Skeptic Project

Despite all the hyperinflation propaganda and their mythology about Ludwig von Mises's unrecognized greatness, Austrian economists have to sell their hero's "bible" at a substantial discount:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/i1xm7ez9a7.jpg

That's a good one Muertos. Why on earth would they accept worthless fiat money?

@advancedatheist

I believe they call it "Resource Based Economics with Fresco characteristics."

I suspect Austrian economics depends on something like astroturfing (by the Koch brothers, for example?) to stay in existence. For example, after Mises migrated to the U.S. in the 1940's, some businessmen funneled their own money through New York University to create the illusion that Mises had an office and a position there as a "visiting professor," when most refugees from Nazi Germany, even ones with college degrees, thankfully accepted any crappy job in this country they could find without that sort of patronage. The more I think about it, the stranger Mises's story sounds. It also casts doubt on NYU's integrity at the time.

Contrast Mises's story with Ayn Rand's. Rand migrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union some years earlier, and while she received help from relatives already established in the U.S. (whom she later ignored without thanking or compensating them after she made a fortune), and benefited from some improbable-sounding lucky breaks (like getting a job through a chance meeting with director Cecile B. DeMille when she still struggled with English), on the whole she had to succeed as a novelist through her own efforts. Nobody handed her a regular paycheck so that she could take time off to write her breakthrough novel The Fountainhead.