Well since you asked for a comment here it is. Hayek and the rest of the guys of the libertarian branch seem to have made atleast a little bit of sense. Unfortunately many people i have been talking to seem to believe that concentration of power is an inevitable consequence of any free association of human beings. Now if people at large believe that there individual interests are served solely or largely by undermining those of others, then there is a rather anihilistic breakdown in the offing for any Market Anarchy.

Again i agree to Hayek’s humility ideas and i think intellectual humility is critical for any degree of clarity of thought. but often when stressing that humanity is unequal intellectuals of that shade of purple will at some point accede a degree of arrogance, a la Friedman or Yazad Jal ;-).

Contrary to Misesian methodology, i think Hayek’s sympathy for Falsificationism has better chances of a response from the statistically charged public at large. Yes econometrics is inimical to the Austrian approach, and the Austrian approach maybe better and more efficient, but as in some other place VHS vs. Betacam (or Linux vs. Win) was mentioned, i think as part of the market process we have to admit that thus far the Econometric School is winning, even if the Austrian is better technique. An irony of the market place :-). what say good Jal.

The Nobel well i think many Austrian’s are sore that they waited for Mises to die before they gave Hayek the Noble. Despite the fact that it was the Mises-Hayek ABCT.

But yes giving economics a pedestal on par with that of other sciences is not correct, neither is it in good company with the almost Orwellian Noble Peace Prize.

I think is was Shaw who said that he could forgive Noble for inventing dynamite but that it was a sick mind that must have thought up the Noble Prize.

I find it really strange that Physicists and Biomedical scientists are ridiculed thus by economists. Look around you, I wish to tell them, and tell me about one gadget that was not made possible by Physicists, from cars (operating on Internal Combustion Engines, thermodynamics) to computers (semiconductors etc.).

As far as these ‘exotic’ cold particles are concerned, they may not remain that exotic. In our experimental Cosmology lab (we study the very early universe) we are developing efficient ways to transmit radio waves through thin superconducting striplines, which may be used in devices a few decades from now. This is not a boast, just the way things normally are in Physics - every gadget you see around you was developed as a matter of chance because some Physicist had explored an ‘exotic’ idea.

Of course, I understand that this is a quote and you do not necessarily have the same view.

Welcome to my blog. And yes, reading the whole piece does help as I kind of *agree* with you. But never mind, we’ve all “been there, done that.”