анонимный вопрос

To make the answer to this question more authoritative, I turned to the most well-known popularizer of the Austrian School in Russia, Pavel Usanov (be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel if you haven’t already). By the way, I will soon release a review of his new book, “Retrospective of Economic Thought.”

So, in Pavel’s opinion, the main difficulties for the Austrian School are as follows:

1. It is unclear how to reconcile Mises’s praxeology and Hayek’s market process

What is the difficulty? Praxeology is the logic of human action, derived deductively from general basic principles. The market process is the emergence of spontaneous orders from a multitude of individual acts of choice made by people. The study of these spontaneous orders is conducted using the method of induction. For physicists, perhaps the clearest analogy would be to liken praxeology to molecular-kinetic theory and the market process to thermodynamics. In other words, we are dealing with the problem of at which grain of sand a pile begins, or in the language of dialectics, the transition from quantity to quality.

In principle, game theory lies somewhere at the intersection of the two, but it still does not completely fill the gap.

2. Cryptocurrencies and the regression theorem

When I was asked a question about Bitcoin, I fell into this trap myself, referring to an article stating that Bitcoin satisfies the regression theorem, and later received criticism that it was unconvincing. I very much hope that Pavel will be able to bring some clarity to this issue in his book “The Future of Money,” the release of which he has already announced. Apparently, it should be expected in 2019.

3. Theory of the state: origin and evolution into democracy

Representatives of the Austrian School indeed express themselves in various ways regarding the origin of the state.

Hoppe derives the state from natural aristocracy, that is, the institution of turning to more competent persons when facing difficulties. Indeed, this is a common human practice reproduced in any community, from primitive tribes and mafia clans to modern leaders of non-systemic opposition and professional gurus.

Zolotorev argues that one should not mistake a blessing for a curse; while the “curse” in the form of the institution of informal leadership is widespread everywhere, the “blessing” in the form of the state is a historically recent parasitic formation. The only thing that remains unclear is whether human history could have done without this dubious acquisition.

There are also disagreements regarding the evolution toward democracy. Hoppe writes that this is due to the ruling class’s desire to increase irresponsibility, while Chetvernin points out that the emergence of stable libertarian-legal institutions required a rare combination of climatic factors, where instead of a rigid division into castes of laborers and warriors, a mixing of roles emerged in Hellas in the form of free community members and warrior-farmers; this gave rise to libertarian ethics, law, and polis democracy instead of the usual doctrine of plunder and coercion.

4. Enforcement without a state

Here, it is less about an internal problem of the Austrian School and more about how this problem was gradually solved as libertarian theory developed. Mises did not dispute the necessity of the state at all. Rothbard developed a general theory of anarcho-capitalism but left several statist rudiments, such as arbitrarily chosen patent expiration dates or the presence of forced imprisonment in ancap. Modern theorists, such as Zolotorev or myself, demonstrate the possibility of doing without these rudiments by proposing alternatives.
Nevertheless, the topic of non-state enforcement has not yet stabilized and is more of a doctrine than a theory, so there is room for work.