Re: 2017/07/31: http://cafehayek.com/2017/07/bonus-quotation-day-41.html
Don Boudreaux seems to be a Mises Monk. He, and the other acolytes, have gone apoplectic over comments by a Nancy MacLean that evidently wrote a book that took some shots at one of their saints … a James Buchanan.
This quote is typical of the type presentations you get from these people. Saint James Buchanan is said to have written:
The abiding genius of Karl Marx lies precisely here, in his acute understanding of the possible reaction of the ignorant intellectual to the workings of the capitalist or market order.
Now there is nothing mystical about a capitalist. A capitalist is easily defined as “two years”. That’s what it takes for a person with elite connections, and thus privileged under banking laws granting them 10x leverage, to double the “capital” they put into a bank … assuming they make a conservative 4% spread (which x10 is 40%/year on “their” money) on the so-called “loans” they make.
After that, they can take “their” money off the table, and leave the other half to ride forever. In a 30 year career, their con of compound interest turns their money into over 24,000 times what they “put in” for just that “two years”. It’s infinite when you consider they had zero capital at risk over the other 28 years.
Pretty slick deal isn’t it. What’s not to like about capitalism. And of course, anyone who takes a shot at capitalism must be a “communist”. That’s the only other alternative, right? That’s what they would have you believe, yet they repeatedly qualify their “capitalism” with the adjective “crony” when they don’t think it’s pure … i.e. when it is mostly communism and corruption and what they like to call “corporatism” (they never seem to run out of “isms”) as it is in the USA … and everywhere else capitalism is claimed to be found.
Here at Money Delusions, we talk about “traderism”. We know and we prove that “money” is created only by traders ( … oh, and of course counterfeiters … these being easily and quickly mitigated in a proper process). Money is “not” created by banks. It is “not” created by the governments banks institute to protect their con.
So, putting so-called capitalism aside for now (i.e. ignoring everything we read about it herein), let’s keep our eye on their other subject … that being “market order” … something we here know at MD is not “order-able” … it is free to do what it pleases … and if not, it is “rigged” and is not a market at all. Of course all markets are rigged because money is rigged.
Just keep that in mind as you read these annotated excerpts of some of Don Boudreaux’s nonsense:
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From Bourreaux’s Essay/
… is from page 167 of Vol. 19 (Ideas, Persons, and Events [2001]) of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan; specifically, it’s from Jim’s 1986 paper “Liberty, Market and the State”:
The abiding genius of Karl Marx lies precisely here, in his acute understanding of the possible reaction of the ignorant intellectual to the workings of the capitalist or market order.
DBx: Fancying themselves to be unusually insightful, thoughtful, and knowledgeable, a great many intellectuals are, in fact, mindless pack animals.
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MD: When challenged to disprove the definition and proof of what money is as given by this MD site (see side panel), Boudreaux responded like a “mindless pack animal”. He said he doesn’t feel compelled to address my “unorthadox” treatment of the subject. I reminded him that Columbus and Copernicus also presented unorthodox views on subjects we take today as being obvious.
And here’s some more of the Boudreaux pot calling the kettle black:
They mistake their slogans – which sound fine to the ears of intelligent second-graders – for insight and knowledge. Never bothering to learn economics, and also never bothering to think realistically about politics or to study history with care, they criticize without careful reflection, condemn without sound judgment, and propose without information, insight, or wisdom.
MD: Now, I have not found a single economist that knows what money is. How in the world can you teach a subject like economics without knowing what money is? So anyone who has “never bothered to learn economics” really has a leg up on those who have. They don’t have to unlearn any of that nonsense.
It all begins with knowing what money is. At this site we will repeatedly bring up their confusion and shine light on it. Remember … Boudreaux says the obvious truths explained here are “unorthodox” … what a properly religious term he uses to explain his own behavior.