Money and Banking Dogmatism

—–Original Message—–
From: G
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2018 9:25 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: how to answer when an Austrian skeptic says you’re “dogmatic”

Dear Professor Block,

I’m a business engineer student from Belgium and also a huge fan of your work! I’m obviously a radical Austro-libertarian and I’m always trying to spread our word. Last night, I was discussing QE with a famous economist who is at the head of a big private bank. He was a big fan of fiat money and of fractional reserve banking while I told him that I was for a 100% gold standard, that we should never have bailed-out banks and that monetary policy shouldn’t exist. Moreover, I told him about praxeology and why economics isn’t an empirical science…

Unfortunately, I always get the answer from guys like him. Namely, that I’m too confident about our theory, that things aren’t that easy and clear, and that sometimes we should print money and sometimes we shouldn’t.

My Question to you is: How to answer to people who are saying that we believe too much in the soundness of praxeology, that we’re dogmatic and that you shouldn’t always apply the same principles?

Thank you very much for your time and I hope you will be able to answer my question.

kind regards,

G

Dear G:

Ask him how “confident” he is about the truth of the Pythagorean theorem, the claim that 2+2=4, the view that triangles have 180 degrees, the economic law that trade is necessarily beneficial, at least in the ex ante sense. If he says he is totally confident about these claims, suggest he might be “dogmatic.”

As for specific case of money and banking, suggest that he peruse the following:

Rothbard, Murray N. The Mystery of Banking, New York: Richardson and Snyder, Dutton, 1983.

Rothbard, M. 1963. America’s Great Depression. Kansas City: Sheed Andrews.
http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

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3:55 pm on November 16, 2018