Comments on: Don’t call me hetero, says Quiggin

By: Jason Soon

Jason Soon — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:59:03 +0000

ahem – the spacing function on comments doesn't seem to work!

By: Jason Soon

Jason Soon — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:07:53 +0000

Rafewhat utter rubbish. "What it means to be "mainstream" today is completely devoid of any substantive proposition about the self-correcting properties of the market economy."Mainstream neoclassical economics does start off on the presumption that there are such self-correcting properties. Complications are then introduced because they do actually exist. It's also misleading to say that neoclassicals are necessarily 'agnostic' on policy conclusions. It is of course ultimately a matter of the devil being in the details and looking at the specific empirics of the case but that's why it's called a 'science'/ The Austrian complaint about neoclassical economics is simply that it doesn't support any unvarnished purist line on laissez faire. What really pisses me off about the Austrians is that the left-heterodox side exaggerates and caricatures the modelling aspects of neoclassical economics for the purpose of deriding it as ideologically biased towards markets. Then the silly Austrians join these heterodox groups, sign up to their stupid petititions and join in the general disparagement directed at these modelling assumptions but because of the *opposite* assumption that neoclassicals are biased against markets.

By: Rafe

Rafe — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 01:31:38 +0000

In case the site is accepting comments today, this is Pete Boettke's take on this issue, posted on The Austrian Economists http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2007/06/larry_white_set.html

By: Jason Soon

Jason Soon — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 00:52:52 +0000

DonYou'll find that the Austrian true believers are joining in the mindless cacophany of exaggerations made by this 'post-autistic' crowd – there is some stuff on the post-autistic economics website by them. Where they are coming from I believe is a particular strand of mindless libertarianism which is influenced by post-modernism. They have taken on board Hayek's critique of 'scientism' but blown it up into a critique of science full stop and the so called pretensions of the scientific outlook under the irrational phobia that it necessarily leads to central planning and social engineering. Because of this they seek to discredit all scientific approaches to society and unwittingly want to reduce economics to history, and therefore ironically reintroducing the ghost of the Historical School which their much sharper intellectual ancestors exorcised from the discipline.

By: skepticlawyer

skepticlawyer — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 11:34:49 +0000

Testy test test… I keep vanishing into the spam bin, even when logged in as admin.

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 11:13:36 +0000

Hmm, the old 'value free' diversion ey? Well that should get the thread going for a while.

By: Rafe

Rafe — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 04:54:09 +0000

The simple fact of the matter is that economics, to the extent that it tells the truth about anything, is value free, and so economic analysis can be used (or abused) by people with any and every political agenda. A good economic analysis may tell you what is likely to happen if you do "x" but you still have to make up your mind on non-economic grounds whether the outcome of "x" is what you really want.