I was fairly convinced too, so I am now very worried about how many other more blatant silly things I believe and may believe in the future. I’ve definitely been more at least a bit more wary than usual after realising this particular mistake.
I initially didn’t really want to make this post, but I recognised that it was for reasons perhaps relating to status ( I was embarrassed to admit I believed something comparatively less trivial and more obviously rubbish compared to others in this thread) but it was pretty was easy to get over it once I thought about it and also thanks to the fact that this kind of thing is exactly what the thread was probably looking for.
The links are fairly broad because I was admittedly trying to get a better grip on this stuff after having accepted much of it for a while, having given the whole school much benefit of the doubt early because the kinds of ideas it concluded with (stuff like lassiez-faire econ, not to regulate) fitted in with my preconcieved, often political, beliefs. Politics is the mind-killer, don’tcha know. Sorry for the lack of specific propositions.
I’ve read some Hayek too, he seems better, but I don’t really know.
edit: changed a word to make a sentence make sense
Austrian-minded people definitely have some pretty crazy methods, but their economic conclusions seem pretty sound to me. The problem arises when they apply their crazy methods to areas other than economics (see any libertarian theory of ethics. Crazy stuff)
“Universally Preferable Behavior” by Stefan Molyneux, “Argumentation Ethics” by Hans Hermann Hoppe, and of course Objectivism, to name the most famous ones. Generally the ones I’m referring to all try to deduce some sort of Objective Ethics and (surprise) it turns out that property rights are an inherent property of the universe and capitalism is a moral imperative.
Forgive me if you’re thinking of some other libertarians who don’t have crazy ethical theories. I didn’t mean to make gross generalizations. I’ve just observed that libertarian philosophers who consciously promote their theories of ethics tend to be of this flavor.
Austrian Economics.
I was fairly convinced too, so I am now very worried about how many other more blatant silly things I believe and may believe in the future. I’ve definitely been more at least a bit more wary than usual after realising this particular mistake.
I initially didn’t really want to make this post, but I recognised that it was for reasons perhaps relating to status ( I was embarrassed to admit I believed something comparatively less trivial and more obviously rubbish compared to others in this thread) but it was pretty was easy to get over it once I thought about it and also thanks to the fact that this kind of thing is exactly what the thread was probably looking for.
“Austrian Economics” is a very large set of propositions. Which ones have you significantly changed your degree of belief in?
The kinds of writing produced based on ‘praxeology’, by people like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, I have changed my mind to think as being not very reliable. I don’t think that the arguments put forth by these Austrian Economists trying to justify when they reject empiricism and make weird assumptions are very good. This actually hurts a sizable amount of writing by these people, most of which I haven’t read but any that I did end up having believed I now place very little trust in. The wikipedia synopsis of one of Mises’ works should give you a fairly good idea of the kinds of assumptions he makes..
The links are fairly broad because I was admittedly trying to get a better grip on this stuff after having accepted much of it for a while, having given the whole school much benefit of the doubt early because the kinds of ideas it concluded with (stuff like lassiez-faire econ, not to regulate) fitted in with my preconcieved, often political, beliefs. Politics is the mind-killer, don’tcha know. Sorry for the lack of specific propositions.
I’ve read some Hayek too, he seems better, but I don’t really know.
edit: changed a word to make a sentence make sense
Austrian-minded people definitely have some pretty crazy methods, but their economic conclusions seem pretty sound to me. The problem arises when they apply their crazy methods to areas other than economics (see any libertarian theory of ethics. Crazy stuff)
There’s lots of different libertarian theories of ethics. Can you be more specific?
“Universally Preferable Behavior” by Stefan Molyneux, “Argumentation Ethics” by Hans Hermann Hoppe, and of course Objectivism, to name the most famous ones. Generally the ones I’m referring to all try to deduce some sort of Objective Ethics and (surprise) it turns out that property rights are an inherent property of the universe and capitalism is a moral imperative.
Forgive me if you’re thinking of some other libertarians who don’t have crazy ethical theories. I didn’t mean to make gross generalizations. I’ve just observed that libertarian philosophers who consciously promote their theories of ethics tend to be of this flavor.