I&#x27;d have thought the opinion of an academic based at the pre-eminent school for studying Austrian economics in the US would be considered an unusually informed one. Especially when he explains why even though he&#x27;s largely politically aligned with them he thinks much of their theory is lacking.<p>Let me put it this way: the reason the academic mainstream has relatively little regard for Austrian economics and even less for permabear investment advice based around passing familiarity with Austrian economics has nothing to do with printing money for their buddies (which the more influential half of the economic establishment has been passionately arguing <i>against</i> for decades) and everything to do with adherents of the discipline&#x27;s tendency to rely on rants about government conspiracy once the economic problem gets a bit more complicated than determining who buys the purple bicycle from whom.<p>The education system isn&#x27;t in the slightest bit interested in disproving the sort of trivial economic stuff about preferences that most microeconomists simply absorb as foundational axioms on the first day of their undergrad course rather than writing papers about how they can be deduced from the statement &quot;humans act&quot;, but they&#x27;re rather more sceptical about extending that to &quot;therefore, it&#x27;s true <i>a priori</i> the gold standard is the only way to run an economy and that QE will inevitably lead to uncontrollable hyperinflation and large scale malinvestment. (Which is the sort of prediction made on a regular basis by Austrian-inspired economic commentators on finance sites like the one being discussed here). Especially if the proponent of the idea starts ranting about &quot;financial incentives&quot; and wrapping inverted commas around the word education at the mere suggestion that such hypotheses might be falsified.