Critique of Austrian Economics: A Critique [Part 6]

This is part 6 of my critique of the Critique of Austrian Economics by AustrianCritique.

The Market Process

AC here starts with the most epic strawman yet.

AC: "According to Austrians, only individuals "on the scene" know what's going on in the market, and any attempt to manage it centrally is bound to fail.

Perhaps the best way to highlight the error of market process theory is by analogy. Suppose you are the chief of a tribe of wandering nomads, and you wander into a region that is unfamiliar to everyone. Soon the tribe becomes thirsty, and everyone agrees to start searching for water.

In the first version of this example, suppose you are an "anarchist" chief, and allow the tribe to conduct its own search without organization, coordination or planning. A lot of effort will be wasted and duplicated in the chaos that follows."

Really: Basically AC is trying to argue that Austrians oppose cooperation. Well they don't, so I guess that's that... FYI "laissez-faire" does not equal "chaos." He later gives examples of a "mixed economy" chief and a "central-planning" chief, but I don't need to go into that.

AC: "All the subjectivism, individualism and market process that exists in the private sector should exist in the public sector as well. Both companies and governments provide goods and services in exchange for money. Customers vote with their dollars; voters vote with their ballots. Both customers and voters are self-interested, seeking the best goods and services for the least money."

Really: AC chooses to completely ignore all that Austrians have written on this and makes the claim that the public sector is really no different from the private one. But they are different. Mises wrote about this already in 1920 in his Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth[1]. And there's also the works of Thomas DiLorenzo[2].

AC: "Companies and politicians that do not perform well go bankrupt or are voted out of office. And if society should reduce government that has grown too centralized and inefficient, then it should do no less for monopolies, which share the same shortcomings."

Really: Governments are monopolies, but that doesn't mean monopolies are like the government. That's a complete non sequitur. They do share some of the same problems, but I doubt AC would even know what they are.

[1] The Debate on the Socialist Calculation Debate
[2] The Theory of Political Entrepreneurship