I'm actually not a fan of Dollar Milkshake Theory. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I don't reason from narratives!

Nuance only gets you hated these days.

People really over-estimate the decline of the dollar in these conversations. While it's true that there's been quite a steep decline in the use of US Treasuries on central bank balance sheets, and that makes for exciting charts about the impending collapse of the USD, there's a problem: it's only part of the story.

If you look at reserves that are dollar-denominated. Including cash, t-bills, etc. you actually find that the decline of dollar *usage* has been far less pronounced. In fact, by this measure, dollar dominance has been *increasing* for the past two years.

While it goes without saying that much of the world would like to get off the dollar, and I actually think that would be *good* for America by making US exports more competitive, and allowing the US to re-enter the game of mass manufacturing, I think rapid dedollarization is not in the cards in the short-to-medium term.

Yes. Because if you are going to claim a theory explains everything, I want to see everything explained to me. 🤷🏻‍♂️

The thing is, any advantage AI gives you in the market, is going to be short-lived. Because eventually the prices will just reflect any asymmetric information advantage and the alpha will trend to zero.

You can bet that hedge funds are already using the most cutting edge AI models to squeeze out that edge. But it's an ever-moving target.

Okay, explain global population growth trends using quantum mechanics.

What I would say is that any theory that can't produce reliable predictions lacks any explanatory power at all.

If you think you have a theory of the world that explains everything, you really just have a theory that explains nothing.

Degradation of the information environment. Epistemic cleavages growing starker in society.

When it’s used in ethical constructions — which it often is — it really seems to from my perspective. If we want to look at it purely as an analytical tool, then I’d just argue that it’s overly-simplistic. And I do argue that.

The insistence that economics can only be understood through purely deductive reasoning is definitely not a claim I can get behind.

The fact that in complex systems, we cannot possibly account for all the variables does not mean that methodological individualism is the only way to understand the world.

Not profound.

Yes. I think methodological individualism is a highly problematic framework that does not capture the realities of the human condition. Now, as a classical liberal, my political philosophy is grounded in individualism. But unlike Austrians and libertarians, I do not completely deny the relevance of collective considerations such as negative externalities and collective action problems. I don’t think, like many libertarians and Austrians do, that thinking that the state has a role to play in these arenas, that it’s a slippery slope to totalitarianism or socialism.

I don’t agree the axiom of action is self-evidently true, because it presupposes the existence of libertarian free will, which I also don’t think is self-evidently true. It’s certainly incompatible with any naturalist position. But we don’t need to go down a metaphysical rabbit-hole to find problems with the axiom.

While it’s true that the subjective theory of value and marginal utility come out of the Austrian School, it’s worth mentioning these things are accepted in mainstream economics today. A lot of Austrians seem to try and play a sleight-of-hand where they suggest that because these things are accepted, the full corpus of Austrian School thinking must also be true. This is obviously logically fallacious.

Furthermore, the axiom of human action implies what is known in philosophy as psychological realism, which casts aside problems of environmental factors, social contexts, cognitive biases, and any discussion of emergent social behaviors. In fact, to even bring up that last point will often get an Austrian screaming at you that you are introducing “collectivism” by even going down that route, which is apparently self-evidently evil. So you’re already into a realm where we’re not even talking about analytical economics anymore, we’re deep into political ethics before we even get off the ground.

This is why most Austrians are either libertarians or anarcho-capitalists. They believe there is an objective reality, founded in Austrian reasoning, that proves that these political philosophies are necessarily and obviously the most ethical systems. It goes without saying, I think this is absurd.

No it's not.

Bitcoin doesn't prove Austrian Economics correct. Behind these pronouncements are normative arguments being paraded as objective truth.

Also, the axiom of action is not self-evidently true. It's circular reasoning, disguised as a revelatory brute fact.

I don't know what decking culture is!

Do you think he counseled Bukele to declare himself absolute monarch?

I agree it's not getting better. We disagree on how confidently we can apportion blame.

My question remains: what is the culture we're aiming for? 🤷🏻‍♂️