The “Are you an Austrian?” quiz on Mises.org has been taken a total of 38,297 times since it was created. The quiz has been updated, and now tells you which school each answer best corresponds to. English and Spanish versions are available.
If you are interested in translating the quiz into other languages, let us know!
{ 18 comments }
Anybody see this article out of the UK?
Bailiffs get power to use force on debtors
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5375668.ece?Submitted=true
Don’t they have “marshalls” to do that in the USA?
According to this test, I am 96% austrian.
It’s a good quiz, but very long and very wordy. I don’t see the appeal to someone who doesn’t already know if they are an Austrian or not. Do they get a prize at the end?
The emailed results give you a link if you choose the Austrian answer, but none if you chose differently ( I chose the Chicago answer on one and would like to know the Austrian perspective)
It is very long but then again it is not only a quiz; it is a teaching tool, and it does a good job in this respect. We used to have a shortened version but it sort of defeated its main purpose of illustrating the different approaches and highlighting the Austrian one.
One problem is that sometimes (in my view) all the answers are wrong, at least to some extent. When that happened I chose the least worst answer, even where I seriously disagreed with it.
Here’s an example, where (as it happens) the least worst answer was the Austrian one, no. 6, “What is money and how does it originate?”.
That answer begins “Money always emerges out of barter”, but in fact that is historically false. The other answer beginning “Money can emerge from barter” is correct on that point.
The thing is, we know for sure from the historical record that, with a few exceptions, money reached African colonies when it was put in place by colonial authorities. We also don’t have records to show just how money first reached many places, but what we have from oral tradition and numismatic archaeological evidence suggests that it was often put in by local rulers (e.g. in Lydia in pre-classical times, which is when and where money is widely believed to have been invented); we do not have any evidence about barter, except in times and places like 1945 Germany or in prisons etc., where bartered cigarettes became currency – but those people had had money before. We don’t have evidence for money first coming in from barter anywhere, though we can’t rule it out.
P.M.:
If you were an Austrian you would know the refutation to your argument
The quiz works!
I wish all fellow Austrians freedom, liberty, peace, happiness, and prosperity for 2009:
http://www.economicsjunkie.com/freedom-liberty-peace-happiness-and-prosperity/
Best,
Nima
Oh, Zlatko. How can you “refute” a historical fact, other than by showing that the information itself is inaccurate? Colonial authorities did introduce money to various places, precisely in order to change subsistence economies to cash economies in which local labour could be mobilised by taxes.
+JMJ+
Okay, the quiz tells me I’m mostly Austrian–but would someone explain what the Chicago school is –?? I went for a few of those–the quiz would be helped by commentary on the questions (i.e., which school each one belongs to).
I took this test a long time ago and scored 100%. But only because I answered the questions the way I knew an Austrian would. I actually disagree with all the answers permitted for question number two.
A perfect 100/100 – I actually found the test rather easy. For anyone who does not know the Austrian position is the pure human action, market solution, anti-state, anti-regulation one.
The Chicago School (very simplified) is Milton Friedman economics, in many ways close to the Austrian School on markets but can differ drastically on monetary policy such as the gold standard.
Some other schools of economic thought are Keynesian and Supply-Side economics.
It would be a fantastic idea for Mises to do a comparison of all the schools and how they differ from the Austrian perspective.
98% Austrian with 2% chicago mix..
Maybe I ought to join Mises University. (Hint: Start one!)
“The thing is, we know for sure from the historical record that, with a few exceptions, money reached African colonies when it was put in place by colonial authorities.”
Importing a monetary system from elsewhere is not origination. Especially if it uses an established monetary commodity. No more than importing rats to an island means that rats were invented by the government.
“How can you “refute” a historical fact, other than by showing that the information itself is inaccurate? “
All observations are taken in light of some theory or another. Even our eyes operate on theories relating to how 3D images are projected on our 2D retinas. That’s why optical illusions are possible. Facts are often theory rich and if the backing theory is poor the fact is often false.
Your optical illusion is in not seeing that the importation of a monetary system is not a form of origination. Nor is the transformation of one system into another using an existing pricing scheme. Prices are part of the natural process.
Now if a government arose that had no preexisting money framework to work with (or copy), decided on a commodity (or token) to use as money, and then set up, by fiat, prices for every good in terms of that money, and that worked, well then that would be an impressive act of creating money from scratch, instead of having it arise from barter.
Andrew: “It would be a fantastic idea for Mises to do a comparison of all the schools and how they differ from the Austrian perspective.”
Roger Garrison has done a pretty good job of that in his book “Time and Money.”
Brian Macker quotes me, “The thing is, we know for sure from the historical record that, with a few exceptions, money reached African colonies when it was put in place by colonial authorities”, then does a bait and switch, “Importing a monetary system from elsewhere is not origination. Especially if it uses an established monetary commodity. No more than importing rats to an island means that rats were invented by the government… Your optical illusion is in not seeing that the importation of a monetary system is not a form of origination. Nor is the transformation of one system into another using an existing pricing scheme. Prices are part of the natural process.”
The question (no. 6) as structured is not simply about the origins of money. Some of the options offered speak of how it emerges, then go into further detail on other aspects. In Madagascar, money for internal use emerged when the French introduced it (I have researched this and written it up), ditto in Kenya when the British did, etc. That is, money was not there before, so if we look at the historical records for those places, we find it emerges in the colonial period – and we happen to know how. (Of course, they had been trading with the outside world for some time – but only certain groups did that, usually with goods they got from slaves or tribute or whatever, and usually bartering for trade goods.)
So I am not confusing the introduction of money to a new place with how it originates. I am simply pointing out that, in the ordinary meaning of the word “emerge” – which is what is in the options – it has sometimes emerged from being introduced forcibly. That makes one of the options right on that aspect, with another right on the other aspects, so neither option is completely right (the others are worse). Quite simply, the options don’t answer first origin in those particular sentences – and it is those sentences that I was bringing up.
“Now if a government arose that had no preexisting money framework to work with (or copy), decided on a commodity (or token) to use as money, and then set up, by fiat, prices for every good in terms of that money, and that worked, well then that would be an impressive act of creating money from scratch, instead of having it arise from barter”.
Curiously enough, that is consistent with what we know about what happened when the kings of Lydia produced the first money known in the world. We just don’t know for sure that they did price fixing, although it’s quite likely that they did since it’s a king sort of thing – but they certainly did everything else on that list (there just happened to be a lot of gold, silver and electrum around in those parts then, only of use for jewellery and low strength items like cups and plates – not like the tougher and more useful bronze and iron). They got the metals, of course, by taking them in tribute from locals who collected them – which gave a value to the coins that the kings issued (more like small stamped beads or ingots, then).
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