Austrian School of Economics

[High School Marxist]

I was debating whether to post this here or in learning, but decided I'd be better off posting here so I c7an get the input of people who believe in the school of economics.

Now....

Can anyone who believes in the Austrian School of Economics please give me a quick rundown or synopsis of the economic beliefs and theories held in that school? My understanding of it is a little hazy, especially in comparison to my understanding of Marxist economics, so I would like to hear your side. and please, keep it somewhat simple.

[feather canyons]

If you want to get the perspective of people who believe in Austrian economics, you can go to the Mises institute, they have a tomb full of reactionary babble glorifying free markets. But the jist of their argument against communism is (they are not only against communism, they are against Keynesianism and basically anything other than laissez faire ) is that they believe that what they call "economic calculation", by which they mean what should be produced and how much is should cost, is impossible because without prices to signal what people want there is no way to construct a rational economy. This assumes that a free market is "rational", funny huh?

Socialists have refuted this nonsense many times over the years, from many different angles. For starters, not all socialists believe in a centrally planned economy. That is only one interpretation of Marx, that of the former Soviet Union.

Leon Trotsky and Peter Kropotkin actually criticized central planning before the Austrians did, so Mises (the arch priest of the Austrians ) is not telling us anything we don't already know.

Besides, clearly central planning is possible - if it wasn't, how did Stalin build to USSR into a superpower?

[Prinskaj]

Can anyone who believes in the Austrian School of Economics please give me a quick rundown or synopsis of the economic beliefs and theories held in that school? My understanding of it is a little hazy, especially in comparison to my understanding of Marxist economics, so I would like to hear your side. and please, keep it somewhat simple.
To make a quick summary, the market is the foundation by which society exists, and any government intervention, other the upholding property rights, is detrimental to the economic well being participants in the economy.
But this is fairly typical capitalist thought. What really sets them apart form other capitalist schools of economic thought is the empathise on monetary policy. They believe that having state regulated currency helps destabilises the markets and is therefore an evil which must be purged.
In reality it isn't really different then any other set of capitalist thought, even though they find themselves to be special, and if analysed from a marxist perspective, which assumed money as just another commodity (Albeit one that fluctuates exchange), then the difference it of no importance.

[CryingWolf]

I was debating whether to post this here or in learning, but decided I'd be better off posting here so I c7an get the input of people who believe in the school of economics.

Now....

Can anyone who believes in the Austrian School of Economics please give me a quick rundown or synopsis of the economic beliefs and theories held in that school? My understanding of it is a little hazy, especially in comparison to my understanding of Marxist economics, so I would like to hear your side. and please, keep it somewhat simple.

It's basically this:

Value is a subjective, personal matter with an "ordinal" preference ranking. That is, one's preference ranking can be as follows:

8 slices of pizza > 6 cans of soda > 7 slices of pizza > 6 slices of pizza > 5 slices of pizza > 5 cans of soda > ...

All human interactions are described in terms of mutually beneficial voluntary trades. If I have something you value more than what you have now, and I value what you have more than what I have now, then we would both be better off if we traded our stuff.

If an exchange occurs, then it must have been mutually beneficial, and if it doesn't occur, then it wasn't mutually beneficial. Thus, if a trade is "forced" value is lost.

Since all human interactions are described as trades, any use of "force" leads to a loss of value. Since virtually anything the government does outside of an arbitrary set of actions defined by each libertarian, the government is extremely wasteful and we must severely limit its scope.

Also, any "volutnary" transactions are completely justified because they are thought to produce the maximum benefit to all parties concerned. Hence, wage labor, private property, etc. are all good and just things...

god just writing this bullshit makes me sick...