Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Quote of the day: I-think-Gene-Callahan-will-like-this edition

stickman: "Slowly, however, I came to realise that some of "Hayek's" ideas that I liked least were, in fact, better attributed to Mises. And, more recently, I've come to appreciate that some of that which I disliked most about Mises is actually Rothbard."

Mises lovers: feel free to clarify the man for we, the confused and skeptical ones. I want to emphasize that I really am offering an "I dunno" response to Mises. My disposition is skeptical from what I do know, but I know enough to know I don't know all that much.

UPDATE: Potential addendum - and the really awful stuff in Rothbard might actually just be Walter Block.

UPDATE 2: Should that be "us, the confused skeptical ones" or "we, the confused skeptical ones"? I can't decide. The former sounds weird with the second clause, but the latter sounds weird with the first clause.

UPDATE 3: I have now provided three updates before anyone has even clicked through to this link.

3 comments:

  1. No one actually talks about what Hayek actually says, because Hayek is too moderate for most modern Austrians. Extreme libertarianism and Misesian rationalism are antithetical to the mature Hayekian vision Hayek eventually articulated and was really present throughout his work.

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  2. A lot of people think that Mises supported a 100% reserve gold standard as Rothbard did. That wasn't quite his position, though he supported something very similar. Mises clearly believed in the existence of a "demand for money", he didn't believe it was a mistaken idea.

    It's also questionable whether he really thought that the time-preference theory of interest fully explained the interest rate.

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  3. Ahem. Grammatically speaking, "for" takes the objective case for its object. The objective case of "we" is "us". Therefore "for us, the blah blah blah" is grammatically correct.

    However, for many years "we the people" has become an idiomatic expression without case markers. So, "disdain for we the people" is correct, at least informally. Implicit in that is another idiom, "we the _____", (fill in the blank). Remember how "Got milk?" spawned "Got ____?" So, "for we the blah blah blah" is also correct.

    You high school English teacher would tell you to say, "for us, the confused and skeptical ones", but your choice, "for we, the confused and skeptical ones" is also idiomatic. (I would drop the comma, however. :))

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