point well made. Seems to me this is not the first time a pretty standard set of neoclassical theoretical/reasoning tools is deployed to reach a largely Austrian conclusion – yea, verily, even using the Pareto criterion, innocuous in itself, but subject itself to all sorts of philosophical and axiomatic shortcomings in Austrian eyes.

Still, this recalls my own undergraduate days, long before I encountered the marginalised Austrian school. In that time, we first did a full course in microeconomics, followed by another full course in macroeconomics, before finally going on to 2 or 3 narrower specialisations at third year level. Now, both micro and macro were the offerings of the same faculty under the same Dean. And yet, I remember being baffled by a fundamental logical contradiction between the two courses.

You see, the microeconomics course was a well-crafted ( and very satisfying ) exposition of the neoclassical general-equilibrium framework: Your standard set of ‘simplifying’ assumptions ( perfect information,costless transactions, transitive wants, yada yada yada). It started with the Production Possibility frontier, then went on to cover utility and the theory of demand with indifference curves between 2 products, then on to supply and the theory of the firm, with isoquant curves between 2 inputs, firstly with the basic model of perfect competition, then varying relaxations of that assumption with oligopoly, monopoly, monopsony etc etc, and then, at the end of the course, finally ended up back at the PPF, with the pareto path neatly mapped in an edgeworth box showing how it all comes together to arrive at the point on the PPF showing the most optimal mix of productive allocation between products A and B given the relative preferences of consumers X and Y. Everything beautifully coming together, and tied up with a nice neat bow.

I remember having niggling issues with the basic assumptions, but by and large, I could buy the need for some sort of simplification to model the fundamental relationships. And of course, all the modelling and theoretical manipulation of all those little demand/supply and other diagrams used within the framework generally led inexorably to the same conclusions:

1. Open competition leads to better outcomes for all than any restricted market like oligopoly or monopoly. And
2. Any government intervention, like taxes and subsidies, always make people overall worse off than they would have been without them.

So, with hindsight, the standard neoclassical Gen eq. framework, in its vanilla theoretical modelling outcomes, tends to throw up conclusions broadly consistent with Austrian outcomes, notwithstanding the deep philosophical differences at foundational level. (This probably also explains why Adam Smith still gets a very sympathetic and supportive ear among many Austrians despite Rothbard having ripped him to shreds so thoroughly. Be thay as it may…).

Then, going on to ‘Macroeconomics’, in year two. At the beginning, much was made of the ‘fact’ that macroeconomics ‘aggregates’ the individual agents of microeconomics, thus looking at the same phenomena through the other end of the telescope as it were, and it runs off the same theoretical foundation. Then it swiftly launched into Hicks’s ISLM/ADAS framework before going into Keynes and policy actions, and the tired old debate between ‘Keynesianism’ and ‘Monetarism’ (Both of which I have since discovered Austrians rightly regard as mere variations on the same bankrupt theme), and all sorts of manipulation and exposition followed to evaluate the effects of various alternative policy initiatives on tthe modelled outcomes.

And in all of this, the thing that baffled me most was that, given what we had learnt in the Microeconomics course about the general undesirability and futility of any sort of government intervention, the entire Macroeconomics course was predicated on a fundamental, undeclared but implied axiom: That policy intervention is Right and Good, and indeed HAS to be undertaken – the only permissible question is what KIND of intervention it should be. In among all that tiresome ISLM modelling, I can not remember once being once taken through the exercise to trace the ultimate impact of taking no policy action at all! Veriuly, the model wasn’t even equipped to deal with a market-based interest rate and a market based money supply simultaneously – either one or the other HAD to be an ‘exogeneous’ policy-set variable!

I could never quite ‘get’ this strange inconsistency between the 2 courses under the same faculty resolved. But I couldn’t really articulate the problem either.

Alas! I was young and naieve ( and probably, it must be said, not interested enough) to have made much of a coherent issue out of it at the time, so I kept quiet and basically fed the professors what they wanted to hear in the interest of maximising course credits, with mixed success. Had I known then what I know now from the Austrian school, I sometimes find myself fantasising about what I could have done differently in submitting assignments and the like – but if truth be told, that would quite concievably have earned worse marks if not outright failure.

I’m staying away from this shot and will continue to exercise my freedom by being healthy through natural means — vitamins, supplements, good food, etc. and not the Big Pharma – Government partnership that exists today.

I used to be straight up radical progressive. It was actually the vaccination issue that started opening my mind and the journey to a libertarian perspective. I had a kid, and learned that so many sincere, well meaning people were pushing this poison on kids. they just are not willing to admit that it’s a scam at worst and a joke at best. I now have two incredibly healthy kids, neither of which have been vaccinated. Not once.