Ugh. Excuse me while I vomit for a while.

Philosophy is also based on faith-based axioms. While that is reprehensible, regular philosophers have an excuse for being jackasses. They study stuff which lacks any real world manifestation. So if you ask them, "why don't you take that to the data?" They can say "gee, we would really like to, but in our field there are no observable data at all."

Austrians work in a domain with abundant data, but refuse to pay any attention to it. They say well, we assumed we were right and we don't need to find any evidence to support that. After all the fact that we are right follows directly from our axioms and axioms do not require empirical validation by definition. This is my main objection to Austrian economics. It is purposefully teleological. In science, teleology is avoided. For Austrians, teleology is worshiped. If you don't believe me go read the holy book linked to above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology#Teleology_and_science

Besides the complete rejection of empirics, Austrians also refuse to use mathematics. This is a big problem for them because economics typically gives rise to ambiguous predictions (i.e. there are multiple factors which offset one another and theory provides no prediction about which of these factors will be most important.) Thus, there is a need for quantification. However, Austrians reject quantification. Instead, they focus their attention on simplistic theoretical settings that do not produce ambiguity and therefore can be analyzed without mathematics. Not surprisingly, this leads to a simplistic world view where everything is seen in black and white terms.

Listen to the libertarians oversimplify things and paint everything in black & white terms on the forums. Austrian economics is partially to blame for their faulty thinking.