I’ve been a member of this sub for a while now, and recently, I’ve noticed a concerning shift in content. Instead of discussing the principles of Austrian economics, the discussions seem to have devolved into a screaming match between Austrian economics and left-wing ideologies. It feels like this sub, once focused on exploring the ideas of Austrian economics, has been overrun by individuals pushing socialist or far-left viewpoints. This shift has made the space feel more like every other Reddit sub, rather than a community for thoughtful debate around Austrian economics.

While I absolutely believe in the value of exchanging diverse opinions for the sake of learning and intellectual growth, it’s crucial that the discussions remain constructive and focused on the base subject matter that this sub was created for. The influx of people using the sub as a way to spout their own ideologies—without regard for the principles of Austrian economics—has created screaming matches rather than meaningful discourse.

Moderation is needed to preserve the integrity of the space. We should ensure that the discussions are not just ideological battles but centered around the ideas that the sub was originally founded on. Without proper moderation, the sub risks losing its focus, becoming just another echo chamber for leftist economic ideology, rather than a place for thoughtful, in-depth discussions of Austrian economic theory.

https://inomics.com/blog/austrian-economics-historical-contributions-and-modern-warnings-1542898

What is the most compelling evidence that government inference (increasing money supply, over regulating supply chain, etc.) is the main cause of inflation and not the arbitrary “greed” of businesses? I have some friends who are mystified at the prevailing high levels of inflation despite the Keynesian actions of the last four years. What would be convincing to show to someone of that economic persuasion? As someone who subscribes to the Austrian and Chicago school style of economics, it feels painfully obvious to me that this is a government and monetary issue.

A lot of Keynesian type proponents often point to the Nordic countries as a perfect example of their economic system/government system. There are plenty of counterpoints to this so I'm wondering what your favorite is?

Mine is pointing to the Swedish Economic Crisis and how the government began to privatize afterwards.

What's yours?

Racial segregationists are laughing from beyond the grave. Now their progressive grandchildren defend the regulations they passed to keep the country segregated.

It was deviously clever to set up all these regulations (ostensibly to protect from "disastrous unregulated development") and then have a permanent useful idiot constituency of young liberals defending them because they are too stupid to tell good laws from bad.

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It all started in Berkeley, California and spread from there:

[Berkeley’s zoning code], which has been revised about once a decade, is the template for development in Berkeley. It contains rules and regulations about how land can be used, where building can occur, what kinds of structures can be built, and how many people can live where. But the bureaucratic guidelines set forth by the zoning plan conceal its history as a tool for racial and class-based discrimination.

The guidelines set out in the zoning code served for many decades to separate the poor from the rich and whites from people of color. Some neighborhoods were zoned to only allow single-family homes; these became havens for the white and wealthy. The code allowed apartment buildings and duplexes in other neighborhoods, turning them into places for people of color and those on the lower end of the economic scale.

In 1917, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Buchanan v. Warley decision that it was illegal for municipalities to use zoning for purposes of racial segregation. Yet because Berkeley’s zoning plan was not explicitly racial, the ruling did not stop Berkeley from being zoned for low-density in East Berkeley and high-density in the flats in order to maintain the racial and class order.

“The classic and explicit arguments for zoning were the need to ensure public safety and protect the health and the general welfare of the population,” wrote Hirt. However, “racial and class prejudices played a key part in the emerging zoning story, since it was minorities and the poor who were perceived as the greatest danger to property values in general and to single-family residential areas in particular.”

[Source]

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Step 1: Create zoning regulations to keep minorities away from white neighborhoods.

Step 2: Watch white-owned property values skyrocket, deepening wealth inequality and creating nationwide racial segregation.

Step 3: 100 years later, their progressive grandchildren defend these laws because "regulations good," "greedy developers bad," "deregulation bad," "gentrification bad."

Step 4: Profit!

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The irony is impossible to ignore.

Edit: Step 5: Liberal children inherit house from mommy and daddy and live in the segregated neighborhood they worked so hard to defend!

I chuckle everytime somebody says that inflation only grew by 140 percent and during Milei it rose more , its the fact that its false combined that the state of the country is their fault that makes it so funny to me.

Protectionism has long been considered wrong by many schools of thought, but the Austrian opposition to it is obvious. Why would an Austrian support the state trying to pick winners in the market by taxing external sources? It would just impede natural market forces and remove cheaper parts/products from consumers.

I believe this is outdated, simplistic thinking.

The short answer to this: National Security, and unprecedented levels of global outsourcing.

I have two examples that show the potential necessity of Tariffs in today's world that I think are impossible to refute. And if you manage to accept that there is a moveable "line" in regards to justified tariffs, I think that's a start to more reasonable discussion on them.

Example 1: Country A hates Country B, which is protected by Country C. Country C is run by an ideologue Austrian reddit poster, and therefore will not implement tariffs under any circumstance.

A begins to heavily subsidize its steel, gas, food, and medical supply companies, and focuses on exporting to Country C. Consumers in C are thrilled that they get cheaper fill-ups, medical treatment, and the costs of construction and cars reduce significantly. Over time, the wealthier C's unsubsidized steel, gas and medical companies in C go out of business, or significantly reduce their size.

After a number of years, A invades B. C tries to intervene, but then A puts an embargo on C, causing their economy to go into heavy shock. People can't afford to get treatment, the auto industry lays off people due to a lack of steel, gas prices soar. C is in crisis. It's supply lines just collapsed.

Example 2. Country A is the wealthiest in the world, and produces info-tech, cars, retail goods, insurance, pharmaceuticals, steel, etc. Area B has a few countries in it, but has 10X the labor pool of A, and also are very poor. Country A elects an Austrian Redditor to be dictator, and the Austrian opens the country to free and open trade.

Area B immediately gets investment and starts building industry in steel, manufacturing, and other low-skill labor industries. They export and outcompete A's domestic industries after a period of time spent improving quality. After the infusion of capital and with a new domestic industry providing revenue, the Gov's of A come together and decide they would like to start that process again. They invest in education, and start heavily subsidizing a new industry that needs more know-how, like automobiles. They commit corporate espionage on a state level, and begin to take over auto manufacturing.

Repeat that and tell me how, without state support, Country A can stop this? Their consumers get the benefit of low wage made products, but now also have less and less jobs. Country A no longer produces nearly the amount it consumes. Doesn't this imply a wealth drain, and a less prosperous future?

Why are you commie assholes lurking and posting in this sub? I don't go to r / marxism or r /socialism to proselytize the way you guys are doing here. In those subs they don't event accept antagonistic comments/posts.

You fucking obnoxious cunts just overwhelms all topics with sheer numbers and it is impossible for the people that are interested in the topic to have a fair discussion. Leave this sub alone. Why can't the moderation enforce good faith and rule compliance in this sub?

Edit:

HURR DURRRR FREE SPECH go fuck yourselves you r*tards

its completely ok for me to sell my children into sex work and none of you commies has any right to tell me otherwise

https://mises.org/mises-daily/children-and-rights

how does private property exist without the threat of force from the state, if good ideas dont need coercion?

How would Austrian economics reconcile the Easterlin Paradox with the principle of methodological individualism, particularly when aggregate measures like national wealth fail to reflect individual variations in happiness and preferences?

Similarly for the non-austrian economists that visit this sub... Since there is a favored view of government intervention in the market to alter GDP or wealth/inequality metrics how would you address the Easterlin Paradox if economic growth does not always lead to greater individual happiness?

I'm reading The Happiness Curve by Jonathan Rauch which made me think of these questions. I highly recommend the book.

There are:

a) Only upward forces on prices

b) Only downward forces on prices

c) Both upward and downward forces on prices

Correct Answer: C

Currency debasement, taxes, regulation and other disruptions to supply chains push prices up. Entrepreneurs who aren’t colluding with the state wake up every day trying to find ways to bring prices down. Don’t believe me? Consider as one example how expensive flat screen TVs were upon their first release.

Yet, we equate the net effect of the two forces, which manifest in the movement of prices, with the upward forces, which we label inflation. This is a false equivalence.

The CPI, flawed as it already is. Measures the net effect of the upward and downward forces because it measures prices. It does not measure just the upward forces.

The result is that we always get an understated CPI, even if you want to argue that its methodology is perfect. This is because the magnitude of net price movements is always smaller than that of the upward forces acting upon them.

Ever since I was introduced to the idea that taxation is effectively government extortion and forces everyone to fund policies and projects they may not want, I have been toying with more fairer ways of taxation.

In an elective taxation scheme, you as the taxpayer would choose where and how your tax dollars should go. You'd be given a list of categories, and would need to allocate your money as you see fit. Of course, this would require solid auditing.

For example, I could opt to give none of my money to national defense, so I can put my tax dollars towards things I value like education and healthcare.

These ideas are totally half baked. So I'm curious if there are more formalized ideas or theories of doing taxation like this? I figure this is the right sub to ask this.

‘Hey, bro! I'm writing to you in the hope that you'll find some elegant solution to our problem. You probably already know that for the third year now, once a quarter a gang of mafiosi come to our factory and take about half of all our proceeds and production stocks. In addition, they regularly take a portion of the wages we pay our workers.

Do you think we can pass on some of our losses to our customers? Yes, we are aware that the bulk of our customers are also vulnerable to such raids and don't have extra money. But maybe that's the solution? You're an economist with a university degree. Give us your advice, please!'

A: ‘Try it’
---

Hi!

I realised with some surprise that even in such a seemingly - enlightened - sub, a great many participants believe that the price of goods depends on costs: wages, land, taxes, interest and the like.

Many people here believe that prices can rise for the sole reason that the wages of workers in an enterprise rise, although the Austrian school argues exactly the opposite: wages rise because the demand for the enterprise's output rises. They believe, like the Marxists, that it is not the demand for vegetables that determines the price of land, but that rising land prices force farmers to raise the price of vegetables.

Not surprisingly, some ‘Austrians’ readily allow the broadest exceptions to the law of ‘supply and demand’, claiming that this law is just an old, silly law from a first-year university programme and that it no longer reflects reality. The belief that ‘producers are able to pass on tax costs to consumers’ is also unsurprising. It is said that there is even some kind of study that supposedly proved that producers are able to shift up to 80% of the tax cost to consumers! I think that if there is such a study, it is just the usual mainstream nonsense dressed up in a scientific form.

Ladies and gentlemen, come to your senses!

This is all Marxist nonsense designed to justify tax increases. It is misleading the public to divert attention from the fact that taxes benefit only the government bureaucracy. It's shifting the blame for poverty from the bureaucracy to ‘greedy corporations’.

It is also a logical error any verbal equilibristics with the use of the words ‘price elasticity of demand’, which supposedly allow to transfer tax costs to the buyer. This error simply hides the fact that a monopolist somewhere had the opportunity to set a monopoly price. But even in this case the monopolist manipulates not the price but the volume of supply in order to maximise profit.

'If the circumstances are such that a monopolist is able to secure higher net revenues by selling fewer of his products at a higher price than by selling more of them at a lower price, then a monopoly price arises, higher than the market price would be in the absence of monopoly. It is monopoly prices that act as a significant market phenomenon, while monopoly as such is only important if it can lead to the formation of monopoly prices'
- Ludwig von Mises (not literally), Human action

But no monopolist, with the exception of the state, can raise the price indefinitely, because it will either make them switch to substitutes or, in a vital situation, simply break their heads. The only monopolist who can afford all this is the state. However, it has already played too much with monopoly on money (see ‘bitcoin’, etc.).

Let me remind you of the basic corollaries of the law of ‘supply and demand’ in the context of Trump's imposition of tariffs:

So, the introduction of tariffs leads to higher costs for producers. In this case - Chinese producers. It is impossible to include the growth of tax costs of producers in a competitive market in the price. If it was possible, the producer would have done it earlier. But he did not do it precisely for the reason that he cannot. As soon as he raises the price, he will immediately find himself at a different, more left-wing price/volume point, if we look at the graph of the imaginary demand curve, and the vacated niche will be occupied by a competitor. That is, it is not at all certain that a smaller volume will allow at least to maintain profit. Let us add: the elasticity of demand (at price) does not matter here for exactly the same reasons: if there was an opportunity to raise the price (taking into account the elasticity of demand), the producer would have raised it even before the tax was introduced.

What happens in reality?

Rising costs lead to lower profits for producers because some of the profits are now passed on to the American bureaucracy. Because of this, Chinese capitalists simply withdraw some capital from the industries affected by the tariff and allocate capital to other industries with higher returns. As a consequence, Chinese producers subject to the tariff are forced to reduce production.

In addition, some Chinese producers who were barely making ends meet before the tariffs were imposed (so-called ‘marginal producers’) are simply going bankrupt or stopping production. This further reduces the supply of goods.

As a result, we get a general reduction in supply, which, according to the law of ‘supply demand’ and leads to an increase in price. It is this price increase that is mistaken by those who skipped lectures in the first year of university as ‘shifting tax costs from the producer to the consumer’.

Describing this situation we can also say that: ‘Consumers didn't start paying more. They just started eating less. For the sole reason that DC has started eating even more.’ Something like that....

Will it help American manufacturers? Hardly. It will only do them a disservice. The Russians call such aid ‘American aid,’ i.e., aid that worsens the situation of the one being helped.

The fact is that American companies are being displaced by Chinese companies not because Chinese companies, other things being equal, are able to perform better. The problem is that the ‘other things being equal’ condition is not being met. American companies have a much higher tax burden and are more heavily regulated than Chinese companies. Therefore, the only true condition for their revival would be to reduce the tax and regulatory burden to at least the level of China.

Yes, those U.S. companies whose products are protected by the tariff will sell more than they did before the tariff was imposed. And perhaps even more profitable than before the tariff was imposed. But other American industries will suffer, as American (and Chinese!) capitalists will start to withdraw capital from them in order to inject it into the industries protected by the tariff. We can't tell you exactly which industries will be affected. We can only say for sure that the first to suffer will be those industries that use the Chinese imports that will be subject to the tariff (see current stock quotes).

This movement of capital will lead to a reduction in supply, and thus to higher prices in completely unexpected sectors. Consumers will eat less again.

That's it, I've finished my report.

P.S.
I don't think Trump will raise tariffs. I think all this media noise is just standard haka before the usual negotiations to get export/import bonuses for companies affiliated with the team of newly appointed bureaucrats.

In this article, I explain why the monopolistic prices administered by the most prestigious online publishers (who enjoy some quasi-monopolistic status) are due to a combination of: 1) copyright laws 2) open access (OA) mandates 3) moral hazard (due to subsidies).

1. Copyrights restricts competitors from selling "perfect substitutes" for existing journals by publishing exactly the same articles. Likely the most important factor that explains the very high publication fees and disproportionate profits of large publishers.
2. Enforcing OA publishing restricts the researchers' choice since the other alternative model, is the subscription model, which is much cheaper for researchers (especially those from low income countries). By doing so, OA mandates reduce competition.
3. Economists and other researchers complain about the inelastic demand (e.g., prestige effect of top tier journals, big deal packages that are seen as anti-competitive) but they ignore the evidence that researchers are not sensitive to prices, which is due to research grants being "provided" by taxes, thus distorting the demand curve.

In the article, I also explain why the predatory practices of OA publishers are not inherent to free markets. Public agencies actually encourage the "publish-or-perish" culture, which increases the number of submitted papers, lowering the quality of the papers due to emphasizing quantity, and overwhelming journals with numerous papers, more than volunteered reviewers can handle, which in turn reduces quality check.

Both schools of thought can offer the other insights.