We tend to think of economics as a sterile, number-clotted discipline, writes Colby Cosh, but most of the great economists have antagonized the received wisdom of their day. There wouldn’t be an economics profession if some of the great truths weren’t contrary to intuition. One doesn’t get remembered as an economist without saying a few things that sound outrageous. But today the lecturer who says outrageous things is taking his academic life in his hands. He speaks of the ordeal of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, one of his favourite contemporary intellectuals. FULL STORY
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3526/good-economics-offends/
Good Economics Offends
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It was reported today that a Professor at Wesleyan University, Jane
Carpenter, is teaching a course on terrorism. The thesis of the course is
that 9/11 was a right wing conspiracy and the attack was actually committed
by our own government.
That kind of teaching is never challeged, but any reference that offends a minority is.
That sort of crackpot nonsense doesn’t bother me much. Let her teach the course. It is better than a course on the nobility of the state.
It’s a pretty radical thesis, for sure. So was the argument that Roosevelt engineered the attack on Perl Harbor. And I believe that one. Therefore, it seems to me, nothing is beneath Washington, shocking and repulsive as that fact is.
As to Pearl Harbor, I would tend to agree that had Roosevelt had any desire to avoid confrontation with the Japanese, there would have been no attack. The Japanese had absolutely no desire to go to war with the US, and they knew they would lose.
However, I tend to believe that the attacks on both Pearl Harbor and the attacks on the Trade Center were not planned or carried out by the US government.
On another note (more related note), I dislike the implication that Keynes was a great economist, or that he challenged any ideas. Rather, as noted by Mises in the recent daily article, he provided a pseudo scientific defense for the policy governments wished to pursue.
Pete: Are you refering to the comment “One doesn’t get remembered as an economist without saying a few things that sound outrageous”? I doubt the intent was to suggest Keynes was a great economist.
HA, but on the other-hand, maybe it was. If so, i missed it. Good catch, if you’re right.
HA, but on the other-hand, maybe it was. If so, i missed it. Good catch, if you’re right.
Concerning the accusation that the US government was somehow involved in the mass murder of 9/11, please buy and read a book entitled “The New Pearl Harbor” by an author whose name I have forgotten, but who is a professor of divinity at Claremount College.
Concerning Pearl Harbor, please read Robert Stinnett’s “Day of Deceit” which proves Roosevelt’s complicity beyond reasonable doubt.
From Mark: Concerning Pearl Harbor, please read Robert Stinnett’s “Day of Deceit” which proves Roosevelt’s complicity beyond reasonable doubt.
It’s on a shelf at home.
For the record, I only meant to suggest that Keynes was a “great” economist in the sense that Napoleon was a “great” man; the adjective refers strictly to his historical influence and not to the truth-status of his theories. The Failure of the New Economics was not wasted on me, though sadly one cannot say the same for the world at large. In the long run (ha ha!) it certainly looks as though Mises will be more influential than Keynes, for which one can only be thankful.
The gentleman at Inforwars.com will gladly fill you in on why he thinks the attack on September 11th was known and allowed, at least, if not actively aided by the Whitehouse in order to be able to do all that has since been done.
Ok since this is a thread on outrageous economic claims I need to ask.
Has anyone read R.A. Heinlein’s For Us the Living
It was writen by heinlein in 1939 but only realesed in 2004. I am currently reading it and the economic theories that it professes are well to my thinking outrageous but he does provide some justification for his thinking.
If anyone is familiar with it I would love to hear thoughts on it especialy from one more economicly informed than myself.
Fianaly if this is the wrong thread for it please feel free to email me about it I am quite curious.
Colby Cosh:
As to whether Keynes or Mises will be more influential in the long run, I’m sure Mises himself would have regarded your (very mild but nonetheless confident) triumphalism as misplaced. Nothing’s a “done deal” insofar as the affairs of men might be concerned. No matter how brilliantly correct the ideas of some might be, the composite–in which social reality at any given time exists–consists
in the actions of those living at the time.
Like you, I’m also gratified that the correct ideas seem to have wider currency than at any time in the past. I’m further gratified that there is a fairly substantial number of people (like yourself, for instance) with popular-readership capabilities who can maintain a multipronged, subversive attack on the fallacious received wisdom informing all forms of statolatry. That’s the purpose of this whole site, after all.
The one thing I can predict confidently is that the battle of ideas is forever. Keep at it.
Well, at the risk of trolling, I find it laughable that you would consider Hoppe’s arguments remotely convincing. All he does is make a bunch of assertions about the nature of democracy and economic behaviour, and treats them as a priori axioms in order to derive his predetermined conclusion. I’ve got news for you, but social science (indeed, any scientific endeavour outside theoretical physics) is not mathematics, and you cannot ignore empirical evidence, as Hoppe claims you can, that contradicts your assumptions.
Even in mathematical analysis, theorems hold only under specific circumstances, and axioms are generally equivalent to definitions rather than Hoppe’s blind assertions. Of course, in this I’m indicting the basis of the so-called Austrian School, but it could use a fresh dose of reality.
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