George Selgin: Thinking Too Much About Proper Methodology Cramps My Style

I am not making this. Slegin really wrote the following. My highlights.

At the close of my last post here, I referred to myself as a "non-Austrian," causing one of our regular commentators to wonder why. "Because," I answered, "belonging means conforming."

That admittedly cryptic reply (I was anxious to get back to the book I was reading) led to speculation to the effect that I was inclined to identify "Austrian" economics with the economics of Murray Rothbard, and particularly with his and his devotees' opposition to fractional reserve banking. 

But although it's true that I have a low opinion of the ideas and arguments put forward by the 100-percent crowd, and that I'd rather swallow a dozen toads than have anyone confuse my thinking with theirs, I don't believe they've yet succeeded, despite trying their damnedest, in hijacking the "Austrian" brand name. There are, thank goodness, still plenty of non-Rothbardian "Austrians," including my fellow blogger and former colleague and mentor Larry White. But though there is no such radical difference--and in some cases hardly any difference at all--between my views and those of such non-Rothbardian Austrians, I wouldn't consider myself an Austrian even if they were the only self-styled Austrians around. My reason has nothing to do with any particular "Austrian" belief to which I object. I don't consider myself an Austrian economist for the same reason that I don't consider myself a Chicago economist, or a Keynesian economist, or a New Classical economist, or a--well, you get the point. I don't want to belong to any economic school of thought, or to "do" any sort of economics. I just want to "do" my own sort of economics.

And what sort of economics is that? I can't tell you--I've never thought much about it. But perhaps that's just it: I don't "think" about writing any "sort" of economics. I don't want to have to think about whether what I'm up to qualifies as "praxeology" or not, or whether Mises would mind my using terms like "money" and "inflation" the way most contemporary economists use them, instead of the way Mises himself used them a century ago. Nor am I any more inclined to trouble myself over whether my work fits neatly into any other economic school's pigeonhole. I don't worry about not having a "model," meaning a bunch of equations, when I'm perfectly confident that I can say what I need to say in plain English. (I rather wish that other economists both appreciated the power of plain English, and knew how to make proper use of it.) But if there's one thing I truly believe concerning the "methodology" of economics, it's that thinking about it is as helpful to actually doing economics as contemplating one's steps is to dancing the rumba. In short, having to look over my shoulder while I think or write, at any methodological strictures at all, cramps my style.