We discuss

• Is the government effective at doing anything?
• What's the use of thinking counterfactually?
• Is it just market failures all the way down?
• Three kinds of anarcho-capitalists
• The economic calculation problem
• Is an economic theory necessarily political?
• What to make of the claim that austrian economics is like physics
• But wait, isn't it also metaphysics?

References

• Scott's FAQ
• Napolean science funding:
  • Canned food
  • More readings
• Bruce's Theory of Anything Pod and on twitter at @bnielson01
• Vaden's blog posts on Libertarianism:
  • First: Is Austrian Economics the Best Explanation of Economics?
  • Second: Can we predict human behaviour? A discussion with Brett Hall

Quotes

The Argument: Government can’t do anything right. Its forays into every field are tinged in failure. Whether it’s trying to create contradictory “state owned businesses”, funding pet projects that end up over budget and useless, or creating burdensome and ridiculous “consumer protection” rules, its heavy-handed actions are always detrimental and usually embarrassing.
...
The Counterargument: Government sometimes, though by no means always, does things right, and some of its institutions and programs are justifiably considered models of efficiency and human ingenuity. There are various reasons why people are less likely to notice these.
- Scott's FAQ

7.1.1: Okay, fine. But that’s a special case where, given an infinite budget, they were able to accomplish something that private industry had no incentive to try. And to their credit, they did pull it off, but do you have any examples of government succeeding at anything more practical?

Eradicating smallpox and polio globally, and cholera and malaria from their endemic areas in the US. Inventing the computer, mouse, digital camera, and email. Building the information superhighway and the regular superhighway. Delivering clean, practically-free water and cheap on-the-grid electricity across an entire continent. Forcing integration and leading the struggle for civil rights. Setting up the Global Positioning System. Ensuring accurate disaster forecasts for hurricanes, volcanoes, and tidal waves. Zero life-savings-destroying bank runs in eighty years. Inventing nuclear power and the game theory necessary to avoid destroying the world with it.

Socials

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
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Special Guest: Bruce Nielson.

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Oh, and we also discuss, in admittedly frustrated tones, the failed blog exchange between Brett Hall and Vaden on prediction and Austrianism. If you want the full listening experience, we suggest reading both posts before hearing our kvetching:

• Vaden's post
• Brett's "response"

Hold on to your hats for this one listeners, because she starts off rather spicy.

We discuss

• Why Kant believed in the truth of Newtonian mechanics
• Newton and his assertion that he arrived at his theory via induction
• Why this isn't true and is logically impossible
• Was Copernicus influenced by Platonic ideals?
• How Kepler came up with the idea of elliptical orbits
• Why finite observations are always compatible with infinitely many theories
• Kant's paradox and his solution
• Popper's updated solution to Kant's paradox
• The irrefutability of philosophical theories
• How can we say that irrefutable theories are false?
• Annnnnd perhaps a few cheap shots here and there about Austrian Economics as well. # References
• Some background history on Copernicus and why Ben thinks Popper is wrong

Quotes

Listening to this statement you may well wonder how I can possibly hold a theory to be false and irrefutable at one and the same time—I who claim to be a rationalist. For how can a rationalist say of a theory that it is false and irrefutable? Is he not bound, as a rationalist, to refute a theory before he asserts that it is false? And conversely, is he not bound to admit that if a theory is irrefutable, it is true?

Now if we look upon a theory as a proposed solution to a set of problems, then the theory immediately lends itself to critical discussion—even if it is non-empirical and irrefutable. For we can now ask questions such as, Does it solve the problem? Does it solve it better than other theories? Has it perhaps merely shifted the problem? Is the solution simple? Is it fruitful? Does it perhaps contradict other philosophical theories needed for solving other problems?

Because, as you [Kant] said, we are not passive receptors of sense data, but active organisms. Because we react to our environment not always merely instinctively, but sometimes con- sciously and freely. Because we can invent myths, stories, theories; because we have a thirst for explanation, an insatiable curiosity, a wish to know. Because we not only invent stories and theories, but try them out and see whether they work and how they work. Because by a great effort, by trying hard and making many mistakes, we may sometimes, if we are lucky, succeed in hitting upon a story, an explanation, which ‘saves the phenomena’; perhaps by making up a myth about ‘invisibles’, such as atoms or gravitational forces, which explain the visible. Because knowledge is an adventure of ideas. These ideas, it is true, are produced by us, and not by the world around us; they are not merely the traces of repeated sensations or stimuli or what not; here you were right. But we are more active and free than even you believed; for similar observations or similar environmental situations do not, as your theory implied, produce similar explanations in different men. Nor is the fact that we create our theories, and that we attempt to impose them upon the world, an explanation of their success, as you believed. For the overwhelming majority of our theories, of our freely invented ideas, are unsuccessful; they do not stand up to searching tests, and are discarded as falsified by experience. Only a very few of them succeed, for a time, in the competitive struggle for survival.
\
C&R Chapter 2

Socials

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
• Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link
• Help us fund more hour-long blog posts and get exclusive bonus content by becoming a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover anger management here.
• Click dem like buttons on youtube

Would you rather be wrong or boring? Tell us at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

Support Increments