The origin of various bizarre anti-AE talking points

This is a discussion about where I think socialists/leftists are coming from when they say stuff that is obviously not true to AE fans about AE. This is not a debunking session of these points, as the intended audience (AE fans) can probably all debunk these points very easily. This is just trying to identify the origin of the following ideas:

1) “You just hate the poor/You just want the rich to rule everything like tyrants”

I group these together because I think they are fundamentally coming from the same place, socialists trying to fit their understanding of the world (The rich will rule everything under capitalism, the poor will be hurt unless we have socialism, etc etc) to our actions (advocating against socialism, advocating for capitalism) and concluding that “The only reason AE fans would advocate for the destruction of the poor and the supremacy of the rich is if AE fans hated the poor and loved the rich”.

This is understandable logic, just with really unsound premises.

2) “Austrian economics is pro- status quo” (note: I am only addressing two arguments here, there are a few, some of which are less on their face false, though still quite incorrect)

The first is pretty simple, the socialists believe that the status quo is “Capitalism” or “Free market” and see us advocating for capitalism and the free market, and just equate the different definitions being used as being the same.

The second is a bit more complicated, with socialists essentially believing that the status quo is a slide towards the domination of corporations, and lessening government involvement in the market will just accelerate that slide, as socialists believe the degree of business centralization has an indirect relationship to the degree of socialism in a state.

3) “You want a healthcare system where the poor just die”

This one really is a tragedy, and just stems from a lack of knowledge of the free market healthcare systems that existed in the past and were so cheap that doctors and insurance companies lobbied the government to ban them so they could raise prices.

I don’t think this position is really socialists fault any more than it is them not thinking about this too hard. Most people have not heard of lodge practice or fraternal societies and fewer know how they used to work. This is just on our education system.

I will probably post more of these later. In the meantime I hope this helps some AE fans become more understanding of the socialist positions. We will never be able to convince socialists of our positions if we cannot understand them.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War