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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 21 Aug \ parent \ on: Donald Trump Does Not Know the "Correct" Interest Rate econ
One addition, and I know you know it, but it's the reason none of this central planning stuff can ever even hypothetically work: the market has access to data that is fundamentally unknowable outside of the individual.
Our subjective preferences are not even comparable interpersonally, much less quantifiable by some group of Fed nerds, and yet, through the near magic of market forces, the result is an efficient allocation of resources.
Yep, exactly.
Here's another wrinkle. Often we may not even be aware of what we want ourselves... until we are presented with a choice. Our human action often conflicts with what we SAY we want, believe, or value.
So even if you could ask people... you would get it wrong. We have many examples of this in the business and marketing world.
The more I got into Austrian economics the more it just seemed logical and even humble to me. I never really found traditional economics that I learned in college logical. I mean the math was but the concepts seemed odd. At the time I just assumed I wasn't smart enough or interested enough to get it.
Reading Rothbard and listening to Ron Paul, Tom Woods, and Bob Murphy really opened my mind to how things work in free markets. It all kinda fell into place for me in my mind at least.
I'm sure there are many discoveries to be made in economics and I suspect there are mistakes in these theories but the bones seem very solid to me.
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The cheap-talk point is really important. Most of the difficulty in designing economic experiments revolves around eliciting true preferences. Well designed experiments often have entirely different results to surveys that just ask what people believe about themselves.
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