[dajepson]

As the OP noted, it is indeed intuitive to think that an increase in atmospheric CO2 might cause warming temperatures, through the well-known greenhouse effect. However, as also noted above, the evidence is much stronger that temperature changes in fact drive changes in CO2 concentration. And given this, it is IMPOSSIBLE that CO2 is also driving temperature. If this were the case, we would have long ago seen a runaway feedback loop leading to the destruction of all life on earth.

I highly recommend watching the YouTube video of Murry Salby’s presentation in Hamburg last year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ROw_cDKwc0

It takes him barely over an hour to comprehensively blow the entire man-made climate change hypothesis out of the water. If you don’t like math, you can skip the first half-hour without missing too much, though be aware that this section contains some important material on interpreting the proxy record.

[dajepson]

In terms ideas for other courses, here are my top two:

1) Politically-charged Scientific Issues. Obviously, climate science would be the big one here (and hey, Murry Salby might be looking for something to do, since he’s apparently been hounded out of his most recent position), but we are also bombarded by a great deal of nonsense about nutrition and health as well. I’m sure many people would benefit from having a one-stop resource separating scientific truth from politically-approved fiction on these issues.

2) Rhetoric.

[dajepson]

What is your name?

Daniel Jepson

How do you describe yourself ideologically?

Libertarian. I’m proud to say that, like Dr. Woods, I became a libertarian despite spending my undergraduate years at the People’s Republic of Harvard. However, I had the considerable advantage of growing up in England, where politics is much less of a national obsession. When I was young, the word “politics” primarily connoted nothing more than a bunch of old guys in wigs droning on about boring topics, and occasionally saying “hear hear!” Having grown up in such a neutral environment, it was not difficult for me to see through all the blather about affirmative action that I encountered upon arriving in Cambridge, to say nothing of the ridiculous “living wage” campaign that reached its crescendo during my junior year.

I’m seriously impressed by anyone who becomes a libertarian despite having grown up in the United States, where the general nature of political discourse – let alone the formal indoctrination from public schooling – is so conducive to developing irrational attitudes on the subject.

How did you first hear about Tom Woods?

To answer this, I should first resume the story of my college years. Having heard that libertarianism had something to do with “Austrian economics”, whatever that was, I obtained a copy of Human Action. I certainly liked Mises’s approach, and encountering this book was enough to completely kill my already waning interest in the Intermediate Macroeconomics class that I was taking that semester. But to my eternal embarrassment, I didn’t entirely “get it” on this first reading – I didn’t fathom just how completely Mises was invalidating the entire mainstream framework. So as I went on to other pursuits during the next few years, I didn’t spend much time thinking about economics of any variety. And even when the financial crisis happened, it didn’t occur to me that there was any connection with what I had read back then.

All of that changed in early 2009, when during a visit to Barnes and Noble, I came across a little book called Meltdown. Suddenly, it all clicked into place – I was like a cartoon character with the lightbulb going on above my head. Since then, I have read everything I can find about Austrian Economics, and done what little I can to try to help those around me understand what a ridiculous scam the mainstream of the subject is.

Facebook and Twitter profiles?

Nothing relevant. However, I did recently purchase the domain name firepaulkrugman.com, and if my current career hiatus stretches much beyond this summer, I may start posting at this site. The point would be to offer up a daily piece making fun of the idiocy of mainstream economists. I also write for misesboston.com, though I only have one article up at present.

Other Fun facts about you?

I grew up in the borough of Runnymede, near where the Magna Carta is thought to have been signed.

Courses YOU’RE (ahem) looking forward TO (ahem)?

All of them. I’ve sampled lectures from most of them so far, and they are, without exception, thoroughly excellent.

[dajepson]

Anyone interested in an Austrian perspective on finance and investing would be well advised to start by reading The Dao of Capital, by Mark Spitznagel – it’s an absolutely tremendous book. Crisis Investing, by Doug Casey, is also good, though the connection to Austrian themes is less direct.

[dajepson]

It depends on how you define “doing a good job.” If you accept the simplistic premise of modern economic discussion that an economy can be evaluated by “GDP good, inflation bad”, then yes, perhaps we should indeed be singing the praises of Greenspan et al.

But of course, economic reality does not unfold along only those two dimensions – there are many other factors we need to consider as well. For example, in The Signal and The Noise, Nate Silver notes that much of the GDP growth associated with the Great Moderation was “fueled by large increases in government and consumer debt, along with various asset-price bubbles.” Of course, he draws completely the wrong conclusion from that observation, but at least he acknowledged it.

[dajepson]

Robert Nozick also made a reasonably credible attempt in his essay On Austrian Methodology, published in his book Socratic Puzzles. Walter Block wrote a very effective response:

http://www.academia.edu/1355560/On_Robert_Nozicks_On_Austrian_Methodology

[dajepson]

Personally, I am a big fan of Kirzner’s essay on the Pure Time-Preference Theory of interest, as reprinted in Professor Herbener’s book on that subject:

http://library.mises.org/books/Jeffrey%20M%20Herbener/The%20Pure%20Time-Preference%20Theory%20of%20Interest.pdf

[dajepson]

Much as it pains me to have to disagree with cartoon bears (or whatever they are) who make farting noises whenever Keynes’s name is uttered, I do think they have rather missed the point.

The thesis of the Keynesian multiplier, roughly speaking, is that if there are currently “idle” resources, an increase in expenditure will bring them into action, thus leading to a further increase in total income, to an extent determined by the marginal propensity to consume. This is a silly way to think about economics, for a number of reasons, but it is not internally inconsistent.

There is nothing illegal about the order of operations used from a purely mathematical standpoint – it depends on the economic assumptions involved. It seems to me that the error made by the farting bears is to stipulate at the outset that the increase in total income is limited to the amount of the original stimulus. If this were true, then yes, the MPC would have to change accordingly, and the Keynesian approach would indeed involve a mathematical sleight-of-hand. But this assumption is what Keynesians explicitly deny.

Of course, I don’t presume to speak with any authority here, so I look forward to being corrected by Professor Manish if I have missed anything.

[dajepson]

PatSzar, another particular tactic you can use when confronted by your “defiant bloggers” is to ask whether they also deny the validity of the Ricardian Law of Comparative Advantage. After all, this is a pure thought experiment, devoid of any empirical verification – so it should surely be treated with similar suspicion.

If they attempt to bypass this by pretending that they are indeed skeptical of the Law of Comparative Advantage, you can remind them that none other than Paul Samuelson – certainly no friend of the Austrian approach – once identified this as an example of a true and non-trivial proposition that had been discovered by economic science.

Of course, none of this is intended to deny the philosophical contribution of Mises’s writings, which Professor Casey elucidated in his response. The point I am making is that much of the mainstream fuss against a priori reasoning in economics is no more than empty posturing.

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