Pat Gunning wrote: "Menger, Mises, Hayek, Kirzner, and  
Lachmann would have regarded themselves as  
economists."   
  
  
 Let me testify that they are economists. I came to  
think that they had depth and breadth of knowledge and  
they had profound understanding. Their misfortune is  
largely of their own making. They choose to make  
themselves inaccessible to the ordinary readers by  
their never-ending philibustering and ear-splitting  
jargon, and served to alienate themselves by a  
readiness to attack instead of to attract potential  
recruits.  
 Having lost all faith in mainstream banality, I went  
to NYU at the age of 33 with the hope of getting some  
answers from the Austrian School, only to find a cult  
atmosphere of some andh-bhakt (Hindi for blind  
followers)who would not tolerate any questions. Ten  
years later, I left. My dissertation reached an  
Austrian conclusion (that new knowledge is the  
necessary and sufficient condition for economic  
development) from within a strictly noeclassical  
format (Samuelson's 2x2x2 trade model), also exposing  
the utter banality of Lewis, Becker, Todaro, Solow and  
Lucas. I made plenty of enemies on both aisles by  
marrying the odd couple.  
  
  
The tragedy is that these authors have valid substance  
but no form, so that nobody can readily see what it  
is: it is amorphous. The neoclassical school has good  
form but no substance. In my own little way, I tried  
to pour the substance of Menger-Mises-Kirzner in a  
bottle of Leontief, producing a concoction that  
pleases nobody.   
  
Shall we drink to that, no?  
  
Mohammad Gani