Does the Austrian school of economics have solutions?

[Eric the Green]

(06-03-2016, 12:42 PM)Galen Wrote:

(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.

Stop you right there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you fall for this most obvious of delusions. Amazing, though! You and your libertarian buddies REALLY DO think that "value" = "economic calculation!" Total absurdity!

Quote:  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.

Venezuela was unfortunately not socialist, but cult worship. I would not have voted for that bozo Hugo Chavez.

People voting express their values; their priorities of what needs to be done by the state. That of course includes how much people want to be taxed. All this obviously encompasses much more than what makes the most money for somebody. If resources are needed to accomplish what is needed, then it taxes you. And I hope it taxes you until you bleed! Since that's all you care about!

Quote: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.

You obviously don't read my posts so you are not entitled to say what I know or what I don't.

Quote: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.

Money can't buy what is most important to people, and having money does not mean that the market will supply you with what you need. Often, it only supplies what is convenient for them to make. That's why I often cannot buy what I want to buy in this economy. And money in the world does not mean that a corporate economy is going to hire you, and it certainly does not provide for fair wages or working conditions. What making the market central DOES do, is force all values into the economic calculus. And that means the abdication of all values, and the destruction of our planet.

If anything has screwed up the last century-plus, and provided a false foundation for our civilization, it is this obsession with economics, the lowest value, above all other values. If you look at previous civilizations around the world, you see people dedicated to spending enormous time and effort on making beautiful monuments and works of art that express the spirit. Money was not the motive for these accomplishments, and their value can't be expressed in economic terms. But, dummies like you think that money is the only value, and that's why we have the kind of commercial claptrap that we have in our society.

Is this discussion off topic? Not really. Those earlier civilizations understood that there's more to existence than one lifetime for one human being. What is valuable is what lasts. Economic calculation guarantees that what is created will not be any more valuable than next week's balance sheet. What a shallow view of life you have, Galen!