-
David Ing posted an update in the group
Systemicists: 1 year, 5 months agovia @mercatus WSJ profile on Austrian school of economics at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703418004575455911922562120.html# , with rejoinder by Peter Boettke at http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2010/08/some-clarifications.html clarifying the Mises-Hayek-Kirzner lineage .
I’ve had some trouble since the early eighties getting excited about the Austrian School when I took part in many debates with my friend Ronko Bon of MIT. He expressed his undying love of the School’s innermost thoughts.
The debates didn’t take me any deeper than Lao Tzu thoughts already had on the limits of governmental abilities to manage an economy. Professor Boettke’s rejoinder doesn’t help sway me either. His emphasis on getting poor PhD students to concentrate on continuing to pretend that economics is a science, and thus focusing on writing pretty silly stuff in journals, seems unfortunate. I prefer Georgescu-Roegen’s approach to mapping out a life’s work.
Perhaps the most bothersome thing is the alignment of the Austrian School with the Tea Party, where each is totally unaware of the other, or much of anything else, where they both will screw up some quite sound ideas from 2500 years of human history.
Just some random thoughts from 9 AM.
@davidhawk Since I’ve had a lot of graduate level economics classes, I found the Austrian school to be more compatible with my view on the systems sciences than other schools. I’ve heard about the breadth of researchers within the Austrian school — Rothbard I’ve heard a bit, and Lachmann I don’t know — and from the Mises-Hayek-Kirzner lineage, I’ve like Hayek more than Kirzner, and have listened to Boettke podcasts describing Mises in ways that I don’t like.
The Austrian school represents a big tent, and I’m hoping to find more linkages within the same ballpark (as opposed to economists who seem to be on an entirely separate planet).
As for the Tea Party, this could be a situation where the Austrian School is being used like the lamp post for the drunkard: more for support than for enlightenment. (As a Canadian, I’m somewhat removed from the inner turmoil of American politics).
Quick point on economists (sorry if this has been covered already). I’m still on the point of the enterprise as a system, and I am finding some helpful thinking in Douglass North and Oliver Williamson, who specifically extend Coase’s work on the nature of the firm, and (to my crazed mind) indicate a whole subject area of institutional architecture. I keep hoping to get deep enough into this to create an essay.
@dougmcdavid I studied Oliver Williamson in grad school. Coming down through Coase is a completely different school from that in which Hayek is generally included. On the institutional front, it might be interesting to figure out a new systems perspective, since I can’t think (offhand) of systemicists working on that question. My key reference at this point is Howard Perlmutter, on Social Architecture, http://books.google.com/books?id=lA8FAAAAMAAJ&q .
More on Pete Boettke as a basketball fan, who says ”don’t sell motivated people short”. From the Globe and Mail, Neil Reynolds ”Good economics, and basketball: Just let the players play”, at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/good-economics-and-basketball-just-let-the-players-play/article1707595/#