[This article responds to Walter E. Williams’ Minority View — “Problem of Ignorance” at GMU, as further cited at Liberty Maven, “Who Understands The Free Market? Walter Does.”]

Walter evidently intends to borrow credibility by citing Hayek (as if Hayek’s assertion is credible). He says,

“Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, called it a fatal conceit for anyone to think that a single mind or a single committee can somehow do things better than the spontaneous, unstructured, complex and creative forces of the market.”

What a crock. You say that Williams understands free markets; but when in history has a free market itself solved problems such as inflation/deflation, systemic manipulation of the cost or value of money or property, or inherent multiplication of debt by interest?

Never.

In fact what you are probably calling a free market here itself comprises a resistance to solving these things — all for the contrary sake of predation. Is a man’s promise to another made better by costs imposed by a third which eventually make payment impossible?

Evidently, you say so.

So, under the facade of purported economics which *are* bankrupting us and which are wholly bereft of a single formal proof or theorem (as is exemplified by the article’s assertions), we are made subject to a monetary system which can only multiply debt upon that market and its producers, to whatever degree we must re-borrow principal and interest paid out of the general circulation — thus engendering a perpetual and eventually terminal escalation of debt.

On the one hand, Austrians renounce the whole plausibility of math, either for analysis, solution, or validation. Yet they cite simple mathematic problems such as traffic statistics, and regularly pronounce them insoluble, even while every signal you visit is its mentor’s best solution. That’s a mighty poor excuse for “understanding” “free” markets which never even granted their assent to the central banking systems imposed upon the world.

On the other hand, without qualification, evidently Austrians claim “spontaneous, unstructured, complex and creative forces” better determine solutions or course (whatever, mud) than pragmatic, structured, simplified/solvent efforts which in all true disciplines characterize quality work.

Walter emulates the latter, but he does so to raise the former.

So it just doesn’t hold water, Walter. I don’t even see what you intend to instruct us in. Is it economic rectitude? It can’t be, if you won’t even venture to justify the nature of money. Is it sustainability? It can’t be, unless you can show us how a handful of unassented banks can consume so much of our production for the money they print out of thin air, that we don’t have to re-borrow any interest we have paid out of the general circulation, the perpetuation of which will irreversibly multiply debt in proportion to a circulation.

Yes, I’m aware Austrians *think* they’ve already invalidated “the debt virus theory.” That’s because the author pretended to be its author, of something he didn’t even fully understand, much less could cite correctly.

Austrians pretend there is no such thing as mathematically perfected economy; that interest is justified, even as new money is required to sustain further commerce, and no new money published at virtually no cost whatever can possibly represent earned wealth, at stake at the necessary cost of interest.

Walter says, “The big problem in any system, whether it’s an economic, biological or ecological system, is information, communication and control.”

Those are not atypical issues Walter, which validate purported Austrian economics in its obstruction of solution.

Nor is the Austrian course even in possession of something unique. Given any problem, any true engineer organizes the given information and deduces a solution which engenders the desired control.

We cannot even truly say, much less can we validate the preposterous Austrian notions by asserting, “For congressmen, or a committee they select, to take over control of the nation’s traffic signals requires a massive amount of information that they cannot possibly possess such as traffic flows at intersections, accident experiences and changes in peak and low peak traffic patterns.”

No, Walter. Today especially, we *can* “possess” and even process massive volumes of information.

In fact we do so routinely — except of course if “Austrian economists” get in the way of solving inflation and deflation, systemic manipulation of the cost or value of our credit *to each other*, or inherent multiplication of debt by interest — something the Austrian “somehow” savors.

I agree with you Walter that we the people can determine how to run our lives better than Washington can. I disagree that purported Austrian economics is any better than Washington, for you have the privatized currency subject to interest each of you would impose upon us — and both obstruct rectifying.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 5:27 pm and is filed under CENTRAL BANKS, WORLD BANKS, FEDERAL RESERVE, Mathematically Perfected Economy, RON PAUL, events and politics, usury. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.