All States are Empires of Lies [and especially when economics is the concern.]
Posted by freedomforall 2 weeks, 6 days ago to Economics
Excerpt:
"Casey’s sound advice is that to be a good citizen one needs to “become your own economist.” Don’t rely on the state’s mouthpieces in the “media” or even academe for your economic knowledge. Educate yourself to some degree; it doesn’t take a university degree. Indeed, everything we do at the Mises Institute is geared toward helping anyone anywhere to become their own economist (preferably Austrian School and not Keynesian or Post Keynesian!) and avoid being bamboozled by the state and its court historian economists.
Mises never joined the American Economic Association, the association of academic economists founded in the 1880s. The association’s founding document provides a clue as to why. “The state is an educational and ethical agency whose positive aid is an indispensable condition of human progress,” the document purred. “The doctrine of laissez faire,” on the other hand, “is unsafe in politics and unsound in morals,” said the statist moral scolds who founded the American Economic Association.
There are exceptions, the Austrian School economists being the most prominent, but the majority of academic economists view themselves as advisors or potential advisors to the state. They are Rothbard’s “court historians” with degrees in economics instead of history. The role that they serve is the same as all “intellectuals” in our almost 100 percent state-funded universities. As Rothbard put it: “The majority [of the electorate] must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and at least inevitable. Promoting this ideology . . . is the vital task of the ‘intellectuals.’” In return, the “intellectuals” are given government jobs, grants, placement at prestigious universities, book deals, and myriad other political payoffs. (Mises wrote that history, law, and economics are the disciplines most widely used to bamboozle the public about the supposedly good, wise, and inevitable state).
...
One of the most ridiculous things taught to generations of economics students was that because of the free-rider problem the U.S. would be spending far too little on “national defense.” “Efficiency” requires coercive taxation. There are economists who have defended Pentagon corruption and fraud on the basis that it expands defense spending, which is supposedly hindered by that nasty free rider problem. Who on earth would define Pentagon spending as “efficient”? !
It was only in the past ten years that the “mainstream” of the economics profession finally discovered that the massive interventions of the New Deal actually made the Great Depression more severe and longer lasting, something the Austrian economists have said all along. This Big Revelation was made in an article in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy by Professor Lee Ohanian of UCLA, an editor of the American Economic Review at the time. Better late than never."
"Casey’s sound advice is that to be a good citizen one needs to “become your own economist.” Don’t rely on the state’s mouthpieces in the “media” or even academe for your economic knowledge. Educate yourself to some degree; it doesn’t take a university degree. Indeed, everything we do at the Mises Institute is geared toward helping anyone anywhere to become their own economist (preferably Austrian School and not Keynesian or Post Keynesian!) and avoid being bamboozled by the state and its court historian economists.
Mises never joined the American Economic Association, the association of academic economists founded in the 1880s. The association’s founding document provides a clue as to why. “The state is an educational and ethical agency whose positive aid is an indispensable condition of human progress,” the document purred. “The doctrine of laissez faire,” on the other hand, “is unsafe in politics and unsound in morals,” said the statist moral scolds who founded the American Economic Association.
There are exceptions, the Austrian School economists being the most prominent, but the majority of academic economists view themselves as advisors or potential advisors to the state. They are Rothbard’s “court historians” with degrees in economics instead of history. The role that they serve is the same as all “intellectuals” in our almost 100 percent state-funded universities. As Rothbard put it: “The majority [of the electorate] must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and at least inevitable. Promoting this ideology . . . is the vital task of the ‘intellectuals.’” In return, the “intellectuals” are given government jobs, grants, placement at prestigious universities, book deals, and myriad other political payoffs. (Mises wrote that history, law, and economics are the disciplines most widely used to bamboozle the public about the supposedly good, wise, and inevitable state).
...
One of the most ridiculous things taught to generations of economics students was that because of the free-rider problem the U.S. would be spending far too little on “national defense.” “Efficiency” requires coercive taxation. There are economists who have defended Pentagon corruption and fraud on the basis that it expands defense spending, which is supposedly hindered by that nasty free rider problem. Who on earth would define Pentagon spending as “efficient”? !
It was only in the past ten years that the “mainstream” of the economics profession finally discovered that the massive interventions of the New Deal actually made the Great Depression more severe and longer lasting, something the Austrian economists have said all along. This Big Revelation was made in an article in the prestigious Journal of Political Economy by Professor Lee Ohanian of UCLA, an editor of the American Economic Review at the time. Better late than never."
