:lol: Although I'm big fans of the Austrians in general, I tend more towards Friedman's economic views than anyone else I've come across. I don't know whether that is an accurate representation of the Chicago school or not. In saying that, I also have a huge amount of respect for Rothbard, and even now enjoy reading his writings. I just disagree with his FRB view and basically agree with what Friedman says about it. That is, that on a basic level it isn't fraud, but that how it is currently implemented is essentially fraud and absolutely insane to boot. I also like the fact that anarchism comes both from having the correct moral perspective and also is superior from a utilitarian, consequential approach.
Yeah, Friedman rocks. For better or for worse, I've been corrupted by the moral philosophy angle pushed by the likes of Stefan and Rothbard. The fact that they are likely to end up in (roughly) the same place implies that designing the key frameworks around the moral philosophy should aid in getting to the stable framework faster. A very good example I saw at the end of last year was a (long) lecture about how you could design a completely internally consistent legal framework (in all three of the law-making, enforcement and judicial sentencing sides of things) around strict interpretations of the NAP. Although detailed and naturally complex, it was also very elegant and hung together very well as well as incorporating many aspects of the current common law based systems (meaning that it could largely be enacted fairly quickly). In contrast, the "Friedman" approach would basically incrementally grope in the dark from current frameworks towards a similar framework but its organic evolutionary nature would mean that I doubt it would ever get to the same level of elegance and internal consistency without having a philosophical guidance of some sort.
I think that it would develop as a standard really as standards develop in many other industries. So I think the approach you described above would probably be the way that it develops and then most security agencies would adopt that as the standard while maybe having slight variations in some areas if necessary. Simply because this would be far more efficient in the long run while still not being one monolithic unchanging or rarely changing framework. And that if there was an aspect that wasn't working for people they wouldn't necessarily have to use it. But who knows really? We won't know until (if?) we get there.
I found David Friedman's Price Theory text which he talks about in the video. I've been to his home page before, but with so much material I missed it. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC.html
I've always wondered when people (particularly the Austrians it seems) refer to the current (bad) economic thinking as Keynesianism is that entirely fair to Keynes? I'm no expert on Keynes by a long shot, but he's got at least a few interesting quotes, one of which (I think you know the one I'm talking about) is one of my favourites and dead on the money imo. I'm just not sure if it's fair or not, though it could be for all I know, I'm reluctant to use it myself without knowing for sure. I honestly doubt if most people who today use the term actually know Keynes' views one way or the other.
When I saw the title I was hoping for a calm, reasoned debate where they would talk about the similarities and differences between the two. I guess it's just hoping for too much in debates but I don't think either party was innocent, although it was reasonably civilized I thought.. I posted it because I did get something out of it. I know very little of the Chicago school beyond watching a few Milton Friedman clips, whereas the Austrian school I have read countless articles, some of their books, watched many videos etc and could rattle a few Austrian economists names easily off the top of my head. Chicago school has a much lower profile on the net it seems. I was hoping to find out a bit more about it, because I think it's healthy to have differing viewpoints. You are much more likely to get to the truth the more angles you look at things from. Whether David accurately represents them I don't know because he certainly has differing opinions with Milton on the role of govt. But, yeah, it was a little disappointing. Worth watching I thought, but a bit snarky as contentious debates quite often seem to be. I'm not taking sides and wasn't even thinking about it in terms of "who won".
+1 When I started reading Tom's post I thought "cool", but then was disappointed. I don't know why I bothered to post it really. More seriously, the video was great because I want to find out more of why and how David approaches things and there are a few elements of that actual debate/contrast happening but then, as Tom said, David goes off to talk about other random things besides the topic of the debate. Similar thing happened in a debate between Walter Block and Stephen Kirchner (I think??) at the end of last year where they were supposed to discuss the merits of the ABC macro theory and although it started out well, Stephen simply didn't grasp what Walter was talking about so the debate went off topic.
Keynes was clearly a bright spark. One of my work colleagues who's actually read the old texts says that Keynes was largely misquoted/taken out of context by his followers but like you I have no idea of the extent. Things like Why your Grandfathers economics was better than yours seem to show that Keynes misinterpreted enough about Say's Law and advocated the same policies and principles of what we call "Keynesianism" that I think a lot of the criticisms are still fairly accurate.
