Don't Entrust Economics to the Experts … Why has so much of the world succumbed to populist demagoguery and xenophobic nationalism? To a non-trivial extent, economists may be responsible.  This idea finds some support in a new book, "The Econocracy," written by three U.K. economics students — Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins. – Bloomberg

Austrian economics has been driving banking elites mad for over a century and now apparently they are trying to replace it with what can be called "Econocratics" – our elaboration of the term.

In fact, a new book "Econocracy" encapsulating the movement seems to regurgitate every criticism of modern economics made by Austrian critics and free-market groups.

More, according to the Bloomberg editorial (above):

They argue that popular dissatisfaction with government has a lot to do with its over-reliance on concepts and ways of thinking supplied by economists, who have been much more influential than their expertise justifies.

In the authors' usage, an econocracy is a society where — though it looks like a democracy — goals get expressed in economic terms and policy making has become a purely technical activity.

Objectives such as faster growth, increased competitiveness and access to more and cheaper consumer goods are taken as inherently desirable, with little consideration of differing values or visions of the future.

Specialists handle the execution, because involving the people can only mess things up.  The econocracy inevitably breeds a sense of disenfranchisement.

This is terrific stuff, but when we look through the website here, we can't find a single mention of Austrian economics nor the role its leading proponents have played in creating the dissatisfaction that this "rethinking" supposedly addresses. (Maybe we're not looking hard enough?)

If one is going to broadly "rethink" economics, shouldn't one begin by incorporating trenchant free-market criticisms of modern economics? These criticisms are certainly within the ambit of what the Bloomberg article relates – and also what we could see on the group's website.

But not a word about Austrian – free-market – economics.

Too bad.

Led by Mises.org in the US, criticisms of modern economics are directly buttressed by the 150-year-old concepts of Austrian economics.

Lew Rockwell and his eponymous website have just been attacked in an article in the Washington Post. Lew Rockwell (by writing non-traditional articles based on economic history) stands accused of doing the bidding of Russia – of the Russian state – in order to undermine the West and specifically the US.

It can certainly thus be speculated that the idea is to denigrate Rockwell and his Mises society while adopting its critiques but not its solutions.

The problem with Austrian free-market economics is that it leaves little room for government itself, nor for the mathematical-based econometrics that most economists are trained in. We previously mentioned this issue here, regarding a new libertarian center.