Bitch, meet slap

Le Cygne Gris demonstrates that John Case doesn’t know the first thing about Austrian economics, which somehow didn’t prevent him from attempting to critique the theoretical school:

The role of the state in Austrian and now Libertarian theory is more confused than its transparently false propositions on the business cycle. The first Austrian, von Hayek, was actually a social democrat and strongly supported standard social democratic policy on the key role of the state in providing services that were market failures. He differed only on whether the post office should be public or private.

Actually, the Austrian school was founded by Menger, Bahm-Bawerk, and Wieser, so 0 for 1 there.

I am not sure what is more remarkable. The fact that more people are attempting to critique Austrian economics than ever before, or the fact that they think they can do so without so much as cracking open a single work of Austrian economic theory. Of course, based on how little they know about the Neo-Keynesian theories to which they nominally subscribe, I suppose they are accustomed to opining in near-complete ignorance.

The sure tell is a critic mentioning Hayek or Schumpeter. If he doesn’t even mention Mises or Menger, there is virtually no chance he knows any more about Austrian theory than Paul Krugman does.