In a few threads I have been on it seems like this forum is filled almost exclusively with anarchists with the odd minarchist thrown in. Maybe I'm wrong but I can't help feeling that perhaps some of the more famous Austrian economists are not quite so fundamentalist as they guys here. I thought I'd test this out with the following question. For each person in the list below, please append the percentage of GDP that you estimate that each person would ideally like to be spent on the public sector (police etc). I know this is very unscientific and you'll be guessing to a large degree, but I'm curious to see if everyone will insist its zero for all of them.
Ludwig von Mises ......?%
M Rothbard...................?%
Tom Woods.................?%
Peter Schiff...................?%
Ron Paul.......................?%
Henry Hazlitt ................?% (I know its not zero for him)
The list may seem strange to you - it simply corresponds to the ones I've heard of or have watched on youtube. Feel fee to add names.
What Went Wrong with Economics
It's been a problem on the forum lately. People have what they want to talk about, and instead of making new threads, they inject it into any current discussion.
@ the premise of the thread,
Hoppe is an anarchist. Block is an anarchist. I don't know if Doug French is an anarchist, but I know he was a student of Rothbard's, who was an anarchist. There are far more anarchists @ LvMI (GMU and other institutions may differ) than there are minarchists. There are minarchists, but in almost all cases, they are very radical, and firemen are not part of radical minarchism. A fireman has nothing to do with justice, he is merely a service provider, no different from pest control or flood restoration service.
There is a reason why many of us are anarchists. Two years ago, I was a Ron Paul minarchist. I'm also a Schiff fan, and he is very radical. Now whether he is or is not an anarchist, I don't really know. Obviously, with a potential campaign, he has to parse his words, so I don't think we could call his radio show and get a definitive answer.
As far as Mises and Hazlitt, they have passed. A lot has changed in the world since they were in the debate, and knowledge has continued to advance.
Ron Paul, definitely an anarchist at heart. No one who references Lysander Spooner and supports secession down to the individual level could be a minarchist. A minarchist is not for a minimal voluntary state, a minarchist is for a minimal involuntary state.
dude seriously! have you figured out how to build a road or not yet! it takes two hands and coercion isn't going to move the shovels. it's not that difficult and so you therefore ignore the simplicities. yes ignore seeing that you've ignored any post that scares you! truth is scary!
mickanomics: Do you think you could get all that for 0.05% of GDP? 0.05% of GDP corresponds to around 1 person in 2000.
Do you think you could get all that for 0.05% of GDP? 0.05% of GDP corresponds to around 1 person in 2000.
Daniel: Btw, 300,000,000 X 0.05% = 150,000 people. You fail again.
Btw, 300,000,000 X 0.05% = 150,000 people. You fail again.
300,000,000/150,000 = 1/2000. How exactly did he fail?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Rothbard was an Austrian and an anarchocapitalist - his major contributions are probably why the two are so strongly linked today.
wilderness: dude seriously! have you figured out how to build a road or not yet! it takes two hands and coercion isn't going to move the shovels. it's not that difficult and so you therefore ignore the simplicities. yes ignore seeing that you've ignored any post that scares you! truth is scary!
Thats a discussion from another thread. Send me a personal message if you're really keen for me to answer something. If you want to follow up this mail, do so on the other thread. Lets not screw up the thread system.
I. Ryan: mickanomics: Do you think you could get all that for 0.05% of GDP? 0.05% of GDP corresponds to around 1 person in 2000. Daniel: Btw, 300,000,000 X 0.05% = 150,000 people. You fail again. 300,000,000/150,000 = 1/2000. How exactly did he fail?
Oh, okay. I totally misread that last part. I figured "in 2000" meant "in the year 2000".
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
I. Ryan: 300,000,000/150,000 = 1/2000. How exactly did he fail?
Yes, that's what I thought! But then I thought a bit longer and worked out that Daniel thinks that 150,000 has so many zero's that it *must* be a big enough number to cover all requirements government workers. But of course america is a big country and 150,000 has to spread very thinly! I don't think Daniel is very good at math.
mickanomics:This was a surprise to me, I had no idea the Austrians school would be so full of anarchists
well, to give you some background and context...
a large proportion of the senior faculty of the Mises institute are anarchists, and the founder of the mises institute is himself an anarchist. The historical tradition is http://mises.org/story/2519 Jean-Baptiste Say and Gustav Molinari then modernised,fleshed out and popularised by M Rothbard. Hoppe, Block, Murphy etc are Rothbardians as much as all Austrians are Misesians....
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
150000 would be 25 government employees per square mile, a figure that could work if the government provided very few services(I'm not sure we could manage courts and prisons on that number).
mickanomics: I. Ryan: 300,000,000/150,000 = 1/2000. How exactly did he fail? Yes, that's what I thought! But then I thought a bit longer and worked out that Daniel thinks that 150,000 has so many zero's that it *must* be a big enough number to cover all requirements government workers. But of course america is a big country and 150,000 has to spread very thinly! I don't think Daniel is very good at math.
nirgrahamUK: a large proportion of the senior faculty of the Mises institute are anarchists, and the founder of the mises institute is himself an anarchist.
a large proportion of the senior faculty of the Mises institute are anarchists, and the founder of the mises institute is himself an anarchist.
Thank you... its all becoming clearer now.
I still wonder about Peter Schiff. I think I've watched every single Peter Schiff video on youtube (there's hundreds of them!) and I didn't get the slightest hint that he was an anarchist. Any thoughts?
mickanomics: wilderness: dude seriously! have you figured out how to build a road or not yet! it takes two hands and coercion isn't going to move the shovels. it's not that difficult and so you therefore ignore the simplicities. yes ignore seeing that you've ignored any post that scares you! truth is scary! Thats a discussion from another thread. Send me a personal message if you're really keen for me to answer something. If you want to follow up this mail, do so on the other thread. Lets not screw up the thread system.
i apologize if you think i'm focused on the roads. i'm not veering from the current thread discussion. look at what i wrote. "it takes two hands and coercion isn't going to move the shovels". That's liberty in action! my view is people wake up in the morning and go to work. they desire to work the career paths they have chosen. some people like or dislike what they do, but no politician wakes 'em up each morning and tells them to go deliver the milk, get the criminals, or put asphalt on the road. sure people find obligations in their jobs, they need food on the table and would like to keep their house - the incentives are basic, the government is what acts like the middle man making it look like they're makin' it all happen. the milkman and computer engineer are doin' it - with their own two hands!
mickanomics: nirgrahamUK: a large proportion of the senior faculty of the Mises institute are anarchists, and the founder of the mises institute is himself an anarchist. Thank you... its all becoming clearer now. I still wonder about Peter Schiff. I think I've watched every single Peter Schiff video on youtube (there's hundreds of them!) and I didn't get the slightest hint that he was an anarchist. Any thoughts?
When was the last time he said something favorable about the government?
mickanomics:I still wonder about Peter Schiff. I think I've watched every single Peter Schiff video on youtube (there's hundreds of them!) and I didn't get the slightest hint that he was an anarchist. Any thoughts?
i havent heard him deny or decry anarchy. lots of anarchists use the constitution to show liberty minded statists (a strange but common breed) how far the USA has strayed from its supposedly noble and libertarian ideals, yet using this rhetorical technique does not necessarilly imply that they believe the consitution to have authority. I think Woods, DiLorenzo and Ron Paul are examples of this. and maybe Schiff .... of course I could be wrong about these individuals, but I think I've made my point that small government rhetoric does not entail that the proclaimer is not an anarchist. the smallest government is zero sized after all...
mickanomics: I still wonder about Peter Schiff. I think I've watched every single Peter Schiff video on youtube (there's hundreds of them!) and I didn't get the slightest hint that he was an anarchist. Any thoughts?
he's running for the Senate office in Connecticut, i believe, but i don't know if it's official or not. yet some people believe they can worm into the system covertly and use the Constitution as their fallback so the average Bob and Jane don't go runnin' the other way. i don't know if he would go all the way - touchdown - but he definitely wants to scale back the government, get it out of the economy, and affirm the Constitution again. He's all for liberty. if he mentions the Amendments about succession and affirms those, like Ron P. does, then of course he's for walking away from the beast and towards what! i think he's an intelligent person and would think things through first. but to give a more black and white answer - i don't know.
i wrote my post while you were writing yours