What are /r/austrian_economics' favorite Products & Services?

How about a whole book?

https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Reinterpretation-American-1900-1916/dp/0029166500

Bonus: its written by a progressive! Not that it will matter, sounds like the person already has made their decision and doesn't need to be bothered with evidence or facts.

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson:

"It is sometimes said that the Germans or the Japanese had a postwar advantage over the Americans because their old plants, having been destroyed completely by bombs during the war, they could replace them with the most modern plants and equipment and thus produce more efficiently and at lower costs than the Americans with their older and half-obsolete plants and equipment. But if this were really a clear net advantage, Americans could easily offset it by immediately wrecking their old plants, junking all the old equipment. In fact, all manufacturers in all countries could scrap all their old plants and equipment every year and erect new plants and install new equipment.

The simple truth is that there is an optimum rate of replacement, a best time for replacement. It would be an advantage for a manufacturer to have his factory and equipment destroyed by bombs only if the time had arrived when, through deterioration and obsolescence, his plant and equipment had already acquired a null or a negative value and the bombs fell just when he should have called in a wrecking crew or ordered new equipment anyway."

>Peter describes money along these same terms but then goes on to denounce bitcoin because it has no intrinsic value whereas gold does. Either he doesn’t understand what the term means or doesn’t care.

Or maybe what he means when he uses that term is that gold is useful in the production of goods that satisfy subjective value of human beings.

A medium of exchange is a good that is not consumed but hoarded until it is traded away, and is only consumed later. As such, the value that good has for consumption is (very) significant.

Schiff's most important point that he is trying to get across to the public is the relationship between current trading value (of stocks and houses) and the value it can generate in the future (dividends and rents, respectively). This is why he views bitcoins as a 'hot potato' that will experience a bust. All this seems perfectly Austrian to me.

I have written an article outlining this view of money in a technical way, which you can read here: The theory of money in the tradition of Carl Menger

I'm not sure if your word choice was intentional, but Sowell's follow-up textbook, which is very good though not Austrian, is Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.

Statistics and formulae are good for understanding economic history, and there have been some great books on economic history (Rothbard's America's Great Depression, for example!).

But since economics is a social science as opposed to a physical science, it has more in common with sociology than trigonometry. As such, Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson is the typical starting point for a reason. In fact, I would say it's one of the world's most essential works. And if I wasn't opposed to centralized, bureaucratic education monopolies, I'd make it required reading.

If you want an actual economic textbook to munch through, I usually recommend starting with Robert Murphy's Lessons for the Young Economist. You may be tempted to skip it if you've read Sowell's Basic Economics above, but it's worth your time as it serves as a solid base (it's written for middle- to high-schoolers, but that shouldn't pose a problem).

From here, read Percy Greaves' collection of speeches that was published as Understanding the Dollar Crisis. It covers a lot more material than the title would suggest.

Moving beyond that, Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State is outstanding (and Power and Market, which was originally written as part of MES, turns the dial up to 11).

Then continue to "Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays" edited by Ebeling.

If you still thirst for more - pick up de Soto's Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles.

I can recommend more - including Mises, of course - but this should hold over anyone hoping to delve past "Basic Economics."

Did economic conditions really change on a dime between November and now? Krugman seemed pretty okay with recommending large deficits back then.

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is an excellent primer on the subject, and Peter Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, while not explicitly Austrian, outlines the same basic philosophy that underlies the Austrian school of thought, and does so in a narrative form that is very easy to follow.

I think it would help to read Economics in One Lesson first. It is another classic, so why not anyways..... but.. Mises is so clear, and Austrian Econ makes so much sense and is free from useless mathematicobabble... I think it is ok to just dive right into it.

Ah, this is a favorite from lefties. I won't read the whole thing because it begins setting up a fallacy/lie, 16 years of chicago economics to experiment???? I think not:

> The reality was that Chile's military officials were initially in charge of the economy. They were corporatist and paternalist, and they opposed the Chicago Boys' ideas. The air force controlled social policy, for example, and it blocked market reforms until 1979. It wasn't until this approach led to runaway inflation that Pinochet belatedly threw his weight behind liberalization and gave civilians ministerial positions. Their success in fighting inflation impressed Pinochet, so they were given a larger role.

The source focuses on Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism but works well against Rojas' claims too. Remember that Chile had to fix Allendes' bad economic decisions plus Pinochet's economic decisions which were socialist ideas from an economic point of view, i.e. the military tried to manage the economy as you would handle an army into battle: centrally planned and top-down. The fact is that the chicago school policies worked so well that Chile kept them after Pinochet's dictatorship had ended and a new left-wing government elected instead.

I know Swizerland is one of the few countries that has a partial commodity backed currency hence its strength vs the US dollar use the zoom feature and set it to "all"

"Hayek was for the state production of roads, education, a social safety net, theaters, sports grounds, certification of professions, building regulations, food regulations, factory safety and health regulations, restriction on the sale of dangerous goods —including drugs—, and more."

From: https://medium.com/p/20e6466057bc

I'm of the strong belief that one should delve right in to the big works: "Human Action" by Mises and "Man, Economy, and State" by Rothbard and in that order.

Others might suggest something like "Economics in One Lesson" by Hazlitt or other such smaller works. A defensible route, especially if you're not able to commit to works the size of Human Action and MES, but there are important sections that one can't cover in a work like that.

As for videos (or audio), the Mises U lectures from the Mises Institute are always good.

You can find them here:

https://mises.org/library/mises-university

The Institute has a wealth of free PDFs and audio that you can delve in to (including HA and MES). Basically, if the Institute owns the copyright, they've put it out a PDF for free.

If you have any questions on Austrian Economics or otherwise, feel free to let me know; I'll do my best to help.

PS. In a week, I'll be beginning an informal, online seminar on Human Action. If you would be interested in joining us, you can find more information here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3mx1ci/human_action_seminar_syllabus/

I highly recommend Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?, by Richard Maybury.

Then: Lessons for the Young Economist by Robert Murphy.

And Economics in One Lesson

These are also good; however, I think the above order is what you may be after:

How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes

How an Economy Grows and Why it Doesn't

An Island Called Liberty

The Kingdom of Moltz

Austrians believe that the state sponsoring such a monopoly delays the point at which new entrants appear. i.e., actually I think great formulation of the Austrian point appears in Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom".

Examples of such delayed entry include Bell & PanAm. Both industries saw significant innovation the moment monopoly status lost its government guarantee.

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt gets a lot of credit, even in general. It's even ranked pretty high on Amazon and I've seen it in regular book stores in the econ section. It's a lot shorter than Human Action and Man, Economy, and State.

I personally read Human Action, and it was great, but Economics in One Lesson might be a lot better for someone who wants a shorter introduction.

This is a great video that somehow escaped me until recently:

An Introduction to Austrian Economics with Israel Kirzner

I think he is considered the leading economist on Entrepreneurs, and is an Austrian highly critical of the Chicago School, meaning that he explains things in terms of why Friedman was wrong, not Keynes, which in my opinion is helping us more out of the dark ages.

I'd also say that it is noteworthy to understand 1) what Keynes was responding to, before thinking that he had much interesting to say. Specifically, he was basically saying that Say's Law was wrong, but in my opinion, he merely stated the problem, he didn't actually refute it. To be fair, I don't claim that as any kind of original opinion, just one I agree with.

2) The (contemporary) counterargument was Mises "Human Action", though the "Road to Serfdom" and "Economics in One Lesson" were contemporary beliefs that were incompatible, but not necessarily responses directed at Keynes General Theory. Much easier to read than Mises though. I loved "Human Action", but could not recommend it to anyone with a passing interest. Robert Murphy doesn't even include it in his First Year Home Study Course. To my understanding, the modern living Austrian authority on Keynes is Roger Garrison. I think he gives Keynes a lot of credit in terms of what he explains well, but then uses Hayek to bridge the gap between Keynes short term policy suggestions and neoclassical arguments that content that long term such policies do the opposite of their intent. His slideshows explaining Keynes and Hayek Macroeconomic Theories of Capital Structure are priceless.

Here is something to chew on: Why Mises (and not Hayek)?

And here is my (more or less): Why not Mises and not Hayek (chapter 'Economists')

Overall though, just because you disagree with idea X doesn't mean you can't appreciate idea Y from someone.

You might want to bring up that Austrians started predicting a housing bubble would come some time in the future in the early 2000s if not before.

I couldn't find anything about him predicting it. This is from April 2007 though.

>WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson delivered an upbeat assessment of the economy, saying growth was healthy and the housing market was nearing a turnaround. "All the signs I look at" show "the housing market is at or near the bottom," Paulson said in a speech to a business group in New York. The U.S. economy is "very healthy" and "robust," Paulson said.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/paulson-says-us-housing-sector-at-or-near-bottom

If you want to learn more about Austrian theories on banking, combined with history, Rothbard's America's Great Depression is a good choice. It walks the reader through common explanations of the Great Depression, accompanied by his rebuttal. A large portion of the book is spent on Hoover's policies during his tenure (I found this part to be the most interesting). The text is pretty thick, but I would advise against skimming it. It's pretty cheap on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Americas-Great-Depression-Murray-Rothbard/dp/1494837188/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1495828473&sr=8-2&keywords=america%27s+great+depression

If you're looking for more books to read, I highly suggest reading prominent non-libertarian political theorists. The refutations section include a lot of them but other books like On the Social Contract by Rousseau, Republic by Plato, and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman are all good ones. Know thine enemy if you will.

I took a college course where I heavily studied A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (I HIGHLY recommend you read at least the first half). It's actually a very compelling argument and is a perfect reflection of what most modern-day Statists believe. If you then read Anarchy, State, and Utopia your mind will be blown over how Rawls gets obliterated. I agree with u/skranton_strangler.

I wouldn't worry too much about the people Mises is criticising. You can look them up as you go along. For example, when Mises has a go at Hilferding you can look him up on the internet.

There are two main groups that Mises criticises. Those who favour various types of centralized economic planning. That includes Communists and also many others who want to centrally plan economies with private ownership is some way. There are still a few of those around, these days the left is much more concerned with wealth redistribution to achieve it's aims. The other group he criticises are Keynesians, or those who had similar ideas before Keynes. This is the group that believe that giant programs of monetary stimulus or public spending can end recessions. Oddly enough, this group are now very like they were when Mises was writing. They've recently gone back to a lot of their old ideas.

You can just start by reading Mises, it's not that hard.

If you don't want to start with Mises, here are some other suggestions:

"An Introduction to the Theory of Value" by William Smart.
"Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.
Mises' short book "Economic Policy".
"Markets For Managers" by Anthony J.Evans.

The first 3 of that list are available as free PDFs from mises.org. Lots of people recommend Hazlitt and it's one of the most comprehensive, but there are lot of details of it that I think are wrong. Still, if you read other stuff later you'll see those problems.

While Human Action and especially Man, Economy, and State gave me the best understandings of Austrian Economics, to begin with these works is to invite difficulty and density immediately.

I'd suggest something less dense and more flavorful such as Hazlitt's classic Economics in One Lesson or Murphy's textbook Lessons for the Young Economist - and then move on to the Great Tomes when your curiosity gets too much.

>Starting with The Wealth of Nations, the necessity of public goods have been pretty much an accepted part of economics, including in the Austrian tradition.

This is not true. There is a substantial part of Austrians who do not believe any amount of taxation/government/'public goods' is necessary. Which is likely true for the majority in this subreddit.

See "The Critics of Keynesian Economics" edited by Henry Hazlitt (see also: "The Failure of the 'New Economics'" by Hazlitt; and Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" is also a good primer on some of the fundamental economic fallacies that under-gird the Keynesian system). "Where Keynes Went Wrong" by Hunter Lewis is also good. This are the best printed works I've come across in recent years--they are all from an Austrian perspective but they lay out Keynes's ideas clearly and concisely, including his theory of business cycles.

I'm a web developer. Dropped out of high-school. First couple of jobs at digital printing shops, then freelance graphic design, web development, and marketing, and now I work at a mobile-oriented startup doing full-stack web development and UI design.

I got into Austrian economics after reading Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. The Mises Institute has done great work making all sorts of material available.

Whitaker also seems not to have given up reading the book before reaching chapter 15 How the Price System Works that explains how the free market allocates resources and any intervention disrupts the this system, making it very difficult for any project done outside of the pricing system to be efficient. The likely hood of the benefits outweighing all the unseen cost for tax funded project is very low.

>..I understand the basics of Austrian, such as the regression theorem, the subjective theory of value, ..

This competing theory to Mises might be of interest to you: The theory of money in the tradition of Carl Menger

The quote in context can be found on Google Books, here.

If I might add to the context, I believe what he's saying is something like this. Without a central bank, the individual banks will now and then demand specie from one another, in order to clear their accounts of paper. In other words, if Bank A has more claim checks on gold from Bank B than it is comfortable holding, it will demand that Bank B cash them. This works to keep banks honest, as any single bank that expands its notes beyond what the other banks are comfortable with will feel the pinch.

With a central bank though, going from what Rothbard writes (see the link I posted), the central bank encourages the use of paper and acts as a lender of last resort. This diffuses the pressure that the banks would be putting on one another for specie in a freer market. Without that same pressure, the incentive is to expand.

>The crucial advantage of money as a store of value comes from the fact that money is durable. Historically, durable precious metals like gold and silver served as money. Under a fiat money system, entries in a computer are durable, as well (the differences between fiat money and commodity money will be explored in a future article; for now, it suffices to know that durable money can be a reliable store of value).

Fiat money taxation, legal tender laws, and government continuity are what make fiat money durable in value. At least, under my theory.

But I'll see what you have to say in your other article.

I've written something recently on this: A reply to Murphy regarding money and Menger

Basically I'm saying that in your hypothetical there are multiple consumers now and in the future. This allows a stock to be taken on and does not demonstrate 'monetary demand'.

>But... Rothbard in What Has Government Done to Our Money says that whatever amount of money is in the economy right now, is the amount there should be.

I think moreso that he said that most quantities of money in the market are fine, because prices adjust (and secular deflation is not a concern).

Regarding the suggestion about 'any amount of money is fine', I would disagree. Governments have a stronghold on the money market and prevent individuals from bartering with money of their own choice. Let's say there is only 1 USD in a country, and that's all the money they are allowed to buy and sell with, that would be problematic. The value of that 1 USD is not sufficient to sell a lot of things and those things could not change hands, except by direct trade.

I believe Rothbard and Menger actually had different ideas about how money works. See my article here: The theory of money in the tradition of Carl Menger

Look up "The Bitcoin Standard" by Saifedean Ammous, a young Austrian economist (PhD and all).

There is a strong Austrian argument in favour of Bitcoin, and the Austrian school seems to be the only methodology that can make sense of it (as per Bob Murphy). Bitcoin is engineered money, distilled to money's most abstract properties and divorced from its traditional but incidental properties.

Curiously, Bitcoin also seems to contradict classic Austrian theory in that its price so far has been following a simple analytical model (the stock-to-flow model), which is deemed naive by the old Austrians. It's uncharted territory.

The results are in! We will be reading Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard! We will "meet" in a thread once a week on Mondays to discuss each chapter starting April 29, 2019. Each week a thread will be posted so we can share our thoughts, ask questions, gain clarification, and consider the role of MES in today's world! Happy reading! See you on the 29th!

You can acquire the book for free here or purchase from Amazon!