[skhunted]

The last

mother-of-all-recessions where the accumulated debt and unhealthy investment comes crashing down.

that happened in the U.S. was before Keynesian principles were used. It was the use of Keynesian principles that helped FDR win 3 elections.

Im not an economist so anyone with a moderate amount of training will run circles around me in a discussion about economics. So I’ll just say two more things. Your comment about Austrian economics never having been implemented reminds me of leftists who say communism has never been implemented so we can’t say communism doesn’t work. Secondly, before Keynesian economics recessions and depressions occurred much more frequently in the U.S. The data seems to clearly point to at least some level of success of Keynesian economics.

[roenxi]

> Secondly, before Keynesian economics recessions and depressions occurred much more frequently in the U.S. The data seems to clearly point to at least some level of success of Keynesian economics.

Having some recessions and depressions are healthy. There needs to be a mechanism to punish people who persist in allocating capital in wealth-destroying ways.

The US has real problems with capital allocation. All the manufacturing capital seemed to be invested and created in Asia and there is a retirement crisis because a generation didn't prepare appropriately for old age. There isn't a way to run a counterfactual, but the US has been on the warpath to protect people from having to recognise that they keep giving their money to charlatans. That means it all gets wasted, instead of just some of it being wasted.

[Clubber]

>a generation didn't prepare appropriately for old age

This will have a snowball effect because their children will need to support them and save less for their own retirement, then their children's children and so on.

In all fairness, it's tough for most people to save with massive recessions/depressions with mass layoffs every 10 years and near zero interest rates on savings accounts for 20+ years now. Add to that wage pressure from offshoring and things like NAFTA and 2-3% regular inflation targets.

Also, the government won't keep social security payments up with inflation and they tax it. Just more ways to keep the people down. If only we spent the $34T we now have in debt since the 80s on something less frivolous.

[pjc50]

> There needs to be a mechanism to punish people who persist in allocating capital in wealth-destroying ways.

But the cost of recessions, especially pre-Keynsian ones, falls most heavily on workers?

> but the US has been on the warpath to protect people from having to recognise that they keep giving their money to charlatans

They keep electing them. There's a huge popular demand for charlatans backed up by the charlatan news channel. It's probably going to result in a Liz Truss level financial disaster at some point.

[roenxi]

> But the cost of recessions, especially pre-Keynsian ones, falls most heavily on workers?

I dunno, does it? Why do you think that? Who is the cost of bad capital allocation going to fall on? I'm not expecting any millionaires to go hungry or do without in their old age, or lack housing and goods in their youth. The people eating the brunt of it are workers. They can't save money.

[nyokodo]

> Your comment about Austrian economics never having been implemented reminds me of leftists who say communism has never been implemented so we can’t say communism doesn’t work

Maybe, however the difference being that there are many countries and regions that have claimed to be communist for over a century but none that have claimed to be adhering to Austrian Economics.

[skhunted]

Pretty much every country implemented Austrian economics principles before that became a term.

[nyokodo]

> pretty much every country implemented Austrian economics principles

Looking at history I’m seeing pretty much every country having a government controlled and manipulated currency, mercantilist restraint of trade, guilds and unions with government enforced monopolies fixing prices, central banks, pseudo-governmental corporations, and on and on. Those are all antithetical to Austrian economic principles. Can you point me to the overwhelming historical examples you were referring to?

[skhunted]

1870 U.S. is one example. There was restraint of international trade but that trade wasn't much and it didn't have the capacity to be much. A continental sized country at a time when transportation was still limited that used a gold standard satisfies the condition of "implemented Austrian economic principles".

They were implemented in the same way one says that communism has been tried and it failed. It wasn't true communism and it wasn't true Austrianism. Government intervention has shortened recession/depression lengths and lengthened the time between them. It's a lot better than Austrianism.

I'm not going to convince you of anything and vice versa. My comment is for anyone who happens to be reading the thread. Hopefully they will have read enough perspective on this to make a semi-informed decision.

[nyokodo]

> A continental sized country at a time when transportation was still limited that used a gold standard satisfies the condition of "implemented Austrian economic principles".

Merely having a gold standard in a nationally regulated currency where contracts in that jurisdiction must accept payment in that currency in order to be enforceable is not an implementation of Austrian economic principles.

> They were implemented in the same way one says that communism has been tried and it failed.

You say the examples of AE implementation are overwhelmingly numerous, you give one extremely dubious example of a single superficial similarity to back that up. Can you even point to a single country that claimed to be implementing Austrian Economics? I can point to any number of places that claimed to be Keynesian or Communist, and even one or two that were giving Friedman a try but no Austrians. Your comparison to Communism are nonsense.

[skhunted]

Hard to claim to have implemented a system before a word for that system was invented. Small groups of people were wildly successful in implementing the idea of shared ownership/responsibility way before the word communism was invented.

Lots of large societies had systems of governance where the vast majority of the economic system was free of government control/safeguards and where the value of the currency was not controlled by the government. As societies grew larger/complicated and concentrated more in urban areas people became aware that government intervention was a good thing if done properly. As with all things if done badly then the intervention is not a good thing.