Why I Don't Call Myself a "Moderate Austrian" By Bryan Caplan

Here’s a fair comment on my last post:

Then you need to rewrite your article to say “Why I am a moderate Austrian” rather than why you are not an Austrian. Then you could get the substance right, even if you disregard some errors that Mises made, or what have you.

I could do so; but once you whittle Austrian economics down to its reasonable core, there’s not enough distinctive content to warrant a label. In fact, the label is probably counter-productive, because it makes other economists think that the core is something weird. There’s nothing about e.g. Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society” that any standard textbook author couldn’t accept; but when it travels under the Austrian flag, it makes mainstream economists nervous. Needlessly.