Does the Austrian school of economics have solutions?

[Galen]

(06-03-2016, 09:08 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-03-2016, 01:36 AM)Galen Wrote: A government is not a business.  Name a private sector business that can compel you to buy their product or service?  I should be very surprise if you find one.  Simply spending will not create wealth because the state has no way to determine what is truly valuable.  This is the the most important lesson that you can learn from the writings of Mises and Rothbard.

Perhaps the most important delusion.

Of course the state has a way to determine what is valuable. It's what the people vote for. They express their values when they vote.

The private sector also compels people to obey the dictates of money and property. If people don't, they get hauled off to jail for stealing. But that means that money rules. He that has the gold, rules, is the libertarian version of the golden rule. I prefer the traditional version myself; the one upheld by all religions.

Government can not do economic calculation.  Voting as a means of economic calculation is absurd for the simple reason that 50% + 1 get to override the preferences of 50% - 1.  This typically does not happen in the market for the simple reason that one producers products do not necessarily preclude the existence of another producer creating something else.  Voting only allows people to express a preference without regard to the resources available which is by no means economic calculation and tends to lead to disaster.  People keep voting for socialists in Venezuela but it is safe to say that they don't like what they are getting.

If you botthered to read Gabriel Kolko, no friend of the free market, you would know that he came to essentially the same conclusion that Rothbard did about the consequences of the progressives.  He was not very happy about that discovery.  You are an economic illiterate who has only been exposed to the comic book version of history one gets through the public schools.  Yet another example of the glaring failures of the state.

Saying that people are compelled by economic realities is a bit like saying people are compelled by physics to fall should they walk off a cliff.  Money is a medium of exchange which allow people to decide for themselves what is most important to them.  It also provides a way of allocating resource to their best use a expressed by their preferences.