Posts by Gregory Nelson6

Douglas Reed3 said:It isn't as if there's any choice...

But you clearly do. Just look at how Harvard Business School is packed with people who either couldn't learn or simply didn't care to.

Douglas Reed3 said:The better you are at economics, the less likely you are to have anything to do with academia after graduation. Truly talented economists stir up trouble on campus, and nobody wants them around. You simply learn that it is much better to stay far away from universities and the mainstream media...

Are you one of those people who learned that lesson the hard way? 🙂

Elizabeth Harris11 said:Of course you aren't—if you want proof, just go ask the owners of those twenty little community banks across America how well they're doing. Banking is an incredibly expensive business to run, and the returns? Honestly, they're pretty modest.
But hey, if you're looking for a "good" business right now, just look at pushing debt onto people—you know, the totally legal kind.

I wasn't talking about myself. I was talking about you. I thought maybe if things were different, you could actually afford to send your kid to a private preschool and finally move past this whole Milan Bandić era.

Unfortunately, it looks like you might be stuck dealing with that reality for the rest of your life.

Elizabeth Harris11 said:These are my favorite kinds of people 😂 those water pumps meant to save a few hundred homes 😂
Half of those orders could be handled by just two specialized companies—one of which is based out of San Diego. Man, you could honestly just head over to Aleta, grab 10 or 20 pumps right now, and go play hero in Memphis at a tenfold markup.😂

Actually, here's an even better idea: Home Depot is packed with those high-powered heat guns—I was there yesterday, and they literally had dozens of them on display. Once the water recedes, everyone's going to be desperate to dry out their walls.😂

Dude, just star otići u jutro kupiti i pravac Metković po desetorostruku zaradu.😁

Hey Koeg, Andrew Booth29, why wouldn't you just accuse the Austrians of committing a nirvana fallacy? It's the exact same logic.

Colleague Scorpio, how did you manage to find my Achilles' heel? That Memphis example was a complete miss. My apologies.

What I actually meant to say is that the real business—the one with incredible margins that would fund a private preschool for your kids—is banking. Now, please tell me I'm wrong about that too?!

Elizabeth Harris11 said:Were you actually trying to ask what 100 divided by 0 is? ☕ That would actually make sense given the context of what you wrote here. ☕

@Andrew Booth29
you totally missed the point of the rest of the post😁

The real issue is that all of you fall into the trap of believing in "perfect competition" as this magical self-correcting market mechanism—but honestly, that thing just doesn't exist in the real world.

It's our mistake to believe in perfect competition, right?

And if we don't believe in perfect competition, then you'll feel the need to advise us on what exactly we *do* believe, since you clearly know better than we do.

So, here’s a list of my actual beliefs. If you don't think this is what I believe, please, by all means, explain to me what it is I believe so we can finally understand each other.

I believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

I believe that "excessive profit" isn't really a thing; there are only opportunities for solid earnings that eventually evaporate, only to pop up somewhere else.

An opportunity for good profit (which Keynesians conveniently label as "excessive profit") happens because people want to buy what is scarce, which drives prices up "beyond measure."

Selling sump pumps in Memphis after the Mississippi floods at ten times the usual price isn't shameful—it's helping people in need. It isn't heartless exploitation; it's simply being sharp enough to notice what people actually require.

That's a skill most Americans have lost. Now, all they have left is to rely on the political machine of someone like a local mayor who will aggregate them, only to charge them 1,000 percent more for a daycare center starting January 1st.

When pump prices skyrocket in Memphis, maybe you, colleague Scorpio (though I doubt it), will finally realize how one could earn a hundred salaries in a single day in Memphis. You'd do it just so you could afford private daycare for your kid, or maybe just so you could give a certain corrupt politician a piece of your mind.

Of course, you can't pull a move like that in Memphis because Keynes is waiting in the wings with his economic models and the resulting legislation. They'll demand to know why you aren't importing infinite quantities of pumps, where the certifications are, where the American manuals are, where the trained staff is, and where the eco-certificates are.

Don't try to tell me about seizing an opportunity for "excessive profit." Because if it were that easy to earn a year's worth of private daycare tuition in a single afternoon, well, that would certainly upset the status quo and the people running the show.

That's why you are a proponent of aggregation and modeling. After all, who else could make a year's worth of childcare money in a single day without the "benevolent" protection of the establishment? They rely on people like you to keep their own interests safe.

Elizabeth Harris11 said:Aggregation is everywhere. It’s not some fancy concept cooked up by economists, mathematicians, or the devil himself—it’s just reality. I know you lot have all read a bit of Mises, and now it sounds great to you, so you're out here peddling this philosophy of "don't aggregate." But honestly? That’s a double-edged sword. The devil really is in the details...
Let me explain how the world aggregates me, whether I like it or not. It forces me into this purely logical equation.

Everyone is blowing trumpets about how we Americans are drowning in debt. You know what I mean—"we Americans"—that's aggregation right there. They say the national debt is trillions, or that every American baby is born $40,000 in the hole, and so on. See what I did there? Aggregation again.

Here’s my situation: I don't owe anyone a dime. In fact, my checking account isn't even in the red. My total liabilities $0.00 are zero dollars; if anything, people actually owe *me* money. So, I'm asking you—based on Mises, Hayk, and the rest of the crew—why should I care if you or the rest of the Americans are broke when I'm not? Free markets, free economy, everyone is responsible for their own mess, free labor, price discovery, all that good stuff.

But look, it doesn't work like that. Since I don't owe anything, my standard of living should technically be better than everyone else's, right? Wrong. Here's the kicker: aggregation. Because someone like Ed Koch blew billions of dollars on vanity projects, local parks, or other nonsense, they’re going to hike up my local childcare costs by like 1000%! See how I'm being aggregated by his debt? Even though I have zero debt and pay every single tax on time, my quality of life is going to take a hit because of his spending. It’ll happen with public transit, too.

Now, Mises would say, "Fine, then shut down the public daycare centers. Who cares? Let them pay for Ed Koch's reckless spending. The market will fix itself, and private daycares will pop up at affordable prices." Sure, maybe they will, but not by tomorrow morning. They have to be built, and private investors have to step up to the plate first. By then, my kid will already be in school, and I'll be stuck dealing with the fallout. (See how I used aggregation there, but in a time context?)

Now, you might argue, "Well, that was a public service, and it failed, so that's why it happened." But listen—aggregation happens in the private sector, too. For instance, if everyone takes out loans and then a crisis hits, bad debt starts piling up. When bad debt rises, interest rates climb so banks can cover their losses. I'm not taking out a loan, so you'd think I'm safe, right? Wrong. Everyone else is taking loans—the farmer for his seeds, the dairy guy for supplies, the manufacturer for materials, or my local wholesaler for inventory. Higher credit costs for them means higher margins, which means more expensive goods for me. (See how I'm being aggregated again?)

You see how it works. I wouldn't want to get involved in this debate, but the problem is that whether I want it or not, aggregation bleeds directly into my daily life.

Elizabeth Harris11, you hit the nail on the head!

Keynesian ideas aren't some new trend; they’ve been creeping into our society for an entire century, moving slowly and silently like arsenic poisoning. We cough, we lose our hair, our eyes get inflamed, and we have no clue where all these symptoms are coming from.

That’s why you’re facing what you’re facing today, Elizabeth Harris11: a dark room covered in billions of pieces of chewed gum stuck to the walls and stretched out everywhere. We’ve gotten tangled in it, stuck to it, and now we don't know how to get out.

The bottom line is realizing that Keynes doesn't offer solutions; he just offers more and more arsenic, more and more gum. Whether we want to admit it or not, there are simply no solutions to be found with Keynes.

With "Mission" (Mises), however, there are solutions, but only in the sense that you decide: I am going to pull myself out of this mess. Or more accurately, I am taking full responsibility for untangling myself from the Matrix. Of course, it doesn't happen instantly. You can't get stuck in a billion strands of gum and expect to break free in a split second! That's impossible.

You need grit. You have to know what you want. You have to be patient and hardworking. You can't give up; you have to peel off those sticky, disgusting pieces of gum they've plastered onto you, one by one.

Elizabeth Harris11, if you aren't in debt and don't have credit hanging over your head, you are in a much better position than millions upon millions of people across America!

To me, the Austrian School is inspiring because it doesn't tell me exactly what to do. Instead, it teaches me eternal economic principles and then tells me: "Use what we've taught you to navigate your own life. That part is up to you; you know your circumstances better than anyone else."

There is no collective solution. Forget all those models and math equations; stop wasting your time on a lost cause.

Elizabeth Harris11 said:That’s exactly why aggregation is necessary—it allows us to level out those individual preferences at a broader scale.

Look, I hope you realize that aggregation is a double-edged sword. It's incredibly dangerous.

Sure, no economist who uses "aggregation" claims they are talking about specific individuals. They claim they are dealing with an "imaginary average."

But the devil is in the details. These agile "aggregator" economists are often so blinded by their own models that they miss a crucial point: the average is drifting further and further away from reality. When their data stops matching their theories, they almost always try to bend reality to fit the theory, rather than doing the opposite.

And that’s when, my friend, those theoretical aggregations stop being just math on a page. You start feeling the consequences personally.

How does it happen? Quite simply, they tell you that you aren't smart enough to make the right choices for yourself, so someone else will step in to decide for you "for your own good." This might be fine if they were only deciding things that didn't matter to you, but the obsession these modelers have with micro-managing everything eventually hits both you and me where it hurts.

That's why I say aggregation is a trap that isn't worth the trouble.

wiredtinker12 said:But honestly, what even is the foundation of morality? For all we know, what we call "morals" might just be one long, repeated game that happened to hit an equilibrium at certain points—though there's absolutely no guarantee it won't be totally disrupted down the road by things like technological breakthroughs or shifts in society, right? In that sense, Game Theory actually goes way beyond standard economics; it acts as this unique bridge for behavioral sciences, linking them back to biology through evolutionary game theory, heading toward what Herbert Gintis calls "sociological game theory." In that framework, people aren't just these perfectly rational, selfish robots—because let's face it, that's just not how reality works. Humans are capable of altruism and all sorts of other behaviors that you simply can't explain away using nothing but pure rationality and egoism. At the start of his preface, Gintis quotes John Maynard Smith: "The mathematics and natural sciences are sterile, yet natural science without mathematics is muddled." Economics sits right in that sweet spot between the natural and social sciences, so it really ought to be the first among the social sciences to actually get a better handle on aligning theory with experimentation—because right now, the field feels like it hasn't moved much compared to how the natural sciences stood 300 years ago. Some theories align pretty well with "experimentation" (meaning the data, whatever form it takes), while others... well, others are just straight-up alchemy.

The foundation of morality lies within the individual mind. Alternative economic theory suggests that humans are fundamentally more unpredictable than any physical particle. To be more precise, we are dealing with two entirely different classes of phenomena that are so distinct that the laws governing one cannot be applied to explain the other, and vice versa.

Of course, mainstream economic theory disagrees with this premise. In fact, they fight against it, trying desperately to prove it wrong.

The beauty of Mises's economic theory is that he doesn't try to dictate which specific laws govern human action compared to material particles. He simply insists that those laws are fundamentally different and rejects any attempt to use mathematical models to explain human behavior.

I’d go a step further: I think the sole mission of Mises and the Austrian School of Economics is to deny, dismantle, and essentially destroy any possibility of using math to explain human choice. Their entire effort is focused on showing that you can only truly begin to understand human behavior once you completely abandon trying to view it through the lens of the natural sciences.

Mises's core argument against trying to define economic laws through math is pretty simple: human action belongs to a fundamentally different category of phenomena than physical objects reacting to force.

The people obsessed with using mathematical models in economics just can't accept this as truth.

Mainstream economic theory focuses entirely on answering one question: "What should we do to make the community's economy better?" In this view, "abundance" is strictly limited to material things like houses, cars, or cash.

Alternative economic theory asks a different question: "What allows an individual to gain freedom and live their life exactly how they want to achieve better economic outcomes?" To this school of thought, abundance includes anything a person might find worth spending their limited resources on—whether that’s material goods (houses, cars, money) or non-material things (friendship, peace of mind, love, esotericism, metaphysics, or even a moment of nirvana).

It’s easy to see why mainstream theory tries to reduce everything to math: they believe nothing exists beyond matter, so they don't bother looking any deeper.

Alternative economic theory doesn't claim there's some mystical force governing economic relations; it just refuses to take a hardline stance on whether such a thing exists. Its role is simply to identify the patterns that emerge within the economic interactions of individuals and groups, without passing judgment on their value.

That doesn't mean human action shouldn't be subject to moral judgment; it just means that economic science isn't tasked with doing it.

Elizabeth Harris11 said:I don't know what you're seeing, man, but usually when I run into transit inspectors, it’s just someone checking tickets on the subway—and the only other "locals" I see coming into Chicago are folks out on tractors, looking for those government subsidies being paid for right out of my pocket.

You've got a point there. That totally slipped my mind. My apologies.

I don't know about you guys, but to me, it’s crystal clear that there are two fundamentally different types of economic theory out there. Control and peasant-led movements.It really comes down to two fundamentally different types of people. The controllers and the peasants..

Controllers. They want to use their theories to control the working class because they honestly believe people are complete idiots. In their minds, if they didn't step in with constant oversight, everyone would just descend into pure chaos—turning into a disorganized mess that ruins everything. They think that without their guidance, we’d hit a point where productivity collapses entirely, leading to widespread famine because nobody would be left actually doing the work. So, they frame themselves as the saviors. They act like they're the only thing standing between us and total self-destruction, preventing society from spiraling into nothingness. Thank God we have these controllers and their little models, right? Because if it weren't for them, the world probably wouldn't even exist by now.

Peasants Some people have their own theory, and it’s pretty straightforward: just leave me alone. Don't mess with me, don't hover, and stay out of my way. Let me live my life. Get your theories and your complex models away from me. Honestly, just get lost and let me be. I want to work on what I want, when I feel like it—even when I think I’m doing something great, and especially when I know I'm absolutely screwing up. That’s my theory. It’s pure, simple, and honest. Just good old-fashioned common sense.

Regulators, honestly, they get so caught up in their own theories that they completely miss the mark. They're just throwing around empty buzzwords and can't stand a bit of plain, old-fashioned common sense. It’s frustrating. They seem totally blind to reality. Don't they see that if we don't manage this properly, everything is going to fall apart in a single season? If they keep playing these games, who's actually going to be left to run the show and keep things moving?

It’s honestly baffling how some people react to management. Instead of just adapting, they struggle like cattle being led to slaughter. It makes no sense to me. Only someone truly out of touch would fight against a solution that’s actually trying to save them from making a complete mess of things.

And so, in an attempt to keep them under control, the regulator keeps dreaming up more and more sophisticated models—massive frameworks, bloated simulations, tiny little formulas—all just to find sneakier, quieter ways to manage the masses. It’s all part of the effort to prevent this whole thing—thank God—from turning into a complete disaster out in the fields.

Look, at the end of the day, an average Joe is still an average Joe. He might be unrefined or lacking in sophistication, but he isn't completely brainless. Eventually, there comes a defining moment where he realizes exactly who is pulling the strings behind the scenes—that shadowy controller working from the sidelines. And when that realization finally hits... man, it’s going to be intense. It’s shaping up to be a pretty long afternoon. (Just like Robbie Williams would say in his music video, "She's Madonna.")

There’s a massive, fundamental divide between the controllers and the farmers. The controllers are convinced that things will stay exactly as they are, while the farmers don't even realize yet that everything is about to change.

Which one are you?

northerntiger said:I don't really get why those guys are such a problem for you. They haven't even held any positions in this country where they could actually pull off the stuff you're blaming them for. And isn't someone like Škegro also an issue? I mean, he's been playing the game one way or another since the early 90s.

Let’s set aside the comparisons to the aggression against America-Canada-Herzegovina and the Sano memorandum (the "even those old grandpas over there didn't hold any real power" argument), and just assume for a second that Zvonimir Baletić and Đuro Medić really aren't "important."

But here's the thing: if nobody stands up to challenge their ideas, their students will eventually end up occupying those very "positions" you claim they don't have access to.

What are we looking at here? Just another instance of American silence? That typical "better not to get involved, better not to offend anyone" mentality?

Where are the academically trained citizens in America who publicly and critically question Keynesian theoretical assumptions, if they aren't outright rejecting them? If they truly don't exist, then we are in serious trouble.

My real question is this: is there anyone left in America who can actually stand up to people like Zvonimir Baletić and Đuro Medić? Or are we just stuck being crushed by the outdated theories of old-school socialist economists? In other words, are we doomed to hit a brick wall in slow motion—the very same wall these guys crawled out of like some kind of economic vampires?

Hi everyone,

I just came across this article

and I think it offers some really meaty material for us to chew on.

"Keynesian ideas are the cure for getting out of a crisis.

During the Open House at the University of Chicago this past Friday, there was a book launch titled 'John M. Keynes and American Economic Thought.'

Editors Zvonimir Baletić and Đuro Medić, along with several other respected economists, spoke about the enduring value of Keynesian economic theory and how relevant it remains to the current situation here in the US. This release couldn't have come at a better time. Neoliberal policies triggered the global financial meltdown and the subsequent economic struggles we see in America today. Socially conscious economists at the event believe that through Keynesian state interventionism—focusing on boosting employment and stimulating effective demand—we can find a way out of this mess. (...)"

So, my question is this:

Are we stuck with the likes of Baletić, Medić, and their whole circle of similar thinkers? Or is there actually a group within American academic circles that isn't intimidated by headlines like "Keynesian ideas are the cure for getting out of a crisis"? If such a group exists, where can we find them?