ABSTRACT
The authors had studied Austrian economics at least since our college days at Fordham University in the mid-late 1960s. We were by no means new to the field. But we sensed two main and related problems. The first problem was that there were many misconceptions about the nature and content of Austrian economics among the many in the economics profession we hoped to influence. Many thought that Austrian subjectivism meant some kind of irrefutable solipsism. Many thought that Austrians didn’t “believe” in data. The second problem is that some of these things were true. Austrians were insular and very absorbed with their own tradition as well as highly critical of standard neoclassical economics, even in its Chicago variant. Popper tells us to follow the objective implications of a line of thought even if the espousers of that line of thought did not, or do not, recognize these implications.
