Milton Friedman used to make the same claim (consistent, not a description of reality) about neoclassical economics, but in good positivist fashion he added that it was reasonably predictive. This is debateable except for crude broad brushstrokes or non-formal narrative analyses of the sort that you can find in the classical economists, things like, normally increasing supply will bring down the price of a commodity, increasing demand will drive up the price, etc. I think one great virtue of the Austrians is that they acknowledged that the formalism was a crutch; it's the mechanism described in the narartive that does the work. Anyway, what is it that value theory, either in narrative or formalism, actually explains? Surely it can't be something as boring as, there's a tendency for long term equilibrium prices to regress towards value? Was Marx just a price theorist?
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 26, 2007, at 4:06 PM, Seth Ackerman wrote:
>
> > Even Kliman says he makes no claim that his TSSI
> interpretation is
> > actually a correct description of the world, only
> that it's internally
> > consistent.
>
> You could say the same of a paranoid's logic, and
> I'm entirely
> serious. It's usually internally consistent - it's
> just untethered
> from reality.
>
> Doug
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