Define “damaging”
Here is the Financial Times:
Although economic growth has disappointed, the new Federal Reserve chairwoman has successfully persuaded markets that official rates will remain “low for longer”. Unsurprisingly, the dollar has weakened over the past year.
Her munificence is not totally appreciated across the Atlantic. What is seen in the US as a proactive attempt to stimulate a still-weak economy is an additional complication at the European Central Bank. The result could be a damaging competition between the advanced world’s central banks to weaken currencies and stimulate economies.
Obviously I don’t think this sort of competition would be damaging. But the title of this post is sincere, not sarcastic. I honestly don’t know what sort of damage the FT has in mind. I wish they had told us.
PS. The article also suggests that some believe Yellen’s policies are hurting Europe. That claim does make me want to be sarcastic. I guess they didn’t notice how European stocks react to American monetary stimulus.
HT: Stephen Kirchner
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27. May 2014 at 17:58
It is not clear what the FT means, but it is true that central banks competing to devalue is damaging. It is damaging to what Monetarists and Keynesians purposefully evade and make an effort to not understand: non-market money issuance, i.e. inflation, distorts economic calculation and misleads investors into allocating resources and labor into physically unsustainable projects.
The damage is akin to a master builder initiating a grand project in which he mistakenly believes he has more brick capital than he actually has access to. While the bricks are being added, it appears that the project is going successfully as planned. Workers are “working”, and there is growing “output.” But these facts mask the underlying reality of capital.
The same type of event has transpired in the overall capital structure in the economy since 2009. Yes, “employment” and “output” have been growing, however these facts mask the underlying reality that capital and labor have been massively misallocated due to the false signals that the Fed has engineered with QE, which is just another way of saying what the Fed has been doing for many decades, only at an accelerated rate.
That is the “damage” that you have an intellectual “malinvestment” incentive to purposefully evade and not understand. For if you did understand it, then all the money and time invested in NGDPLT would be in vain.
Maybe you’ll pull a Milton Friedman and advocate for abolishing the central bank when you’re old and no longer in need of pleasing anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fkdagNrjI
27. May 2014 at 19:02
Scott, are you aware that the FT has been running an editorial campaign promoting interest rate rises? I think this is part of that.
The article is probably correct that the ECB will not be happy about continuing low interest rates at the Fed. The ECB wants to avoid doing anything more active than talk, because every alternative it has for further easing is fraught with political difficulties: even cutting interest rates would be unpopular with Germany because of pressures in the housing market there. Continuing low interest rate policy across the Atlantic may force the ECB to take action that it doesn’t want to take. Not so much a race to the bottom as a kick up the ass.
27. May 2014 at 21:01
http://mises.org/daily/6760/Speaking-Truth-to-Monetary-Power
28. May 2014 at 00:54
Nobody gets here what’s going on. It’s maddening. Everybody things its structural or a debt crisis or the currency union or globalization or the muslims… Nobody sees that the main cause of all this is the secular trend towards lower interest rates which combined with wrong monetary policy creates a deficiency in aggregate demand.
Even the extreme parties in the recent EU elections (Front National at 25%, UKIP at 28%, Germany’s AfD got 7%) completely share these delusions. The AfD wants the hard Deutschmark back and less government, the FN wants a devalued Franc but combined with lots of government spending and even protectionism! It’s hard money freaks vs national socialists. Both would be a catastrophe for their countries. The AfD would turn Germany into Japan, the FN would turn France into Greece.
What Europe needs and what is totally absent, would be someone saying: “If you let the ECB do the right thing (NGDP targeting which is perfectly compatible with ECB mandate), everything will be fine. Fiscal policies doesn’t matter. You can do austerity or spending, whatever is best, it won’t fight deficient aggregate demand. Look at Japan. Fiscal policies didn’t help them, it won’t help us. Monetary policy is the only game in town, the only game we have, the only game we need and the only game that works.”
The European crisis is the most superfluous problem imaginable. The only institution we really need is already there, ready to go. One sentence by Draghi and the crisis could be over. Instead we get passivity. What is wrong with these people?
28. May 2014 at 01:55
Libertaer,
Well-put. As in 1930s America, the Eurozone seems to be divided between people who, at best, cannot see more than half of the solution. A Chicago Plan is needed for the Eurozone: a strenuous attack both on monopolistic practices and on a shortage of AD.
28. May 2014 at 02:25
“are you aware that the FT has been running an editorial campaign promoting interest rate rises? I think this is part of that.”
Right. You have to keep in mind that most people take it for granted that central banks can set REAL interest rates. (Maybe not in the proverbial long run, but long enough to matter). Scott takes it for granted that they can’t, so this makes no sense to him.
28. May 2014 at 05:25
Frances, Yes, but what sort of “damage” do they have in mind?
Libertaer, That’s right.
28. May 2014 at 07:57
Go Libartaer!
28. May 2014 at 08:01
What does “damaging” mean? Regardless of all the flaws in economic reasoning, surely this is just a repeat of the often-stated “beggar thy neighbor trade policy to cure recessions. The (false) idea is that you encourage exports and discourage imports, and as long as your trading partners are caught by surprise, your income goes up, and theirs goes down.
But if they “retaliate” with the same policy, then the policy is not effective, and a prisoner’s dilemma ensues, and both nations suffer.
How do they suffer, exactly? Nobody seems to explain in detail, other than say a “trade war” will break out. Which means … lots of export subsidies, greater government involvement in the economy, and the resulting deadweight losses? In the case of a purely monetary “war”, I’d imagine it would be that both countries debase their currency, the net effects cancel, but now (maybe?) the central banks have much larger balance sheets, but without any net gain in the domestic economy.
But of course that assumes that monetary policy is actually costly in some way, that trade is zero-sum, that boosting domestic aggregate demand has no direct benefits to the economy, etc. Still, if you make enough macroeconomic errors, surely you can eventually get to a “damaging” monetary trade war.
28. May 2014 at 08:12
To continue the hypothetical fun, here’s the FT a year ago: “The folly of beggar-my-neighbour policies“, quoting Joan Robinson in 1937: “…an increase in the exports of one country leads to a decline in exports of other countries, “everything else being equal”. At best “it leaves the level of employment for the world as a whole unaffected” and probably reduces it. … Robinson’s explanation of the probable consequences is also worth remembering. She wrote that “as soon as one country succeeds in increasing its trade balance at the expense of the rest, others retaliate” and the volume of international trade sinks as a proportion of world activity.”
So the predicted “damaging” consequences of starting a “trade war” seem to be a rise in global protectionism, leading to a decline in overall trade, and thus less wealth for everyone.
28. May 2014 at 08:32
Educated opinion in Europe has it that the Fed is partially to blame for the eurocrisis by their successive devaluations (blaming America for home-grown issues is part of the on-going Argentinization of parts of the continent). If the EU was stronger, then we could punish the Fed for QE (by, for example, refusing to sign trade agreements unless the Fed stops QE).
In fact, this is often the only sort of conversation where you can get educated people to back easier monetary policy, by appealing to their basest instincts where they’ll say “if the Americans are out to ruin us with easy money, we’ll do it to them too!”
28. May 2014 at 10:44
a damaging competition
Oh no, their economies might grow faster! People might get jobs! Quelle horreur!
28. May 2014 at 11:14
MF,
“inflation, distorts economic calculation and misleads investors into allocating resources and labor into physically unsustainable projects”
You believe that the financial crisis was caused by a lack of physical resources, such as a lack of bricks with which to build houses?
28. May 2014 at 12:42
It’s fairly safe to say that Major_Moron just spouts Misesian garbage without pondering its full implication.
28. May 2014 at 15:10
Daniel:
You haven’t shown how anything I said is “garbage”, and you haven’t even shown any “implications” either.
And no, you feeling scared or inferior or resentful at what your life will be like without you benefiting from initiations of force is not a counter-argument to what I said takes place to capital structures when capitalists utilize a medium of exchange in a socialist monetary order.
Every time you respond to my posts, you show yourself to have a vapid intellect and nothing but invectives and vitriol. You got nothing. Maybe you should consider improving your knowledge by actually reading the subject matter under which you are fumbling about like a fish out of the water. You’re clearly too intellectually and emotionally immature for this board. I mean how old are you? Major Moron? What are you, 13?
28. May 2014 at 15:41
Philippe:
“You believe that the financial crisis was caused by a lack of physical resources, such as a lack of bricks with which to build houses?”
The cause is prior inflation that distorts economic calculation. The effects are encapsulated in the capital structure.
Think of it in terms of information and knowledge of the supply of bricks, versus the actual supply of bricks.
What you have been told by many others to be a “financial crisis” was actually much more than merely problems at the banks. The banks just have so much money and influence, and the media just focuses so much on finance, that 2008 is now pop culturally referred to as a “financial” crisis.
But there were widespread problems all across the economy. Automobiles, housing, manufacturing, construction, and all of what people call “pro-cyclical” industries, were severely negatively affected.
The dramatic fall in money and spending, or, in other words, the dramatic increase in money earnings holding times, or cash preference, were a consequence of the underlying capital structure problems.
In the years leading up to 2006-7, far too many resources and labor were being allocated to the more interest rate sensitive, capital intensive industries, such as construction, manufacturing, and durable goods. You can get an empirical sense of this by looking at the relative number of job losses post 2006, by industry. You will see that construction, manufacturing, and durable goods suffered relatively more than the less capital intensive industries like service, retail, and non-durable goods.
The reason there was so much misallocation of resources and labor into these industries was because capitalists were being misled by relative spending and price signals not determined by market forces, but by the central bank. Or, another way of saying the same thing, the relative spending and prices were influenced by not just market actors, but by the central bank as well. Yet capitalists require free market prices, that is, unhampered prices, in order for their profit seeking and loss avoidance in money terms, to spontaneously bring about capital structure lengthening that is actually supported by voluntary savings in real terms.
The capital structure lengthening leading up to 2006-7 was NOT supported by sufficient real savings. When those errors were increasingly revealed by more and more people, that is when cash preference rose, and why spending declined. Now, from my free market perspective, that rise in cash preference and fall in spending are a GOOD thing, because a. It was voluntary, and b. It has the benevolent unintended outcome of correcting aggregate capital misallocation errors.
Austrians view employment and production as MEANS to serving individual subjective ends. Monetarists and Keynesians view employment and production as ends in themselves, which of course is sterile and devoid of any concept of human desires, and so it is communicated as “general welfare”, or “public good”. And thus the subsequent attachment to ethics that are consistent with that ontology.
28. May 2014 at 15:50
Someone who reads the nonsense Mises spouted and thinks to himself “gee, this is amazing” instead of “what garbage” is a total moron who is genetically incapable of clear thought.
28. May 2014 at 15:54
Talldave:
“Oh no, their economies might grow faster! People might get jobs! Quelle horreur!”
Growth? Or sustainable growth?
Employment? Or employment in sustainable projects?
28. May 2014 at 15:55
Daniel:
You’re still immature and you still haven’t shown how it is garbage.
28. May 2014 at 15:57
Your comment doesn’t explain why you think housing construction, for example, was “physically unsustainable”.
“inflation, distorts economic calculation and misleads investors into allocating resources and labor into physically unsustainable projects”
Surely there wasn’t a lack of physical resources with which to build houses.
28. May 2014 at 16:04
MF,
“Now, from my free market perspective, that rise in cash preference and fall in spending are a GOOD thing, because a. It was voluntary”
So the prior spending on houses and other things was also “voluntary”.
How can you claim that choosing not to spend money is “voluntary”, whereas choosing to spend money is not “voluntary”?
28. May 2014 at 16:23
Philippe:
“Your comment doesn’t explain why you think housing construction, for example, was “physically unsustainable”.”
I believe I did explain that. It is because there was not enough real savings.
“inflation, distorts economic calculation and misleads investors into allocating resources and labor into physically unsustainable projects”
“Surely there wasn’t a lack of physical resources with which to build houses.”
It wasn’t just houses though. It is easy to imagine there being plenty of resources available for individual, specific industries like housing, when you contrast the resources needed in that specific industry, with the total supply of resources. But you have to understand that housing was but one of many, many industries that were competing for capital and labor. The resources that went into housing starts, and many other interest rate sensitive industries, that required complimentary resources, did not have sufficient real savings all together.
You say “surely there were enough resources”, almost as if you believe resources are practically unlimited. But how do you know there were enough resources to sustain the entire lengthened capital structure? Do you know how low the rate of real savings were in the country?
“Now, from my free market perspective, that rise in cash preference and fall in spending are a GOOD thing, because a. It was voluntary”
“So the prior spending on houses and other things was also “voluntary”.”
The inflation that financed it was not voluntary.
“How can you claim that choosing not to spend money is “voluntary”, whereas choosing to spend money is not “voluntary”?”
I didn’t say spending money per se is not voluntary. I believe you inferred this by my focus on the voluntary aspect of cash hoarding, as if I were contrasting it with allegedly involuntary spending on houses prior.
The voluntary aspect of spending and cash hoarding is fine to me. What isn’t fine is the involuntary socialist money that is inflated prior. That is the cause of falsified information.
28. May 2014 at 16:34
Philippe
You don’t understand. Austrian economics is correct because it’s correct.
Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience… They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.
Says so right there.
As such, when an Austrian argues that involuntary unemployment is in fact voluntary, you cannot argue with him/her (although it’s usually a him. Autism is much more common in men).
He may seem wrong, but he is in fact right. He is right because he has performed the appropriate thought experiments, in which people are assumed to be frictionless perfect spheres.
28. May 2014 at 16:48
“Your comment doesn’t explain why you think housing construction, for example, was “physically unsustainable”.
“I believe I did explain that. It is because there was not enough real savings.”
By real savings you mean accumulations of real resources, like stockpiles of steel and wood for example, that can be used for real investment, such as the building of houses.
So you’re saying that there was a lack of real resources such as steel and wood, which meant that things like housebuilding couldn’t continue on the same scale as before, as there weren’t enough real resources like steel and wood (real savings) available.
This is what you are saying, correct?
“Do you know how low the rate of real savings were in the country?”
Do you know? Can you show me evidence that there was a lack of available real resources such as steel and wood?
28. May 2014 at 18:44
Don, If the damage was assumed to be a trade war then the article is far worse than I imagined.
Luis, It’s hard to believe that “educated opinion” in Europe is that ignorant, but that’s what European commenters keep telling me is educated opinion, so I can’t say you are wrong.
29. May 2014 at 03:08
Daniel:
“Philippe”
“You don’t understand. Austrian economics is correct because it’s correct.”
“Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience… They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.”
“Says so right there.”
No, that isn’t a correct interpretation of the quote you posted. It is not necessary that statements which are not derived from observations must be of the trite form such and such is correct because such and such is correct.
That statement you quoted is true for mathematics and formal logic, but would you fumble as much with those fields of inquiry as you do with economics? Yes, you would, if you engaged mathematicians and logicians.
Economic propositions the Austrians are claiming are true a priori, are not pulled out of the air. They are logically deduced from the fundamental premise of human action, which cannot be refuted.
They are what they are, because if the statements were uttered differently, they would be refuted by self-reflective logic, that is, they would be self-contradictory.
“As such, when an Austrian argues that involuntary unemployment is in fact voluntary, you cannot argue with him/her (although it’s usually a him. Autism is much more common in men).”
Why do you believe all arguments must be argued empirically? You can argue against Austrians, you just have to use deductive logic, and show that yours is superior. If you believe you can’t argue against them, then it is because you refuse, or are unable, to use deductive logic.
“He may seem wrong, but he is in fact right. He is right because he has performed the appropriate thought experiments, in which people are assumed to be frictionless perfect spheres.”
No, that is not what is assumed. And what does it mean to say that something “seems” wrong? Oh, I know, it is YOUR a priori, non-empirical beliefs that are clashing with theirs
29. May 2014 at 03:13
Thank you for proving my point, Major_Moron.
When and why did you stop taking your meds ?
Also – we’re still waiting for pictures to prove you’re indeed “tall, slender and handsome”.
29. May 2014 at 03:17
Philippe:
“Your comment doesn’t explain why you think housing construction, for example, was “physically unsustainable”.”
“I believe I did explain that. It is because there was not enough real savings.”
“By real savings you mean accumulations of real resources, like stockpiles of steel and wood for example, that can be used for real investment, such as the building of houses.”
Close. It means voluntary abstentions from consumption from earnings, in real terms.
“So you’re saying that there was a lack of real resources such as steel and wood, which meant that things like housebuilding couldn’t continue on the same scale as before, as there weren’t enough real resources like steel and wood (real savings) available.”
Not just housing. And think of lack of real resources as subjective intentions for resources.
“This is what you are saying, correct?”
Not quite.
“Do you know how low the rate of real savings were in the country?”
“Do you know? Can you show me evidence that there was a lack of available real resources such as steel and wood?”
I am not sure what you would notice as “evidence” the lack of sufficient savings to sustain lengthened capital structures. Are you looking for quantities of wood in volume measures, and then you expect me to say that the quantity “should” have been 1.45x what it was? That isn’t how Austrian theory is proved.
29. May 2014 at 03:47
“[real savings] means voluntary abstentions from consumption from earnings, in real terms”.
You mean produced accumulations of real resources, that are not directly consumed or used for consumption, but are instead invested, i.e. used in the construction of things like houses/factories etc, or held in the form of things such as houses/factories etc, or stored in inventories (such as stockpiles of wood and steel for example), correct?
29. May 2014 at 04:08
“… human action, which cannot be refuted.”
I love the occasional reminder that Austrian Business Cycle Theory is unfalsifiable.
29. May 2014 at 14:12
Daniel:
I didn’t “prove” any of your ridiculously false points. And you’re still immature. And you still have yet to show anything I said is wrong.
Philippe:
“You mean produced accumulations of real resources, that are not directly consumed or used for consumption, but are instead invested, i.e. used in the construction of things like houses/factories etc, or held in the form of things such as houses/factories etc, or stored in inventories (such as stockpiles of wood and steel for example), correct?”
Correct.
The reason the economy went into a real and nominal shock, can be gleaned from this chart:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=BZh
If you notice, post-2006 the relatively more capital intensive industries suffered relatively more than the relatively less capital intensive industries. The reason this occurred was because prior to this, in the years of artificially low interest rates and high credit expansion, investors were misled into allocating too many resources and labor to “higher order” projects, which were not supported by actual real savings. This is why those higher order industries suffered relatively the most post-2006.
Since the capital structure of the economy is interconnected, when one industry suffers, other industries will suffer as well, since those other industries depend on the first one functioning smoothly. To picture this, and please understand this analogy to be extremely loose, but imagine that in a factory assembly line, one step in the line suddenly stops. When that happens, the other steps are “shocked”. Depending on how fast people in the line learn of the one step that suddenly stopped, there will be a ripple effect.
In the overall economy, this ripple effect is associated with falling spending across the board. This is a good thing, because if the spending did not fall for the physically unsustainable projects, then the investors would not be able to learn that their projects are unsustainable. Inflation tricks investors into doing what they should not, and would not otherwise, be doing.
The rapid and steep decline in aggregate spending is NOT the “cause” of recessions. It is another EFFECT, and also, is in itself a CURE. For what better way to stop unsustainable investments than by allowing them to show nominal losses.
In a free market, where the chance of artificially low interest rates and credit expansion are drastically reduced to a bare minimum, if not zero with enough education and enlightenment in the population, the years and years of increasing allocations of resources and labor to higher order stages that are not supported by real savings, as we experience with central banking economies, would be a virtual impossibility.
The recession post 2008 was not caused by falling NGDP post 2008. Falling NGDP post 2008 was an effect of the prior cause of too much credit expansion, inflation, and artificially low interest rates pre-2008. Busts occur because booms occur. Stop the boom, then avoid the bust.
But this medicine is too adult oriented, intellectually speaking, for the more naive and immature minded who think of the world more in terms of pure pleasure and pain, where pain is inherently evil and pleasure inherently good. The reason THAT ideology could take place is that over the last couple hundred years, and perhaps a little prior, there has been a systematic philosophical attack on rationalism. Materialism has made people view themselves and thus others as vessels of pleasure and pain, nothing more.
So we have to put up with immature “economists”, more like political pundits most of the time, cry and moan and whine when pain is felt, having no regard for the fact that some pain is good pain, and that some pleasure is bad pleasure.
Thus, we see fixations on RGDP and employment going up as pleasure, and inherently a good, and RGDP and employment going down as pain, and inherently an evil.
This irrational view of mankind is often communicated as “pragmatism”, or “utilitarianism”, but fundamentally it’s just an inability to deal with reality due to an absence of rationalism. Market monetarism is another stepchild of centuries of attacks on rationalism. If the capital structure of the economy and production methods knowledge were the same as they are now, but the only difference is that we were living in a new age of rationalism, then it would be literally impossible for monetarism to be anything more than one of the zillions of crackpot socialist ideas that feed on ignorance and fear.
29. May 2014 at 14:15
Ben J:
“I love the occasional reminder that Austrian Business Cycle Theory is unfalsifiable.”
Unfalsifiable by experience does not mean it is false, or not deduced, or not open to self-reflective logic to check for internal consistency. You can refute a priori arguments, with better a priori arguments.
Mathematicians do it. So do economists.
29. May 2014 at 14:26
My point, Major_Moron, is that you are retarded and autistic. And you keep proving that with every page of drivel you submit.
Also, still waiting for photographic proof of you being “tall, slender and handsome”.
But since everything you say is the opposite of what is real, you’re probably a small fat troll.
29. May 2014 at 14:27
You can refute a priori arguments, with better a priori arguments.
Alright, then let’s assume humans are not frictionless perfect spheres.
That would be a vast improvement upon Misesian nonsense.
29. May 2014 at 15:35
Daniel:
“My point, Major_Moron, is that you are retarded and autistic. And you keep proving that with every page of drivel you submit.”
I agree with you that your point has nothing to do with any substantive rebuttal to anything I said.
I also agree with you that your point is to show your immaturity, intellectual vapidness, and your whining.
You’re still immature
“So, still waiting for photographic proof of you”
And you’re a creeper to boot. Can’t say I am surprised.
“But since everything you say is the opposite of what is real”
You haven’t shown everything I say is the “opposite of real.”
“You can refute a priori arguments, with better a priori arguments.”
“Alright, then let’s assume humans are not frictionless perfect spheres.”
“That would be a vast improvement upon Misesian nonsense.”
I have already corrected you on that false claim. Praxeology does not assume humans are “perfect frictionless spheres.”
I challenge you to substantiate your claim with documentative evidence. But I know you can’t, because your intention isn’t to seek truth, it is to be a creeper creep on the internet.
29. May 2014 at 21:50
Major,
If you say a priori arguments can be refuted, how can you also say “human action… cannot be refuted”? Which is it?
30. May 2014 at 09:07
Ben J:
Mathematical arguments as such can be refuted with better mathematical arguments. Mathematical arguments are not empirically falsifiable, since they are not empirical statements.
But this does not mean that EVERY mathematical argument whatsoever must be so refutable. Correct mathematical statements need not be refutable by better arguments, since irrefutable mathematical arguments are the best.
My point is that even though a priorism is not falsifiable by experience, it doesn’t mean that such statements are in principle immune from a priori counter-arguments in the sense that they would not even welcome them to the playing field. They are welcome, they just have to be better a priori arguments in order to win.
It just so happens that human action is an irrefutable argument in the sense that it cannot be refuted by other a priori players on the field. Some a priori arguments can be refuted. Human action cannot.
Does that make sense?
30. May 2014 at 11:51
So, basically, austrian economics has a truism as its basic “axiom”.
Of course, what Major_Moron conveniently leaves out is that a truism alone is not enough to build a system – so Mises had to insert all sort of hidden assumptions in order to reach his desired conclusions.
So Austrian economics may be true, but in a different universe, where their assumptions hold.
1. June 2014 at 10:47
“PS. The article also suggests that some believe Yellen’s policies are hurting Europe. That claim does make me want to be sarcastic. I guess they didn’t notice how European stocks react to American monetary stimulus.”
Ummm … you do get that European Stocks are not the same thing as Europe, right? What’s good for the former is not necessarily good for the latter. And in many cases, isn’t.
1. June 2014 at 13:34
Daniel:
“So basically…”
…you’re still clueless, yes.
“…has a truism as its basic “axiom”.”
Human action is not a truism in the sense of being psychologically self-evident. It took many centuries for it to be finally discovered and understood. Yes, once one thinks about it long enough, I suppose it may resemble a “truism”, but the fact that most of the planet has not been exposed to praxeology, makes human action very different from truisms such as “Under appropriate conditions, Daniel will make an error in reasoning.” This is not contestable either.
“…a truism alone is not enough to build a system – so Mises had to insert all sort of hidden assumptions in order to reach his desired conclusions.”
You haven’t even read Austrian epistemology. Everything you say is uninformed prattle.
“So Austrian economics may be true, but in a different universe, where their assumptions hold.”
Human action holds in this universe. In fact, you yourself *just acted* in trying to contest it.