Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

In the realm of macroeconomics, a legion of PhD economists in central banks passionately contends that interest rates are a pivotal policy tool for managing the economy. Simultaneously, these economists firmly uphold that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is an accurate gauge for measuring inflation—a widespread acceptance of this CPI as a valuable metric. The current theoretical state of macroeconomics should be classified as negative knowledge, akin...

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On January 1, 2024, the famous Steamboat Willie entered the public domain. The intellectual property that is the original Mickey Mouse design has been controlled by the Walt Disney Company since 1928. The internet blew up in excitement as a result. Within minutes of the world waking up to the news, horror games were announced based on the design of the famous mouse. The editors of Wikipedia were practically Olympic racers, waiting for the moment it...

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So-called social media is frequently maligned for the nastiness it brings, with focus often set on the personal attacks and trolling that tend to haunt potentially reasonable discussions. X (formerly Twitter) is supposedly the worst, on which people engage in endless mudslinging and bullying. However, the other platforms are not better. The common explanation for the degenerative nature of social media discourse is that the platforms are developed...

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Spreading civilization and human rights has long been used as an excuse for state-building through colonialism and imperialism. This idea dates back at least to early Spanish and colonial efforts in the New World, and the rationale was initially employed as just one of many.  The importance of the conquest-spreads-civilization claim increased, however, as liberalism gained ground in Europe in the nineteenth century. Liberals were more skeptical of...

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People aren’t messing with their 401(k)s enough, according to the The Wall Street Journal. It used to be “Set it and forget it.” Now, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Jon Sindreu, if you forget it, you might miss it. Inspired by a BlackRock thought experiment which included perfect knowledge, Sindreu looked backward between 2020 and the present at a person making yearly changes (moving funds to the previous year’s strongest sector) which...

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Proponents of modern monetary theory (MMT) are back in action after a quiet spell during the embarrassing (for them) record price inflation of 2021–23. They are here to tell us that the mountain of government spending and debt is nothing to worry about; the government’s red ink is the private sector’s black ink, they say. Private sector growth emanates from public sector deficits, and since the US government has a gigantic money printer, there’s no...

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Many economists claim that economic growth is driven by increases in the total demand for goods and services, additionally claiming that overall output increases by a multiple of the increase in expenditures by government, consumers, and businesses. Thus, it is not surprising that most economic commentators believe that a fiscal and monetary stimulus will strengthen total demand, preventing the US economy from falling into a recession. These...

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In his important book The Failure of American Conservatism (2023), the political theorist and philosopher Claes G. Ryn offers some criticisms of libertarianism and free-market capitalism, and in this week’s column, I’d like to examine these. Ryn is not an opponent of all forms of the free market, but he fears an extreme version of it can be dangerous. He defends what he calls “value-centered historicism,” according to which people’s values stem not...

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