This is why it's so hard to argue with people like Peter Boettke

I've always enjoyed reading Peter Boettke. He's a good writer and he has an excellent command of the literature. But here's a selection from his new book that exemplifies why it can be so hard to argue with him:

"But there are good reasons why economists forced these [underconsumptionist] theories into the underworld of economic opinion. They reflected bad economic analysis. What I mean by that is that these theories implicitly assume away scarcity and believe the fundamental problem of modern society is poverty amidst plenty; they explicitly deny both actor rationality and the coordinating role of prices, as well as the function prices serve in guiding decisions and the feedback and discipline provided by profit and loss. If you postulate a world of post scarcity, then neither the coordinating role of the price system, nor the incentives of the property rights structure is critical, and if you don’t allow the individuals that populate your economy to learn from market signals, and you don’t allow those signals to actually work, then of course the economy will not work! This is not mysterious." (from Chapter 1 of Living Economics, footnotes removed)

Peter glosses over the fact that Keynes disagreed with all of these "underworld" theorists (and in great detail), but he simply pointed out that the underconsumptionist position had important kernels of truth that had long been neglected. Anyway, we've got accusations of:

- Assuming away scarcity
- Denying actor rationality
- Denying the coordinating role of prices
- Denying the feedback role of prices
- Denying the discipline provided by profit and loss
- Not thinking the coordinating role of the price system is critical
- Not thinking the property rights structure is critical
- Not thinking individuals learn from market signals

That's a lot that he's packed into one paragraph! You want to know why the mainstream often ignores certain corners of the Austrian school? It's because certain corners of the Austrian school have a tendency to tell the mainstream what positions they are expected to hold and defend. The mainstream economist spends all his or her time running through these points and impressing upon them that actually not a single point on that list describes them instead of... you know... talking about economic ideas they actually have. Some of us are willing to wade into this lost cause. A lot aren't.

A warning to those still figuring out their view about economics and flirting with the Austrian school (which is fine - there's some interesting stuff to chew on in the Austrian school): if you tell a mainstream economist they don't think the coordinating role of the price system is critical or that the structure of property rights is critical, they're going to assume you don't know what you're talking about and not spend any more time on you.