Preliminary Disclaimer: The Country Pundit's degree is in Political Science, and he only had one economics class in college. Although I received a high mark, it was not that I was so good but rather that everyone else in the class had to be reminded to breath at times, when they came to class. Therefore, these great "theories" of economics are largely alien to me.

That being said, I recently took a test to indicate whether or not I was an Austrian in terms of personal economic belief. After half an hour or more of working on the thing, I still made at least one mistake in marking it. Some of the questions are so abstract that I didn't understand them very well, and my personal answers occasionally ran to the "For pete's sake, who cares about the details? The point is is that it happened..." school of thought best espoused by Smith in The Matrix: Reloaded right before he (and his clones) attack Mr. Anderson.

Anyways, the score I got was (more or less) 55. That places you as a Chicago-school devotee, and this was refreshing. Why's that? Well, it shows I've learned something at law school, and I'm happy to identify with the "law and economics" concept that Judge Richard Posner (and a lot of other really intelligent people) fall within. Admittedly, I defaulted to liking any answer where there was a positive suggestion of the merging of law and the economy (must've been that inherent Randian [yuck!] self-interest at work) and so maybe I didn't take the thing in an "honest" frame.

Why am I writing all this? Because it's important to know from what angle some of the next few posts may be about. Broadly, they're about people who would probably fit within the little-l libertarian political sphere. They consider themselves "Austrian" economists, under the lineal descent of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek.

I won't go farther, primarily because I'd have to expend more neurons now than I'm willing to. Future posts on this will be forthcoming, because it seems that the "Rothbardians" (devotees of one Murray N. Rothbard, an economist of this "Austrian" school) don't like fighting Islamists. Of course they'll howl about this not representing their positions and so forth, but when I try and slice through their turgid and abstract prose, I don't always see clear-and-cut support for American victory over the Islamists.

TCP's favorite Rothbardian stance: National defense should be handled by private companies. No word on whether or not these chaps have read the Constitution.

Anyways, this whole trend may be over, but I'm not sure. We shall see; perhaps long-term investigation of things is something I might be good at.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 06:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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