When the German professors attached the epithet “Austrian” to the theories of Menger and his two earliest followers and continuators, they meant it in a pejorative sense.
The hostility that the teachings of Classical economic theory encountered on the European continent was primarily caused by political prepossessions. Political economy as developed by several generations of English thinkers, brilliantly expounded by Hume and Adam Smith and perfected by Ricardo, was the most exquisite outcome of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. It was the gist of the liberal doctrine that aimed at the establishment of representative government and equality of all individuals under the law.
What is known as the Austrian School of Economics started in 1871 when Carl Menger published a slender volume under the title Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre.
Fiat inflation is a juggernaut of social, economic, cultural, and spiritual destruction.
—Guido Hülsmann, The Ethics of Money Production
One of my areas of research in institutional economics is the social behavior of people under different political regimes, what Thomas Schelling called micromotives and macrobehavior. Of course, this topic is directly related to many disciplines, from behavioral economics and political theory to the neurobiology of decision-making and the theory of biological markets.
American life is thoroughly politicized, to the point where there seems to be a talking points template to discuss anything that occurs. Thus, in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the same script is replayed in the media that was replayed from the shooting in Buffalo, which was replayed from the shooting in …
