Saturday, September 10, 2011

This is the giant brick wall standing between me and polishing off this draft and sending it to my co-author.



I'm easily distractable like that.

Jeff Friedman once asked me (and gave me permission to share the query at the time) why I "even bother with the Austrians". It's a question that pops up in my mind fairly regularly lately.

I think sympathetic bloggers oughta all write about this stupid underconsumptionism criticism so I can just link you all tomorrow morning... because Austrians have a way of getting into the media lately and sooner or later this PCE line of argument is going to get on Fox and the discourse is going to get even more screwed up than it already is.

UPDATE: I think most readers know what elements of the Austrian school I do appreciate or am simply interested in - and which elements I find less impressive. Austrians I have a good relationship with should not take this to imply it's a clever ruse... I'm not nearly that clever, nor do I see what the point would be in such a ruse.

4 comments:

  1. Before you start smacking around Fox News in the same way John Stewart does (and note that this is not a defense of Fox News - they just aren't any worse than the other cable news networks, and some of their programming is apparently quite informative): http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/

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  2. 'Jeff Friedman once asked me (and gave me permission to share the query at the time) why I "even both with the Austrians".'

    I used to both with the Austrians for a while myself.

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  3. Everyone knows the "er" is silent, Gene.

    Fixed :)

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  4. Wouldn't the better question be, why do we even bother with any of these economic schools of thought? I sometimes wonder if economics as a professional discipline is bound to make itself as irrelevant today to the general discourse as professional theology is to the discourse on religion (not that professional theology is marginalized* - merely that is what has happened).

    *We'd quite frankly be a lot better if it weren't. I'm thinking about writing a long blog post about this tonight now that it comes to mind.

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