Austrians in crisis

Pete Boettke meditating  on the Austrian response to the New Deal and the same thing all over again.

Re-reading these arguments one cannot help but think of the immediate application to the world today, and how the policies pursued so far have turned a market correction into an economy wide crisis, and continue to threaten our long term economic health of our civilization.  Mises, as quoted by Ebeling, summed up the situation for the economists as follows: “Occasionally, I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy.  Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology.  But I have never allowed myself to be deceived.  I have to come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it.  I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”

What can we do to follow in Mises’s footsteps but resist this conclusion?

Well you could try to distract yourself with some Austrian chocolate cookies.