Other Schools of Thought

Recorded at Mises University 2004.

Recorded at Mises University 2004.

The Jedi sacrifice truth and justice to ambition, writes Adam Young. May this serve as a warning to all who see in emergency circumstances a reason to betray principles and adopt the methods of the Dark Side. 

Communist Parties are still alive and well, even in post-communist countries. Luca Ferrini speculates that the larger the state, the more it corrupts the mind and the culture. Communism means never having to leave the nest.

The founder of the Chicago School, Frank Knight, was an avowed egalitarian. Rousseau was his influence. Jacobins believed in mass democracy and politics as the only way to implement their ideas. They hated aristocrats and religious leaders. Knight believed in progressive taxation. He wanted neocon social democracy.

The debate still continues. It is all about Mises’ initial article and then book on Socialism in 1922. He demonstrated the necessity of the price system and showed how subjective values were transformed into objective prices which could be used as meaningful cardinal numbers in economic calculation.

Monetary inflation is the key way to bring about economic fascism. Fascism was a spending, borrowing government, militarism, imperialism, and a planned economy. Keynes’ followers came to power in the 60s with the Kennedy administration. Nixon went on to impose wage and price controls.

Gene Callahan recounts a forgotten period of intellectual history when the obsession with modelling crowded out the search for truth. 

Prior to Mises there had been nothing written on the theory of monopoly price. Mises felt there could be some limited times of monopoly on the free market, e.g. diamond mines, but Rothbard felt that there could not be monopolies. Both theories developed out of Menger’s original thoughts.

Monetary theory is where Austrians diverge the most from mainstream. Mises built a new taxonomy of money. He said money included any checking account deposits. The marginal utility of gold on the last day of barter was determined by the uses of gold. People then demanded gold as money because there was preexisting value. A paper dollar must have such a connection to money. Government cannot create money. Money is not neutral. The natural trend of prices in a market economy is falling.