Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Lending at negative interest rates. (People like bigger numbers.)
by
Red
on 05/08/2010, 01:37:20 UTC
Are you a libertarian who's unfamiliar with the Austrian school or were you just joking around?

I met my first Libertarian roughly 35 years ago. But I've been hearing people advocate for going back the the gold standard for longer than that. I agree with the pragmatic nature of Libertarianism that says less government is better. However, often find distasteful many people who call themselves Libertarian but use it as an excuse to argue that police and drug laws are bad. Ones I actually know personally, do this because they use drugs irresponsibly and exhibit anti-social behavior which antagonizes the police. I prefer not to be lumped in with them, even though I have some of them as friends.

While I'm well aware of complaints about inflation and FRN, I had not heard it called Austrian economics. I disagree with the proponents of going back to the gold standard. I also find idiotic those who claim going off the gold standard was some sort of secret conspiracy. (I'm not claiming you are one of these Bitcoiner. I'm not so sure about Bytemaster though.) There were issues with gold backed money. It was publicly discussed, passed by congress and in all the papers. It was no secret. Lots of people didn't like it and many of them were rich. Poor people by definition had nothing to lose in the switch. So unless it was a conspiracy of the poor to steal value from the rich by causing inflation, it doesn't seem plausible.

It is like calling Obama-care a secret conspiracy. I disagree strongly with that, but it certainly wasn't a secret conspiracy. Yes it benefits some and disadvantages others. Yes, it institutionalizes the concept that there is a service you are entitled to but not responsible for paying for. But it wasn't a secret, and it wasn't a conspiracy of the insurance agencies, hospitals or medical professionals.

A copy/paste of something refuting something you admittedly are very unfamiliar with does not a valid criticism make Wink

I pasted the quote because it was exactly what I was going to write about bytemaster's arguments on this site. Mainly this part:

"generally lacks scientific rigor,... theories are not formulated in formal mathematical form, but by using mainly verbal logic and what [he] claims are self-evident axioms."

also

His explanations are "contradicted by the evidence." At least by my experiences.