[nabla9]

Quoting Milton Friedman:

>I think the Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm. If you go back to the 1930s, which is a key point, here you had the Austrians sitting in London, Hayek and Lionel Robbins, and saying you just have to let the bottom drop out of the world. You’ve just got to let it cure itself. You can’t do anything about it. You will only make it worse. You have Rothbard saying it was a great mistake not to let the whole banking system collapse. I think by encouraging that kind of do-nothing policy both in Britain and in the United States, they did harm.

[alter_eco123]

And Milton was right about that just because he's Milton?

Can you come up with an argument against Austrian Economics in your own words, or are you content trying to discredit it with an appeal to Milton's authority?

I could argue against the quoted passage but I don't want to bother doing any more work than you have.

[xapata]

You linked to some junk website as an appeal to authority.

I'll throw you a bone: Deflationary policy is idiocy. Belief that monetary policy can be neither inflationary nor deflationary is anti-empirical and wishful thinking.

[alter_eco123]

"Some junk website"?

And yet, somehow I still think you're not even trolling!

But if not.. Once again, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with you people.

By the way, that wasn't an appeal to authority. It was a link to a website where you can educate yourself, without having to take my word for anything.

As for monetary policy, it shouldn't even be a thing.

[xapata]

Ironically, I also suspect trolling whenever someone gets all whacko with Austrian School.

Don't worry, I've spent plenty of time educating myself. Grad school was pretty good for that. It even says Economics on my diploma, heyyy.

I'm not sure what you mean by "monetary policy shouldn't even be a thing." That's like saying, "guns shouldn't even be a thing."

[alter_eco123]

It really doesn't take much at all to see that the Austrian School is right and others are wrong.

For starters, if you understand that value is subjective, you'll also understand that there's no way to put a number on how much you want something, or precisely how much you'd be willing to pay for it, etc.

You'll also understand that you can't base calculations on something you can't actually quantify, and have no way of accurately measuring..

So yeah, you'll understand that most of what you've been taught is just garbage-in-garbage-out.

As for monetary policy, it's essentially just "a plan for forcefully intervening in an economy", and it doesn't actually happen for the greater good - it's done to benefit the government and their buddies.

As a prime example, who gets access to newly printed thin-air-money at zero interest? Do you want him to buy real assets with "free money", and have you suffer the consequences (of the resulting decrease in your currency's purchasing power)?

[xapata]

> no way to put a number on how much you want something

Counter-example: I do it all the time. Ever heard of "revealed preference"? Sure there are weird human things like preferring A to B, B to C, and C to A, but I'm OK with a map not being the territory.

> a plan for forcefully intervening in an economy

All government choices are forceful interventions, whether a choice to act or not act.