Austrian Economists Make Up The Superhero Needed To Save Civilization From Economic and Zionist Myths
As a kid growing up in the 80s one of my favorite cartoons was ‘Voltron: Defender of the Universe.” The main characters would pilot 5 robotic lions who would eventually assemble to create Voltron, who’d use a massive sword to defeat the enemy. In this article I’ll briefly introduce 4 main thinkers and impactful friends associated with the ‘Austrian School of Economics’, and how they create the superhero needed to defend civilization from the economic and Zionist fallacies-myths that threaten it.
Besides properly grounding economics on the subjective (not labor) theory of value, founder of ‘The Austrian School’, Carl Menger(1840-1921), via his seminal “Principles of Economics” also provided what I like to call the “flux-capacitor” idea of the social sciences: Menger’s explanation of the evolution of money.
Private-sector economic competition turns the planet into a supercomputer as companies innovate and copy the innovations of competitors thus spreading superior information. Business profit-loss accounting ensures that the private sector is ordered in a manner where more wealth is produced (sales revenue) than consumed (costs) and is thus profitable-wealth-order-life increasing. Overcoming the double-coincidence-of-wants problem allows the benefits of trade like the expanding division of labor and information to apply to populations above small tribes. All three depend on or emerge from money. Without money and its emerging benefits, homo sapiens would not have progressed beyond the tribal stage. Menger showed how similar to language, which is a vital communication mechanism that man did NOT design or invent, money too and emerging ‘Social Organism’ is “the unintended result of individual human efforts (pursuing individual interests) without a common will directed toward their establishment.” The fact that money and emerging civilization was not deliberately designed is key for understanding how we live in this mind-bogglingly complex world with complex airplanes, the Internet, microchips, etc., yet hardly anyone has the slightest clue regarding how the economy works, and the masses naively clamor for self-mutilation via coercive competition-immune-monopolistic government planning and tribalistic good vs. evil wars.
During the Christmas holidays of 1903, while a student at the University of Vienna, Ludwig von Mises(1881-1973) read Carl Menger’s “Principles of Economics” and, in his own words, “It was through this book that I became an economist.” Among other contributions (see my article on Mises’ business cycle theory), via his 1920 essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth“, Mises showed how it was impossible for soviet-style central planning to work (see my article for a Mises-Hayek inspired critique of central planning). By persuading leading Austrian politicians away from joining the Bolsheviks, Mises also helped stop its calamitous expansion. Mises properly identified economic ignorance as the main source of mankind’s problems and felt like “all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.” This ethos made him a brilliant and inspiring writer, the intellectual Atlas upon whose shoulders future generations would stand.
1974 Nobel Laureate in Economics F.A. Hayek(1899-1992) writes: “the decisive influence was just reading Menger’s Principles.” And that it was “such a fascinating book—so satisfying.” By having a job under Mises, especially in 1922 when Mises published his majestic “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis”, and having Mises help him get a job at the prestigious London School of Economics, this catapulted Hayek to prominence in the 1930s-40s
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
