The philosopher Karl Popper was a strong critic of Marx, his system, and especially his reliance on historicism. Unfortunately, as David Gordon points out, Popper supported economic interventionism as a viable “third way” for social organization.
Mainstream economists claim that in order to “do economics,” they must collect data and then see where it leads them. However, data by itself is economically useless without a guiding theory to explain what is happening.
While MMT advocates claim special knowledge, the irony is that they don't understand money at all. Like all progressive statists, they fail to comprehend the economic damage done through their “modern” monetary manipulations.
Isaac Newton is best known for his development of mathematics and physics, but he also took a keen interest in economics, especially the relationship of money to economic exchange. He also believed that economic laws, like gravity, were immutable.
As the Trump administration cuts thousands of federal jobs, it‘s good to remember that the public sector‘s “services” provide no actual net value to the “national product.”
Elon Musk‘s latest comments on money make the same errors as we saw with Milton Friedman and the Monetarists. If Musk really wants to understand money, he needs to read Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises.
Mainstream economists make too much out of “knowledge.” First, the kind of knowledge one needs to be successful in an economy is not knowing things generally but having an understanding that is more than knowing mere facts. The entrepreneur‘s judgement is ultimately what matters.
When it seemed central Europe would succumb to the terrors of Bolshevism, Ludwig von Mises wrote his classic book, Socialism, convincing fellow Austrians that socialism was destructive. Mises influenced F.A. Hayek, whose The Road to Serfdom had similar effects in the US.
Why do we study history? Some study it as a way to confirm their own political ideologies, something that often happens when historians look at the US Civil War and its Reconstruction aftermath. According to Ludwig von Mises, one cannot bring an ideological lens and honestly approach history.
Americans once dreamed of a country that did not care about global greatness or glory. It was within our reach if we had been wise enough to grasp and hold it.
