But how do you know you're not in a local maximum? Not everybody can be Miles Davis and know exactly when something new is working, and be commercially successful at it. Hell, Miles Davis is probably the only person who ever did that in a low-probability field.

Ok, I have a question. I hear a lot about "tipping point". Isn't it true that in the long run, we saw dramatically higher CO2 concentrations than on your 300 year time scale? Didn't we see a long-term downward trend in CO2? Doesn't this suggest there's not an "irreversible tipping point"? Or are you, too, cherry picking a time scale shorter than the one I'm now using? That's one of the things I'm having a really hard time accepting, because while I can absolutely see a modest increase in temperature due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions, I cannot for the life of me understand the "tipping point" argument, which we head a lot of when we accept reaonable conservative estimates of temperate shifts due to man made CO2 emissions.

No, he gave you information which you refused to review, and then called you on it. That's not hypocrisy.

I'll have to read up on them. I admit to being unaware of this group.

Probably because he's been modded to oblivion inappropriately for saying unpopular things. I'll probably have to do something similar at some point.

There's certainly debate on such topics within the community, even among people who are largely Rothbardian. Walter Block is a pretty awesome example of a guy who's expunged any last bit of inconsistency from his arguments. It's a lot of fun, and very enlightening to watch him go back and forth with other libertarians and also non-libertarians. But the in-camp debates certainly help expose the kinds of inconsistencies you're talking about. The child starvation one is kind of interesting, because of course it opens up the question of abortion. And lots of people who are pro-choice don't want to ask the question "when does life begin". This is where Block's "evictionism" is a genuinely interesting concept.

Are you saying you don't believe in logic? If you don't, I'm not sure where to go. If you have an actual criticism of the example I gave, go for it.

The one thing that has surprised the Austrians and EVERY other economist is that the increase in the monetary base during QE has not increased the money supply appreciably. There are some Austrians suggesting that the inflation is taking place in the asset prices of the stock market. But the real question now is what's going to happen when the huge amount of excess reserves start to be lent out, which will increase the money supply. An increase in the monetary base is not inflationary, even for a Rothbardian. It's the money supply increase they worry aobut. Agree/disagree?

There are a shit ton of things in psychology that are only learned through correlative statistics. The best, clearest case is that there is a high correlation between people who experienced sex abuse and who engage in self-injurious behavior (cutting). No one does causative experiments in that area, though. And that same kind of thing is studied across all kinds of behaviors where you wouldn't even *think* of doing a causative experiment.

Examples? I'm thinking of neo-Keynesian/Chicago school Bernanke being well convinced the banking crisis was "largely contained" in early 2008. The Austrians were absolutely more accurate on that one.

Not so much. The classic example is the minimum wage argument.

A person in a voluntary employment contract at $10/hour that roughly nets his employer a profit of say $10/hour, should he raise his demanded wage to $50/hour (or any arbitrary wage where the employer would no longer be profitable), would certainly become unemployed, either by being substituted with another worker, or by putting his employer out of business. Thus one clearly sees raising a wage causes unemployment. The large size of the raise helps make it clear that this would happen.

In practice, minimum wage and employment effects are nearly impossible to determine, because there can be all kinds of slop in the economic measurements (employers may not lay off immediately and may defer hiring, or may raise prices, or some other factor such as strong economic growth may offset the wage increase). So, we must reject empirical data that says marginal changes of a few percent don't obey the same laws as large changes.

There must then be further study to determine what factors may play into the apparent disagreement between the collected data and the presented argument. But the argument, being clearly true, can't be wrong in this case, so the data must be incomplete.

The climate science parallel is the disagreement between the apparent lack of warming in the past 11 or 17 years and the models. Given the disagreement, investigators had to determine why the model didn't fit the data, indicating a problem in one or the other (both, maybe).

In economics, the Austrian School folks agree with you so strongly that they reject the notion that empirical data can trump a priori reasoning. Recognizing that there is no "controlled experiment", any data that refutes a well-reasoned logical argument is considered incomplete. It's a remarkable rejection of empiricism and a recognition that economic activity is based on human behavior (praxeology) and as such can't be precisely quantified.

Who's saying it's a conspiracy with no evidence? They are actively trying to get bills passed to funnel withheld funds into government-controlled accounts. It's not a leap to think means-testing will be applied to "fairly" redistribute money when SS payments can't be made. It's also perfectly logical to see the sequestering of a percentage of my money into a 3% return as theft considering the substantial inflation we will hit.

Further, I'm talking about portfolio managers here, not flunkies.

Totally agree.

Confused here. Are you saying laws don't already exist regarding credible threats and harassment that apply in this case? Are you saying we need new laws to specifically apply in this case? I don't follow, and I might be in disagreement if you're saying we need new laws to deal with credible physical threats and harassment.

You see wrong. I have contacts in the financial services industry who believe that a significant partial appropriation through asset conversion to US bonds is unavoidable. When a knowledgeable, successful, financially prudent person who works in financial services forgoes the tax benefits of keeping retirement assets in a qualified account, you should certainly consider there's something to it.