Is it possible to achieve a graduate level understanding of economics through the internet?

Do you have an example of an Austrian theory that is only based on common sense ? I don’t really know much about the Austrian school of thought, I’m just curious

FYI r/askeconomics is not a reliable place to learn about either the good or bad aspects of 'Austrian' economics, and I say this as someone whose pubs. are thoroughly 'mainstream' in both theory and empirics: you will not find good criticisms of Austrian econ here, or on EJMR, etc.

What you will see is (a) disdain and (b) confidence, e.g. "Austrian econ is ridiculous pseudoscience, as has been proven definitively and beyond all reasonable doubt by X, Y, and Z!". (Notably, the probability that at least one of X/Y/Z is the Caplan paper is not significantly less than 100%.)

This is kind of problematic, since if you read the actual criticisms, there's very little substance that accurately addresses the positions actually taken by Austrians, and for the most part they're just egregious straw men. So adding to (a) and (b), you've got (c) ignorance. Unfortunately, when disdain and confidence are combined with ignorance, virtually nothing productive is likely to come from it, and it just turns into a shit-flinging contest.

I think this largely explains why certain kinds of smugly idiotic tropes about Austrian econ persist. Austrians do not reject empirical evidence, nor has the mainstream absorbed everything useful from Hayek in information economics, and so on. Despite the fact that these tropes are easily refuted, they'll stick around anyway because it's much easier to name drop the fallacies everybody "already knows" are committed by those weird pseudo-scientific Austrians rather than actually reading and engaging their work.

If you want to see what Austrians actually think, get a copy of Bruce Caldwell's intellectual biography of Hayek, Hayek's Challenge, and then go from there. Stay away from the LvMI / Rothbardian Austrians.

/r/AskEconomics Thread Parent