Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

On Sunday, the populist Austrolibertarian Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina. In the United States, the reaction ranged from concerned curiosity on the part of the political establishment to enthusiastic celebration across the populist Right—including, notably, some economic nationalists. Several renowned libertarians also brought attention to some of Milei’s many flaws, such as his views on geopolitics. Milei’s libertarian skeptics...

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Central banks around the world target a stable price inflation rate of 2 percent annually over the medium term. This is widely considered to be monetary policy’s most important contribution to the smooth functioning of a dynamic economy. This view is wrong on multiple grounds, but there is one problem with it that is commonly ignored. Inflation, even if it remains relatively moderate, can contribute to rising inequality and undermine social...

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Econometric model building attempts to produce a laboratory with controlled variables. By means of mathematical and statistical methods, an economist establishes functional relationships between various economic variables. For example, personal consumer outlays are related to personal disposable income and interest rates, while fixed capital investments are explained by the past stock of capital, interest rates, and economic activity. A group of...

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It has become popular, especially in certain fields and among certain crowds, to glorify failure. So-called entrepreneurs and social influencers often brag about their failures. Multinational corporations publish poems encouraging failure. Vapid mottos rejecting the fear of failure are ubiquitous on motivational posters and T-shirts. These efforts are apparently meant to convey an enterprising spirit and a fearlessness about trying new things in an...

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On Sunday, Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina by a comfortable margin, with 56 percent of the vote. He will be sworn in as president on December 10.  Over the past year, however, Milei has made a name for himself as an extremely vocal critic of socialism, central banks, and many types of government intervention in general. He has become memorable for fiery commentary condemning the Left's ideology and tactics while expressing an...

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Even though support for the free market has become stronger in the last decades, libertarianism can still only be considered a fringe movement. Most people still believe that many social problems are due to “market failure” and therefore require state intervention to be “solved.” Despite the obvious flaws of modern socialism—with its unlikely combination of a redistributive welfare state and globalist crony capitalism—and despite libertarianism’s...

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Regardless of one’s opinion on Israel and Palestine, people can agree that killing innocent civilians, wherever they’re from, is horrible, and whoever takes hostages for bargaining chips in negotiations is a horrific human being. Such is the case of the ongoing siege of Gaza. One has to wonder why Hamas decided that the best course of action was to commit atrocities and kidnap civilians, only to elicit a response amounting to war crimes against...

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During the height of the covid-19 pandemic, some politicians and voters advocated for covid vaccine mandates for air travel. And while this proposal has some intuitive pull, there are likely tradeoffs here that could result in more deaths overall as a by-product of increasing the cost and trouble of air travel, incentivizing travelers to choose another form of travel: driving. And since driving is more dangerous, flight vaccine mandates would...

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