You are right about most of these economic doomsayers being right wing populists. Have you ever visited LewRockwell.com? They’re pretty much the epitome of this kind of thinking, predicting apocalypse every other Tuesday or so. Im still waiting for the dollar to collapse. BTW, what do you think of Austrian Economics in general? That school of thought is popular on Stormfront and libertarian and Paleoconservative circles.
It seems to have gained ground in recent years, especially since Peter Schiff successfully predicted the housing bubble collapse. Search Youtube for “Peter Schiff was right!”. He says it with a stone face, even as the host and guests burst out laughing at him. This is what got me interested in Lew Rockwell’s philosophy, I used to be a libertarian. If Austrian Economics is wrong or flawed, then how was one its main champions correct on the housing bubble, which nobody else predicted?
Being able to predict that a bad idea will fail at some point does not mean that one has a program that will work to accomplish anything, much less prevent the bad idea from failing. It merely means you have good skills of prediction. Good powers of prediction does not indicate a program for success. Think about it. Just means you’re good with a crystal ball.
I’m not an expert on the Austrians, but let me try here.
Problem is that it was Austrian economics, in a moderated form, that failed in the latest economic collapse. The countries that imposed the most “Austrian” type economics, moderated however, were the ones that were most destroyed in the latest economic crash. Check out Latvia and Iceland. Those that kept strong state controls over banking like Africa and China got off the easiest.
The 3rd World is run on a moderated version of Austrian economics. Guess what? It doesn’t work.
Those who say that it’s not the real Austrian deal, fine. The anarcho-capitalists are the real pure Austrians. Their favorite societies are the Old West, especially during the Gold Rush, and modern day Somalia. The Gold Rush! Somalia! Yeah! Anarcho-capitalism works great, huh?
Austrian economics is bad for White workers, bottom line. White workers should not support an economics that is out to screw them.
That said, Austrian economics doesn’t even make sense. It’s microeconomics. That means it is based on what actions you and I will take as a rational actor economically. But you can’t extrapolate microeconomics to macroeconomics, because masses of people do not behave in an economically rational way.
The Austrians want to get rid of all regulation and let the market do whatever it wants. What happens then is you have regular blowups like the recent economic crash. Or witness the economics of the late 1800’s, wild booms and busts all the time. It’s just insane. Little to no government, no worker or consumer protections, no environmental or societal protections, business just runs amok. It’s like the 3rd World. It’s not compatible with a civilized society.
Besides, it says nonsense.
Austrians say that government caused the last economic crash. Government ruins the environment, not business. Government harms consumers, not business. Government hurts workers, not business. Government health care hurts sick people, not capitalist health care. Government schools create idiots, not expensive private schools so costly 80% can’t afford them. Government roads cause accidents. Government causes unemployment, not capitalists.
Land reform doesn’t work and starves peasants; landless peasants are happy, healthy and have full bellies. Stimulus spending and deficit spending don’t work for getting a country out of a depression/recession; what works is gutting government spending. All government spending will eventually destroy economies that engage in mass state spending, that is, social democracy will destroy every economy given enough time.
It’s all bunch of nonsense!
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Robert, you know that you have little understanding about Economics in general, and Austrian Economics specifically, and yet drill out this hit piece full of lies and conjecture. Why?
The facts in this post are simply untrue.
First off, while you can try and smear Schiff, he offered a complete methodology and theoretical background for why his prediction of the collapse was correct. You haven’t brought it up or bothered to analyze it.
I’m going to skip over a bunch of stuff you said and just get to your talk of Microeconomics. Please Robert, explain how modes of acting can be true for an individual and not for a group. It not a group, no matter how large, ultimately made up of individuals?
I could go on but I doubt you’ll give the Austrian school a serious critique…
Good post, Robert (Lindsay). Austrian economics isn’t even ‘economics’ ; it’s just propaganda for letting the rich do what they like and ending what little democracy we’ve achieved.
Schiff is a prick and an ignoramus. I -ME! -predicted the financial crash and saw the housing bubble for what it is, and I know shit about economics ( not as bad as Robert Taylor here though). All you needed to see this one coming was to turn on the radio or read a broadsheet now and then, and ask yourself if a world economy whose ‘assets’ were over 5 times larger than the annual world GDP ( as was regularly reported) wasn’t heading for a crash with reality.
I subscribe to Schiff’s newsletter, and he posts a lot of videos, but honestly I just can’t get interested in him. I saw him on Max Keiser’s show on Russia Today this week, and Schiff was as ignorant as ever. He seems to have a reputation as a shrewd investment advisor or something, but that isn’t exactly a qualification for telling us how to run things. When it comes to politics and political economy, he’s either an idiot or a cunt, the sort that think Obama is a communist – a worldview like that (common in the USA it seems) is something else that is heading for a crash with reality.