1 NEW AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS MANIFESTO

that we are all ceaselessly being bombarded by the media and college educators with propaganda to the effect “that capitalism causes depressions and exploits the poor. That government is our salvation, and the bureaucrat a hero. That America owes its wealth to the Federal Reserve. That without massive regulation we’d be sunk…That cutting government even a smidgen and permitting free markets would be a disaster… John Maynard Keynes died more than 60 years ago, but his ideas still rule us from the grave: give government more power, and print more money…” It is a pleasure to acknowledge that Mises University, the Mises Institute’s week-long summer program for students has done an outstanding service to society in flouting the conventional wisdom about government, and explaining the logic behind free enterprise. Why then does the New Austrian School of Economics (NASOE) take issue with the Mises Institute? As this Manifesto explains it does because post-Mises Austrian economics has ceased to be open to new ideas. It is trying to ossify Austrian economics at the level where Mises left it. It is inimical to the appearance of new knowledge as it flows directly from the founding principles of our school, unless stamped with its own nihil obstat. Discussion and criticism are discouraged. Many a topic is outright tabooed. There is a tendency to turn science into cult. As a result, post-Mises Austrian economics never came up with a really potent theory that could offer an alternative to the mainstream. Nor did it draw up a comprehensive blueprint for the new economic order that would follow the collapse of the current experiment with global irredeemable currency. It claims a monopoly of ideas how the gold standard of the future ought to look like. It must be ‘one hundred percent ’ or nothing. The last thing it would consider doing is to sponsor a conference that would entertain ideas other than its own. The reason for these failings is that post-Mises Austrian economics has deviated from, if not completely abandoned the philosophy and methodology of the founder of th