The Man Who Called Everyone Else a Cargo Cult — And Built One Himself
How quickly the desire to be “the only real scientist” turns into the very dogmatism you claim to oppose.
A few days ago, someone left a long comment opposing a post that praised Misesian praxeology. You can read the full exchange here: View the original X thread
The commenter declared that Austrian economics is “failed/fake science,” that Mises “never understood profit,” and that the only real economics is his own “Profit Law,” an accounting identity that supposedly proves capitalism can only survive through permanent government deficit-spending.
What followed was a textbook example of how someone can become so convinced they are right that they become the very thing they spend their time attacking.
The Critic’s Claim
The critic’s position is simple and absolute:
The economy is an “objective non-human entity.”
Human motives, knowledge, expectations, judgment, and entrepreneurship are irrelevant “illusions” and belong to psychology or sociology, not economics.
The only scientific economics is the study of macro accounting balances (his “Profit Law”).
All other schools, Austrian, neoclassical, Keynesian, Marxian, are “proto-scientific garbage,” “storytelling,” or belong in the “Tomb of the Unknown Moron.”
Real science requires a “Paradigm Shift” that throws out purposeful human action and replaces it with his rearranged national accounts.
He repeated this position over and over, posted links to his own blog, and declared victory without ever engaging the actual counter-arguments.
The Counter-Arguments He Never Addressed
I pointed out, multiple times:
His “Profit Law” is an ex post accounting tautology (true by definition after the fact), not a causal law. It describes balances; it does not explain where profits come from or prove that government deficits are required for capitalism to survive.
The economy is not an independent “non-human entity.” It is, by definition, the emergent outcome of purposeful human action under scarcity. Remove conscious, choosing individuals and there is literally nothing left to measure.
Innovation and consumer choice do not merely “distribute” profits, they determine whether macroeconomic profit exists at all.
Treating human action as irrelevant is not bold new science; it is a radical redefinition of economics that erases the actual subject matter of the discipline.
He never rebutted any of these points. Not once. He simply restated his framework, called the objections “dumb,” and labeled the critics morons.
The Deep Irony
Here is what makes the exchange so striking.
The critic repeatedly accused Austrian economics of being:
“Cargo cult science”
“Storytelling”
“Dogmatic”
“Failed/fake science”
“Folk psychology”
Yet in the very same thread he:
Demanded everyone adopt his private set of macro tautologies as the only legitimate science.
Redefined the entire discipline of economics so that only his method qualifies.
Dismissed 250 years of economic thought as incompetent without engaging the substance.
Insisted that human action, the actual phenomenon that creates economies, is an “illusion.”
Posted links to his own blog as authoritative proof.
In other words, he became the very thing he claimed to despise: a dogmatic, self-referential system that cannot tolerate scrutiny of its own foundational claims.
He accused others of ignoring reality while simultaneously declaring that the reality of purposeful human beings is irrelevant to economics.
The Lesson
This exchange is a near-perfect illustration of a common intellectual trap: The more certain someone becomes that they alone have discovered the One True Method, the more they begin to exhibit the very flaws they criticize in others.
When you start by erasing the actual subject matter of a discipline (human action), redefine science so that only your private framework qualifies, and then spend your time calling everyone else a moron, you have not advanced science. You have built a closed system that protects itself from falsification.
Real intellectual progress requires the opposite: humility, engagement with counter-arguments, and the willingness to test your own ideas against the strongest objections, not dismissal by fiat.
The critic is not a post-modern socialist or a revolutionary genius. He is simply a man so convinced he is right that he has become the very dogmatic reductionist he claims to oppose.
And that, ironically, may be the most Austrian lesson of all: even (or especially) the pursuit of truth is vulnerable to the same human errors the rest of us are.
