... but I must object if you consider economics not to be a science,...
I will say right up front that when I saw your comment I was a little taken back. I did not say that and if you were to say that there was an inference to such a sentiment, I would say that it would be weak one.
Gibbon? Do you mean Edward Gibbon author of Decline and Fall? I would be dumb struck if you knew what my thoughts on his work are.
Again, I am not sure why you would think that I would “dismiss …, Keynes, Krugman…”
Sowell? I do not think that I have ever been persuaded by even one of his arguments. Sowell is a good example of how extreme ideologues function,
psychologists call it projection. In a nut shell they attribute their own screw ups to others. His appeal is easy to see: He is easy to read and, he comes up with up one-liners that either blame others or demand more freedom from people who are somehow holding him, or other true lovers of freedom, back.
Kevin Drum recently came up with a definition of hardcore libertarianism that while unflattering is really very insightful of these mind sets:
Hardcore libertarianism is a fantasy. It's a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they've been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they'd naturally rise to positions of power and influence.
Most of them are wrong, of course. In a truly libertarian culture, nearly all of them would be squashed like ants—mostly by the same people who are squashing them now. But the fantasy lives on regardless.
Few women share this fantasy. I don't know why, and I don't really want to play amateur sociologist and guess. Perhaps it's something as simple as the plain observation that in the more libertarian past, women were subjugated to men almost completely. Why would that seem like an appealing fantasy?
There are a number of people here, right now, that you could apply the above to and I would not be surprised if a fair number of that group, (perhaps all?),
would be actually flattered to have at least a part of the first section of the definition applied to themselves!
(BTW: Has there ever really been a serious discussion of why there are so few women in the game? Do not say that there aren’t many women gamers:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/22/adult-women-gamers-outnumber-teenage-boys/ . Are a fair number of them playing Candy Crush? Maybe. My wife, who is probably smarter than any random combination of several of us put together, plays Candy Crush. But one point is that the few women that do log on get it faster, thicker and longer than any another newbie that happens to meander along. Maybe I am making a connection that is either too weak or not there. Just a thought for later).
Let me again state in part what I said not too long ago:
The reason why people don’t need to pay any attention to the likes of Hazlitt, Sowell, Von Mises, et al, is that because after spending about 35+ years of implementing their ideas on deregulation, government defunding, free markets, principles of self-interest, etc. etc., they brought the world to the very brink of an utter total irreversible financial ruin.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,374473.msg4990892.html#msg4990892So you can look at what happened in 2008 and make an informed decision about what might work and what probably will not work in the 21st century.
You can think about the standards and regulations that worked, and those that perhaps did not. Or you can also blame the whole thing on a Fannie and Freddie Mac fantasy.
There are lots of people making a lot of money selling that fantasy.
Do I believe in competition? YES.
Do I believe that governments need to set standards that allow the best ideas to rise to the top? YES.
Do I believe that people should be awarded for success? YES.
And very importantly, do I believe that it matters how people achieved their success? YES
Mauldin, Tepper, Rickards, Schiff, and Pento?
I was a little surprised that you didn’t list Carl Icahn.
I do not follow these types of people. Icahn is more than enough for me. I know that I live in a culture where the intensity of leadership worship, in the private sector at least, is often awarded based on the number of zeros after one’s name.
Engorging yourself at the expense of others does not count. Gluttony used to be a sin.
Wall Street used to be a place where, however imperfect, investors got rewarded for investing in the country’s future. It is now nothing more than a rigged game of financial musical chairs. Or market timing as “those in the know” would say. Trying to figure out if a P/E is realistic has been replaced by trying to figure out how rip “management” fees out of 401(k) plans. (Possibly to the tune of $17B per year now!).
My current recent favorite Wall Street scam:
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/02/298370558/traders-defend-high-speed-systems-against-charges-of-riggingBTW: my brother-law is a follower of the Austria School. He is not a hardcore libertarian though. He is one of the kindest human beings I know, they are good people.
As I was googling around to check your investment guys out (I do not want to label someone with something they are not), by random chance I came across this gem on Peter Schiff:
http://www.etvita.com/2013/04/peter-schiff-is-wrong-about-everything.htmlI am sure that there is rebuttal somewhere out there…..