Good to see the Austrian School weirdos at the Ludwig von Mises Institute have given up real-world economics and now just play video games. Hopefully in the virtual world their incredible track record of dead-wrong predictions will cause less harm.
The Austrian School economics methodology does not allow for making predictions. See e.g. the note at the beginning of http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Austrian_predictions It provides certain tools and models that one can use for explaining events and reasoning about policy options. These reasoning can be used as a basis of predictions (along with the other, non-economics-theoretic assumptions), but the predictions themselves will fall outside of the economics science in the Austrian School sense.
Basically, if your analysis manages to reason away uncertainty of the future, you're not following Austrian methodology. And no, the Austrian methodology won't even let you quantify that future uncertainty in probabilistic terms: that would only be possible if it used causal explanations of human action; instead, it relies on teleological, goal-oriented explanations.
Now, questioning and disputing the value, coherence and real-world applicability of the Austrian methodology is perfectly OK. (Personally, I find the Austrian economists' disregard for formal notations very unfortunate, as I've mentioned in another discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1647747) Your comment, however, seems to be simply misguided, based on a flawed understanding of the issue, and the sarcastic tone is unlikely to facilitate a constructive discussion.
(Edited: spelling.)
I understand from your other post that the justification of Austrian "models"/"explanations" comes from their simplicity. Which I guess is some application of Occam's razor? But that makes no sense - the simplicity of a model on it's own is no indication of correctness. You always need some notion of the likelihood of the observed evidence under that given model. Otherwise, you can just say "all people make all decisions completely randomly" and that's the simplest model of all.
A completely non-predictive model has no real-world meaning, because it can't be used to effect reality. I suspect that Austrian models do effectively have some small predictive power - there is an implicit causal analysis that comes from the small element of qualitative evaluation of uncertainty, no doubt used instinctively by practitioners to decide whether an argument sounds plausible.
Anyway, it all sounds completely ridiculous. How is their method of choosing explanations any better than a witchdoctor deciding that thunder is a sign of the gods being angry?
Of course, humans do that all the time. What's missing from the original Austrian concept in Mises is allowing for imprecision -- making accurate predictions with error bars for variability below the threshold of detection.
What von Mises didn't like about this and what Rothbard hated about it is that such predictions are statistical and probablistic in nature. They aren't deontological, they can't be nutted out a priori from first principles.
They have a real bee in their bonnet about it. It's a shadow (ha!) of Platonist/Aristotelian bunfights.
Out here in that's-nice-but-I-have-shit-to-do land, grownups accept that models are wrong. But even if the map is not the territory, most of the time it's still good to have a map.
A dislike of stochastic models (however understandable in historical context) should not be taken seriously in the modern world. Complex chaotic systems are modelled through intensive probabilistic simulation all the time.
Austrians make predictions all the time, however. Every new round of monetary expansion is going to end the world.
There are many parallels to algorithms analysis. If we want to know how fast an algorithm runs, our approach isn't to try to run it on every processor in existence and compare the results. Instead we break down the algorithm logically to deduce its theoretical running time.
Austrian economics--in its good parts anyway--is an attempt to build a framework for economics that is more like the asymptotic analysis of algorithms. But this very compelling goal is frequently derailed by politics and polemics.
The asymptotic analysis of algorithms would not be useful if it didn't make accurate predictions about real world phenomenon. I've written peer reviewed computer science papers where I have devised an algorithm, predicted its asymptotic behaviour and then validated through empirical testing.
What you're describing sounds completely different. If the major idea is that human economies cannot be scientifically analysed, then surely all analysis is a waste of time? An analysis that isn't based on the scientific method isn't more likely to be correct.
However, if we (1) add certain assumptions about, say, physical laws, the structure of the reality, the way we can observe it, (2) propose a reasonable way to map some aspects of the world to our mathematical models, (3) calibrate the result according to the future experiments/observations -- we might get a quite useful natural science like physics or astronomy. The pure math will serve only as a low-level tool. That's how the Austrian economists see the place of the pure economics theory: just an analytical tool to be used along with the other disciplines/sciences for solving real-world problems.
For example: Austrian economists believe that it can be deduced from the first principles/axioms that enforcing minimal wage above existing market wages results in involuntary unemployment (most of the non-Austrian economists also believe this is the case, although their methodological basis is different). Assume there was a policy act that included, among other things, raising the minimal wage. A year passed, and it so happened that there have been changes in the economy indicators, including lower unemployment rate. The act was not the only thing that happened in that time; lots of factors may have contributed to the outcome. An Austrian researcher will definitely not count raise-the-minimal-wage factor as contributing in favor of the lower unemployment rate; the factor will be counted against the lower-unemployment-rate outcome, and will require further explanations, what other factors have outweighed its effect.
Using math (well, formal systems/notations) does not guarantee your whole research about the real world is correct, but it establishes a baseline for consistency and rigorous reasoning. It's the same with basic economics.
(My formal education was in mathematics / CS. I study economics, epistemology etc. only as a hobby.)
As you imply, this is why teleology is not a science, though large-scale statistical studies in fields like politics and sociology have made plenty of scientific headway by ignoring the core Austrian belief system and conducting empirical studies about human actions and preferences anyway.
If you think I'm exaggerating, check out this unintentionally hilarious excerpt from the Ludwig von Mises Institute wiki. See if you can count how many times they flip-flop on whether they make predictions.
Austrian predictions
This page attempts to list various predictions made by
Austrian economists about important economic and other
developments.
Important note: Austrian economists, as Austrian
economists, or praxeologists, do not predict. They can
predict not as formal economists, or praxeologists, but,
rather, in their role as thymologists, or economic
historians. In praxeology, A causes B, other things
remaining the same. But, in the real world, other things
cannot be relied upon to always remain constant. Therefore,
predictions of the "A will necessarily lead to B" type are
strictly prohibited. Instead, praxeologists, but not
thymologists, must limit themselves to statements of the
if-A then-B variety.
With this in mind, it is interesting that Austrian
economists have been quite successful at predicting major
events.[1]F.A. Hayek... he has also led the way in attacking the mathematical models and the planning pretensions of the would-be "scientists," and in integrating economics into a wider libertarian social philosophy.
Perhaps one reason is the evident and galloping breakdown of orthodox Keynesian "macroeconomics," which leads even the most hidebound economists to at least consider alternative theories and solutions.
Everybody is drowning in debt, but hey let's just print more and we'll all get wealthy.
Wrong. The economy was fueled by unsustainable private debt before the economic crisis. Part of the recession was shifting this private debt somewhere else, so that it has largely become sustainable public debt.
Your claim that "everybody is drowning in debt" is clearly a mischaracterization of what is happening in the real world.
Regarding your off-the-cuff comment about "printing more": I find it incredible that Austrian types still cling to their delusions so much that they outright deny the possibility that an increase of demand can lead (and does lead, in a slow economy) to an increase of production.
They sell Rothbardianism, mostly. It's Rothbard acolytes and a series of increasingly more-anarcho-capitalist-than-thou writers.
von Mises, who was actually more sensible and more measured than Rothbard, is just the name above the door.
And von Hayek, who was more sensible and more measured than von Mises, is nowhere to be seen. At all. Except possibly as the subject of jokes.
These days I find the Hayekian account of economics to be thoughtful and compelling [1].
I find the Rothbard account to be a breeding ground of ivory towers and scenes from Life of Brian.
[1] http://chester.id.au/2012/12/07/review-the-essence-of-hayek-...