[hummusandsushi]

It's also smugly dismissive of a particularly mainstream interpretation of the economy for a more obscure one, as if the author is privy to some information that key economists do not have.

That said, I would love to see the arguments and evidence in favor of either standpoint if anyone has some useful resources to that effect.

[notahacker]

The standard argument about the role of demand and credit is quite straightforward: the economy consists of people buying and selling stuff. Capital investment plays a supporting role in ensuring a supply of stuff for sale in future (and in distributing money to buy that stuff with), but people will invest more if they anticipate lots of demand to buy their stuff in future and less if they don't. Both demand and investment keep the economy going, but anticipated future demand is essential to investment.

Therefore when demand is low across the whole economy, there is a rationale for govts/central banks either to directly boost demand by spending or indirectly lower the costs of capital investment by lowering interest rates. The evidence for and against the efficacy of certain interventions is basically the entire field of macroeconomics, but Keynes' General Theory is the starting point and something like Woodford's Interest and Prices: Foundations of a Theory of Monetary Policy or most undergrad macroeconomics textbooks more reflective of current practice.

[ianai]

Maybe there’s an argument from which markets move more quickly toward equilibrium. If you push the demand up for a slower part of it then the whole economy might tend to react more quickly than otherwise. Forgetting the specifics though.

[imtringued]

From what I can tell there is no absolute rule that one economic theory always applies. You can consider these interpretations to be a collection of tools in a toolbox.

Some salesmen try to sell their own tool box set as the best that will solve all your problems when the truth is you must use the right tool for the right problem.

For example Austrian economics can be the right tool if you have an economy that is suffering from high inflation. Let's take a look at Greece [0]. Inflation peaked at 6% in 2008. You can call that high but most economies that suffer from the negative effects of inflation have double digit inflation. Inflation fell straight to -2% in 2014. It certainly doesn't look like the type of economy where Austrian economics would be the right tool.

However, if you were to use Austrian economics in say Argentina [1] you could certainly speed up the economic recovery. It certainly has a place on earth but not in most first world economies.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/greece/inflation-cpi [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/argentina/inflation-cpi