together and sounds good.  Reisman was a shabby epistemologist to begin with, and over the years he has become more and more rationalistic; as for Kinsella or whats his face, why don’t you tell me what these epistemological giants had to say about the analytic-synthetic dichotomy lol. 

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After all this, I don’t know what to expect from Mises–or if I care to find it.

Do you have a background in economics or in reading other economists?

Menger has a straightforward epistemology. I find Mises absurdly abstract. I could not get through more than a chapter of his “Epistemology” book, but he does have insights in “Human Action” and in “Socialism”. I’ve only read the Rothbard book on the Great Depression, and it was among the less-than-average books on the topic. Benjamin Andersen is very good on that same topic, but suffers from the reverse of Mises: the reader has to pull the theory out of the text (still, a worthwhile read). Hazlitt is a great writer for a lay audience, but most of what he says in “One Lesson” is not particularly Austrian. His critique of Keynes is good, but written like book-notes: one can keep “General Theory” open and read the critique side-by-side (if I remember right, he has a second Keynesian critique that is more stand-alone).

Of moderns who consider themselves allied with "Austrians’, I would recommend David Stockman’s latest book “The Great Deformation”. Its a bit of a “fighting book” (not much attempt to argue two sides of issues), so most readers won’t like it all, but it is a good history of modern U.S. business-cycles.

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Do you have a background in economics or in reading other economists?

Menger has a straightforward epistemology. I find Mises absurdly abstract. I could not get through more than a chapter of his “Epistemology” book, but he does have insights in “Human Action” and in “Socialism”. I’ve only read the Rothbard book on the Great Depression, and it was among the less-than-average books on the topic. Benjamin Andersen is very good on that same topic, but suffers from the reverse of Mises: the reader has to pull the theory out of the text (still, a worthwhile read). Hazlitt is a great writer for a lay audience, but most of what he says in “One Lesson” is not particularly Austrian. His critique of Keynes is good, but written like book-notes: one can keep “General Theory” open and read the critique side-by-side (if I remember right, he has a second Keynesian critique that is more stand-alone).

Of moderns who consider themselves allied with "Austrians’, I would recommend David Stockman’s latest book “The Great Deformation”. Its a bit of a “fighting book” (not much attempt to argue two sides of issues), so most readers won’t like it all, but it is a good history of modern U.S. business-cycles.

 

 

Yes.  I found Hazlitt’s book to be great, except for a passage or two where he gets close to morality and starts babbling (but this is true of all free market economists, thus far); Hazlitt seems to be something of a common-sense classicist.  I’ve heard several of Stockman’s speeches, and his book is on my list; I’m not particularly strong on Stockman because though he is certainly better than the mainstream, he seems to be agnostic on the subject of money (i.e. “the Fed would be great if it was run my way”), which is better but no cigar. 

 

I have derived most of my original economic thinking from the Objectivist philosophy; the more I read of economics, the more I keep running into false and arbitrary ideas, which is unavoidable since the economic science is overrun with rationalism and subjectivism. 

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Speaking as a self-described Austrian, you need to unpack exactly what Austrian economics is.

 

Austrian economics is a positive economic theory. Rothbard’s evaluation of American businessmen, his anarchism, and Mises’s epistemology are not a part of Austrian economics. Mises lays out the philosophical groundwork for Austrianism is Human Action (its called praxeology), though that too must be unpacked. One can agree with praxeology as a foundation for economic science while denying its validity as an epistemological and metaphysical tool. Mises unified the two in the Kantian tradition, while Rothbard took the econ but combined it with Aristotelian (and really Randian) metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. 

 

I agree with you on Hoppe. He is a dangerous figure who should rightfully be ignored and marginalized. I saw him give a talk where he claimed the success of Europeans compared to Africans and Asians can be attributed to European genetic superiority due to living in colder climates. 

1 Like
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I do not owe the sanction of serious consideration to mystics who believe in god and irrationalists who tell me that anarchy is freedom; in both cases, they are rationalizing reality to fit their whims, and it is only in light of the abysmal state of modern inquiry that people like this expect to be taken seriously or to deserve a rational answer. 

 

Your presented reasoning is actually just an emotional evaluation of your first reaction to a few writers, and furthermore, it’s not even a reaction to the “founding thinkers” of Austrian economics like Mises or pre-Ausutrians like Bastiat. My impression is that Rothbard is a “second-wave” sort of Austrian. In any case, you didn’t point out specific principles you disagree with. That’s unproductive. Understanding is not the same as sanctioning. Given that your arguments lack content, what you  presented makes it look like you don’t know enough to accept *or* reject Austrianism.

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Your presented reasoning is actually just an emotional evaluation of your first reaction to a few writers, and furthermore, it’s not even a reaction to the “founding thinkers” of Austrian economics like Mises or pre-Ausutrians like Bastiat. My impression is that Rothbard is a “second-wave” sort of Austrian. In any case, you didn’t point out specific principles you disagree with. That’s unproductive. Understanding is not the same as sanctioning. Given that your arguments lack content, what you  presented makes it look like you don’t know enough to accept *or* reject Austrianism.

 

Oh no, he threw the emotion card at me; what am I to do?  I don’t know if you’re an Objectivist, or a whim-worshipping pseudo-Objectivist who wants to make happy with a gang of Kantian rationalist-subjectivists while pretending that the two are not insuperably antithetical, or a general libertarian jellyfish who wants to be kinda this and somewhat that too, maybe a little of the other thing. 

 

Here’s the bricks: I do not need to go through and pick out every rotten vegetable in a dumpster before I know that they are not palatable.  Meaning, if I know a system of economics is built upon an epistemological foundation which says that reality and truth are a phenomenon dependent upon consciousness, I don’t need to go through it and nitpick everything that is stated, for the fact that I already know that the theory is not allegiant to reality and a primacy of existence orientation, but to whatever deductive process a rationalist decided would best fit the theoretical end he had already chosen.  Both Austrianism and Marxism are products of rationalism; if you can only derive truth by pointing to the content of your own mind, who is to say which is good or bad?  And do you need to read Das Kapital and present a nuanced deconstruction of the Law of Increasing Misery of the Proletariat before you can understand that Marxism is a shabby emotionalistic fantasy built to cash-in on envy? 

 

“Anarcho-Capitalism” is a particularly crass example of this rationalization at work.  Rothbard hates the state, so he rationalizes a chain of deductive logic which alleges to prove that political power is actually best when it is openly sold on an economic market.  Emotionalism and rationalization is the definitive guide of mystics and rationalists (its the same epistemology); starting out with a presumption that reality is actually a derivative of your consciousness, you end with your emotions as your only tie to the real world. 

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And where do these Austrians get away with claiming Bastiat to be a “pre-Austrian”?  Bastiat is pretty good, he’s more rhetoric than theory but it’s usually good rhetoric; his theory of wealth, for instance, is transparently rationalistic, and unfortunately he also makes the ubiquitous error of tying political freedom to religious mysticism. 

 

*sigh* I just have to remind myself that it is *still* “much earlier than you think.”

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Emotionalism and rationalization is the definitive guide of mystics and rationalists (its the same epistemology); starting out with a presumption that reality is actually a derivative of your consciousness, you end with your emotions as your only tie to the real world. 

Ironically, this is a rationalistic statement. Nobody is actually “tied to the real world” only with their emotions; they are a mixed bag of ideas, each one based in reality, or not, to varied degrees. “Austrianism” is many ideas, some legit, some not. If you wanted a shortcut which saved you from reading all of the authors dubbed “Austrian,” you could get on wikipedia and read about the core ideas, then decide if that group of ideas was basically rationalistic or not. Otherwise, you can’t throw every one of these men out, their entire sum of thought, because a few of them were disagreeable to you. 

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Ironically, this is a rationalistic statement. Nobody is actually “tied to the real world” only with their emotions; they are a mixed bag of ideas, each one based in reality, or not, to varied degrees. “Austrianism” is many ideas, some legit, some not. If you wanted a shortcut which saved you from reading all of the authors dubbed “Austrian,” you could get on wikipedia and read about the core ideas, then decide if that group of ideas was basically rationalistic or not. Otherwise, you can’t throw every one of these men out, their entire sum of thought, because a few of them were disagreeable to you. 

 

And here’s captain hairsplitter to the rescue.  If you honestly believe I was stating that rationalists shave their faces or drive a truck with their emotions, that’s not my problem.  And if I know a theory is built upon an epistemological foundation which explicitly rejects the primacy of existence and the necessity of reference to sensory experience in concept formation (and which entails a stultifying overreliance on deduction)–yes, I absolutely can reject that theory without exploring its nooks and crannies, for the same reason that if I see a switch lined against me, my train is going into the siding regardless of what I want it to do.  A is A. 

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Oh no, he threw the emotion card at me; what am I to do?  I don’t know if you’re an Objectivist, or a whim-worshipping pseudo-Objectivist who wants to make happy with a gang of Kantian rationalist-subjectivists while pretending that the two are not insuperably antithetical, or a general libertarian jellyfish who wants to be kinda this and somewhat that too, maybe a little of the other thing. 

 

Here’s the bricks: I do not need to go through and pick out every rotten vegetable in a dumpster before I know that they are not palatable.

That first part is really uncalled for, please tone it down. My point is, how do you know? Because you only read Hoppe and Rothbard? That’s really insufficient, and an odd place to start. Did you read the wikipedia entry? You seem to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I haven’t read either Hoppe or Rothbard myself, nor do I care to, but I’ve read enough about Mises to say I’m inclined towards Austrian economics, and that’s about it.

 

Also, no you don’t necessarily need to read Das Kapital and form a nuanced understanding of communism to judge, but you would need to understand something of communism to be able to say you know what’s so bad about communism. Ad-hoc investigation is no good, lest we turn to merely evaluating by emotion. It’s fine to react negatively, but it’s important to keep thinking even then! That’s why I asked for a specific criticism of ideas.

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A friend had directed me to this disturbing article. I was familiar with Lew Rockwell’s anarcho-capitalism and Christianity, but the Von Mises Institutes attempts to reconcile what Ludwig himself stood for, with Christianity is outrageous! http://againstpolitics.com/von-mises-washed-in-the-blood-of-jesus/ .

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Read Human Action as an economics book and you’ll get what makes Austrian Economics good.  Philosophically, when it comes to epistemology and philosophy there are issues, which shows up later in politics in odd ways (like IP) but the economics are solid. I agree with Dormin in that I consider myself an Austrian in the field of economics.