Email received from Richard Fuerle
SUBMISSION DATE: 12/21/2006 1:41:55 PM

I have now had a chance to read some of the two articles you sent to me. 
[Simplified Exposition of Axiomatic Theory of Economics and
Critique of Austrian Economics From 1930 To 1990] 

First, I should tell you that I am now retired and have not worked on Austrian economics for about 20 years. My interests have shifted to other areas, so I'm not up on the latest work at all. I am, however, glad that you are working on this subject as I think the Austrians really need to seriously examine their foundations to be sure that they are solid and you and your web site might stimulate some discussion on that subject. As you know, the Austrians argue that mathematics cannot be applied to economics because economics deals with entities, e.g., prices and quantities bought and sold, that can change arbitrarily and unpredictably. Mathematical modeling requires the world that is modeled to behave rationally and predictably. That is probably the main reason that the Austrians have not responded well to your work. A good way to look at this is that the model must be epistemically correlated with what it models. A good example is Euclidean geometry, where the abstract concept "line" is correlated with a pencil mark on paper. In Euclidean geometry the "line" has no width and can be perfectly straight or perfectly round, regardless of how closely it is examined, but that is not true of real pencil marks. Thus, any conclusions drawn from Euclidean geometry will be true of lines on paper only to the extent that those lines have the same qualities that abstract Euclidean "lines" do. Nevertheless, the approximation is pretty good and most of the time the triangles we draw do have angles that add up pretty close to 180°. But values, which determine prices, can jump all over the place, even though they usually don't. That is, there is no underlying law that determines the value that people place on things. A woman can love Bob one minute and the next minute hate him and love Carl. There is no underlying law because people have free will. An attempt to apply mathematics to values, i.e., to epistemically correlate a mathematical model with people's economic decisions, will be highly approximate, especially at times of stress. Mathematical modeling implies the presence of something that can be modeled and free will implies that there is no such thing that can be modeled.
Austrian economics is based on the subjectivity of values, on nothing having any value unless people value it, which, I think, amounts to free will. This is the problem that you will have to overcome before your work will be accepted by the Austrians.

Dick Fuerle