Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Who is in Charge? You or the Government?

“Neocons are patient.

They always keep their eyes on the prize.

Democrats....Republicans....’Outsiders’....

Neocons write the script.

Meanwhile, our lives, our safety, and (of course) our wallets are always at their beck and call.”
The neocons are the deep state.  They run the country.
 “Criticism #3: “Why do you hate data so much?”
This is the basis for a third frequent criticism of Austrian economists. Detractors say that Austrians are afraid of data and stubbornly plug their ears and sing ‘lalala’ whenever they are confronted with supposedly inconvenient facts about the real world. But we’ve seen that there is no aversion to data, math, or statistics. These are just properly used in economic history or psychology and not in the testing of economic theory. The most that observation can do for theory is to guide the theoretician to construct relevant theory and perhaps to encourage the theoretician to take another look at a theory when all of the data “goes against it”, so to speak. Importantly, observations cannot falsify logically derived economic theory, but they can point an accusatory finger at a flawed step in the logic sometimes.”

So this is a new idea for me to grasp in economics.  I am more familiar with the Chicago school (I did go to UChicago, after all) but I agree with the Austrians that economics should be done through deductive reasoning.  I have nothing against the mathematical modeling and data mining but I don’t view that as axiomatic as the praxeological reasoning of the Austrian school.


The private market ALWAYS has a better incentive to keep you safe than the government.

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