Sunday, April 25, 2010

A Minor Rant and an Observation

Scott Smith interviews Douglas French of the Mises Institute on Right Side News (25 April) HERE:

Doug French: Ludwig von Mises and Free Market Thinking’

‘Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, marginal utility and human action, stand as a kind of holy trinity of free-market economic thought. (There is also the profound Misesian analysis of the business cycle, but that is of slightly less consequence than the three concepts just mentioned.) Taken together they are a devastating rebuttal to statists everywhere and certainly to the absurd and soul-destroying policies by most of the nations in the world today, including Western ones
.’

Comment
Many ‘Austrian’s I admire, but sometimes the insufferable certainties some of them express about everything upon which they pontificate about makes me feel uncomfortable. Von Misses and Murray Rothbard are always spoken of as ‘geniuses’, of incomparable brainpower, and only await their due recognition by lesser mortals. A show of occasional humility would do them a world of good. Follow the link.

End of rant.

PS: 'Adam Smith's invisible hand' was not a 'concept' - it was made into concept - nor was it comparable to marginal utility analysis. If that is claimed as an example of the intellectual prowess of Austrian economic, I think they have some ways to go to know the difference between a metaphor which presents its object in 'a striking and interesting manner', i.e., necessity in the case of rich landlords in Moral Sentiments, and the consequences of risk-avoidance behaviour of some merchants in Wealth Of Nations

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