I know that a lot of people here are all out purists but I think that what is needed, now more than ever, is public policy advice from the Austrian school that is first and foremost pragmatic.
By pragmatic I mean: Has some likelyhood that it might get enacted. No central bank is going to be abolished in the near future, the welfare state is here to stay to a greater or lesser extent for the foreseeable future, etc. But that does not mean the Austrian School of thought should have no effect on decision making and future policy direction. I believe it can and it should but only as far as it is firmly routed in the pragmatic.
Unless we are saying that the Austrian "programme" has no value unless implemented in it's entirety and undiluted (which I sincerely hope that is not the case), then I think the "public debate" over how to resolve the ongoing financial crisis is in sore need of pragmatic comentators from this school of thought.
My personal interst is of the state of affairs in Europe and the ongoing debate between "austerity" vs "growth" policies that seems to be increasingly dominated by Keynesian and old school conservatives.
Cool story bro
define 'pragmatic' for me.
John James:Cool story bro
Yours is even cooler, bro.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Autolykos: John James:Cool story bro Yours is even cooler, bro.
What's cooler than being cool?
^^
Ice Cold!
Shake it, shake it, shake it like a polaroid picture!
Just call me JohnJ 3000.
To answer the OP seriously (since apparently no one else will): Fried Egg, I think education and outreach are always pragmatic prescriptions.
I didn't realize he asked a question.
Answer
A response or reply; something said or done in reaction to a statement or question.
I don't think there is an absence of public policy proscriptions coming out of the Austrian camp I just don't think people are inclined to really listen just yet.
Give it time, let's see what happens.
gotlucky: Answer A response or reply; something said or done in reaction to a statement or question.
1) That's the definition of a noun. The "answer" in question is a verb...which makes it a different word.
2) I'm sure you'll whisk off to go find a definition of the verb somewhere that will allege one can "answer" when no question has been asked (and probably succeed), but in typical parlance one does not "answer" a statement. One may answer a "call", but of course, the purpose of a call is to elicit a response. This is not necessarily true of a statement. Or in the case of the OP, a cool story.
But thanks for being dictionary boy! That will probably come in useful at some point.
John, would you feel better if I edited my post to replace "answer" with "respond to"?
Answer as verb: To make a reply or response to.
2) I'm sure you'll whisk off to go find a definition of the verb somewhere that will allege one can "answer" when no question has been asked (and probably succeed), but in typical parlance one does not "answer" a statement. One may answer a "call", but of course, the purpose of a call is to illicit a response. This is not necessarily true of a statement. Or in the case of the OP, a cool story.
See above. But it really doesn't matter about typical usage if the way it was used is still considered correct, which it was.
You're welcome. I'm glad you understand that dictionaries are useful.
gotlucky:You're welcome. I'm glad you understand that dictionaries are useful.
Oh I definitely do!
This thread.... Is the coolest Thread.
Come on lads, stop squabbling and discuss the implcit pragmatism vs principled issue brought up by the OP.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
Fine. I think that the only pragmatic solution currently available is education, education, education. Until libertarianism gets larger any strides forward it actually makes will have any bad events which occur blamed upon them.
Neodoxy: Fine. I think that the only pragmatic solution currently available is education, education, education. Until libertarianism gets larger any strides forward it actually makes will have any bad events which occur blamed upon them.
QFT.
gotlucky: Neodoxy: Fine. I think that the only pragmatic solution currently available is education, education, education. Until libertarianism gets larger any strides forward it actually makes will have any bad events which occur blamed upon them. QFT.
I didn't realize there were so many douchebags on the forums today. The guy's asking if we can take ideas of freedom and put them to practical use instead of squabbling like washer women in hopes of actually changing things. But the gentleman who started the forum failed to realize something: most people on these forums tend to be idealists. They have no intention of putting into effect their illustrious ideas that would solve all the world's problems. They're also a sensitive lot, too, so I'm anticipating a lot of kicking and screaming at my implicitly insulting them. Frankly, from what I can tell, they are scared to put their ideas into practice if it doesn't involve a keyboard and a lot of long hours away from women on Friday nights.
most people on these forums tend to be idealists. They have no intention of putting into effect their illustrious ideas that would solve all the world's problems. They're also a sensitive lot, too, so I'm anticipating a lot of kicking and screaming at my implicitly insulting them. Frankly, from what I can tell, they are scared to put their ideas into practice if it doesn't involve a keyboard and a lot of long hours away from women on Friday nights.
=P
My "pragmatism" has been to lose the "libertarian" name associated with the conclusion in the academic realm. For instance, the "libertarian" theory of bureaucracy" can mesh well into geopolitics and all of the sudden you can create frames of reference around certain interest groups and think tanks. My personal attempts at this have gone over well three out of four times in school (you don't always need to cite opinions from the Mises circle to make the points). So, it does fit in with "education" even though I have actually thought about how to convince people who, are not just skeptical, but outright hostile to libertarianism and not just say "education is the answer" when prompted, like an automoton. Bring them to it, just don't tell them that it is libertarian.
(Also, it is not the well known libertarian Austrian school, but the little known Psychological school; the only school of economics that accounts for human subjectivity at every level.)
Not belligerently berating people on internet forums, but systematizing the praxeological methodology into simple political science and anthropolgy. Then, people cannot point at the rhetoric of the black flag wavers and cull public support for the policies that we may ultimately support. Even if other academics point out, "Well that's Misesian reasoning" or "Rothbardian logic!", you can just say, "It makes sense here, I'm not saying it always will." Even if you don't mean it!
We simply need to do what the progressives have done. It is as simple as that. Dress our language in ways that are appealing to people whether they know our ultimate goals or not.
@tri: Well, I'll turn up the contrast a bit to illustrate the problem to you. Imagine a slave colony. Now, imagine that one of the slaves comes up with the novel idea, "We don't need a master, we should overthrow our masters and build a free society where people are free to enter or leave associations with one another as they each see fit, without fear of the use of violence or hypocritical laws."
But, the colony having been long accustomed to being fed by their masters are loathe at the thought of the turmoil that they know would be brought upon the colony if such a course of action were followed. The more senior slaves - that is, those slaves who are more ingratiated with their masters by virtue of sexual favors or by loyally enforcing the master's will on the other slaves - admonish the revolutionaries to calm down and "work within the system to change it from within". Meanwhile, the ever-present trolls go around saying the revolutionaries are pansies because they're not "taking action".
This is a hyperbolic description of the state of affairs (except the troll part) but the point stands: things have not changed because people do not want them to change. And until people want things to change, it really is a bad idea to try to "take action", no matter how many trolls or agents provocateur sit on the sidelines and bait action.
Obviously, the key is to help people understand that what they "want" is not really what they want, but only what they've been told to want. When people begin to see that their own satisfaction is the only criteria for methodical action, the problem will solve itself. The system is a reflection of what people "want", that is, what they've been told to want (by the system). The key to breaking down the hold of the system is to break its spell on people, deluding them to sacrifice themselves to a higher cause - zealously paying taxes and enthusiastically laying down the lives of their children in service to "society".
Stirner says in The Ego and Its Own:
How is it with mankind, whose cause we are to make our own? Is its cause that of another, and does mankind serve a higher cause? No, mankind looks only at itself, mankind will promote the interests of mankind only, mankind is its own cause. That it may develop, it causes nations and individuals to wear themselves out in its service, and, when they have accomplished what mankind needs, it throws them on the dung-heap of history in gratitude. Is not mankind's cause - a purely egoistic cause? I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them? They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and - has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism. But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people." And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself. God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one [Der Einzige].
I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?
They all have an admirable time of it when they receive zealous homage. Just observe the nation that is defended by devoted patriots. The patriots fall in bloody battle or in the fight with hunger and want; what does the nation care for that? By the manure of their corpses the nation comes to "its bloom"! The individuals have died "for the great cause of the nation," and the nation sends some words of thanks after them and - has the profit of it. I call that a paying kind of egoism.
But only look at that Sultan who cares so lovingly for his people. Is he not pure unselfishness itself, and does he not hourly sacrifice himself for his people? Oh, yes, for "his people." Just try it; show yourself not as his, but as your own; for breaking away from his egoism you will take a trip to jail. The Sultan has set his cause on nothing but himself; he is to himself all in all, he is to himself the only one, and tolerates nobody who would dare not to be one of "his people."
And will you not learn by these brilliant examples that the egoist gets on best? I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself.
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one [Der Einzige].
Clayton -
My only point was that the people above should directly respond to the guy's inquiry instead of mocking his efforts. I see bitching in the complaint section all the time about rudeness and what have you, yet some of the same people are toying with the guy. Whatever, I'm new here, just calling it like I saw it.
triknighted:My only point was that the people above should directly respond to the guy's inquiry instead of mocking his efforts.
Again, I didn't realize he made an inquiry.
Fried Egg:... I think that what is needed, now more than ever, is public policy advice from the Austrian school that is first and foremost pragmatic.
Every time and everywhere, choose freedom (voluntary interactions, markets) over coercion (central planning, government). Period.
Doesn't get more pragmatic than this.
The only things I can think of that would be effective aren't pragmatic, So what's the point? Garbage in garbage out. If a half ass policy is enacted and we get junk results, we could argue that it was b/c the "ideal" policy wasn't enacted. We would then run the risk of being called out for a "No True Scotsman". What I'm thinking of specifically is stopping federal student loans and easing up/ending financial aid.
Something that has been effective though on a local scale has been charter schools.
I'm with BransonBow. I feel like the question is always 'Well, what "pragmatic" policies can you suggest' wherein "pragmatic" means only policies that won't do jack. So again, I'd like to hear how the OP defines 'pragmatic'.
For example, I need some pragmatic suggestions on how to lose weight, but I don't want to exercise, change my diet, make any lifestyle changes, go into surgery or in general move or do anything that might cause me to lose weight.
Any suggestions?
Try switching from 3 chocolate bars a day to 2. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Baby steps. Pragmatic.
But see, these are the things that I specifically listed that are off the table. Obviously you're not being seriously pragmatic. Let's meet in the middle here...
Then what did you leave on the table? If nothing, then your analogy was strawman-ing the OP and your quest for proposals is non-existent.
I think at times of economic crisis (such as now), the public (and hence public policy) become more open to more radical ideas and I think that the Austrian Perspective did seem to enter more widely into the arena of public thought as the crisis unfolded. But I sense, and it maybe just me, that the scales are new tipping away from this perspective and I attribute this to a lack of pragmatic input from advocates of this school of thought.
Perhaps my sense of things is just wrong and there's no lack of pragmatic input from the Austrian school?
Perhaps, as some indeed believe, suggestions of the Austrian school would need to be diluted beyond all usefulness in order to get accepted by policy makers?
Personally, I don't think either of these is the case and that there is scope for more vocal, pragmatic advice from this quarter.
As many of us have been saying here and in other threads, without educating the patient no prudent/pragmatic treatment would be accepted. If he believes, as Krugman prescribes, that eating 5 chocolate bars a day instead of 3 would lose him weight then he won't comprehend how eating less chocolate helps. On top of it, more chocolate tastes better than less or none. So he gets fatter and fatter, while Krugman explains how perhaps 7 bars a day instead of 5 would have done the trick.
But the lesson, the reality, can not be avoided. Ultimately the patient will lose weight as he rots under ground after the heart-attack. The market is the ultimate doctor and taking his medicine is not optional.
The problem is that statist institutions have become so interlocked that entirely abolishing just one, if that were even possible, may well yield dramatic disruptions of the social fiber.
For instance, the welfare state is a result of the criminalization of voluntary mutual aid association, as famously described in R.T. Long's "How Government Solved the Healthcare Crisis". Decriminalize these associations and very little will happen because people have grown accustomed to the welfare state. Abolish the welfare state and people will have no social safety nets left. Do both and you'll have a lengthy period of transition ahead of you during which the sentiment may quickly shift back in favor of the old system.
It's even more complicated in the area of money and banking. As long as you give the state the power to create money, no banking reform will yield any satisfying long-term results. Even putting artifical restrictions like a gold bullion standard on the government will just delay the inevitable, i.e. the abolition of said standard for the supposed promotion of some social good financed by inflation.
Essentially, for Austrian policies to have any noticeable effect, you'd have to dramatically scale back the government and give it at least a decade or two for the last century of political distortions to unwind. In all honesty, I don't see that happening.
@ excel
From the OP: "By pragmatic I mean: Has some likelyhood that it might get enacted."
Fried Egg:But I sense, and it maybe just me, that the scales are new tipping away from this perspective and I attribute this to a lack of pragmatic input from advocates of this school of thought.
...I'm not sure what gave you that idea.
a) This is a large part of the reason a recurring theme you're hearing here is education.
b) I think Ron Paul has been on the right track here. He understands you can't abolish the Fed overnnight. (Literally or practically.) His book is literally called End the Fed, but has he authored a bill proposing that? Of course not. He simply introduced an audit. Just an audit. It got 319 cosponsors in the House and another 32 in the Senate. It got watered down and added on to some other bill, but was reintroduced in the 112th Congress and as of March 10th, 2012, has 214 cosponsors in the House and 19 in the Senate.
I'm not sure how you get more "pragmatic" than something as simple as an audit.
His budget plan many would argue is "draconian", but then again, they called Paul Ryan's "cut essentially nothing" plan "draconian". This is the point BransonBow was making. The only things that would be at all effective don't meet your apparent definition of "pragmatic". So the only solution is to change people's opinion...making such things become do-able and acceptible in the minds of voters...so that they become "pragmatic".
And this is something that Ron Paul has arguably done more than any other (possibly two people) in history to accomplish. This is why he is such a big deal. I know assholes like to pretend they're above it all, and dump on anyone who shows any sort of vocal support for Ron Paul simply because he is so popular (and therefore does have literally fanatical fans), but the reality is the guy is one of, if not the most important historical figure in terms of popularizing the ideas of libertarianism and the Austrian School...especially when considered the mood of the enviornment he's had to work within.
People like Wendy McElroy and Stefan Molyneux feel a need to dump on him because they're jealous they'll never accomplish half of what he has in terms of popularizing the ideas they have spent their lives preaching.
You want pragmatism that will lead to any significant change? Do what Ron Paul has done. Educate people, and more importantly, motivate them to educate themselves.
z1235:Then what did you leave on the table? If nothing, then your analogy was strawman-ing the OP and your quest for proposals is non-existent.
Which was sort of my point. Unless 'pragmatic' can be usefully quantified, it's invariably the case that all proposals will be deemed 'un-pragmatic'. So why waste time trying to give any?
Look at how pragmatic is defined in the OP. Something that has a chance to get passed. Well, the people who do the passing are as immovable in their positions as I am on not wanting to put in the work of losing weight, so as you yourself admit austrian suggestions are pretty fucking worthless then, aren't they?
Look, we need somebody to counter the prattling of Paul Krugman whos running commentry on our economic policy is most annoying. He's even coming to the UK next week to try and ram home his message that we shouldn't be trying to balance the books and should spend like crazy to get ourselves out of recession.
Isn't the real problem the idea that a society should force policies on the populace at large? Isn't accepting that to cede that we should order a society along collectivist lines, where the individual's will is sacrificed to the (easily manipulated) collective at large?
Why not implement a political order based on the principle of individualism itself? Why not choose our own policies, implement them on an individual basis? We have a system of majority rule with minority rights, why not extend that all the way: minority right and minority rule over the ultimate and only true minority: yourself. Allow people to organically group together and associate according to the laws they mutually accept to place upon themselves and those they choose to interact with.
Citizen, rule thyself.