Szeweningen, it seems I have a lot of similar opinions to you, having learnt a lot about the Austrian school a few years ago I now see myself as somewhat of a consequentialist market advocate.

I believe that ideology is the downfall of civilised man and a person's ideology is the only reason why they wouldn't be utterly convinced by the superiority of the natural market process. Despite what I feel is a moderately solid understanding of economics, formulating this and providing people of varying ideological backgrounds with convincing arguments is extremely challenging. In your experience, what specific arguments have you made that you've had a reasonably decent degree of success with?

@ Warlightvet:

I don't think I am in a position to explain evolution since I have no background in evolutionary biology except for very basic high school courses, which count for nothing. Yet my advice would be to first ask yourself why someone does not believe in evolution, which nowadays is just a scientific fact, not an opinion. I cannot think of reasons that are non-theological, on the scientific field there is no dispute, if someone understands what genes and mutations are alongside with knowledge about extensive archeological and anthropological proof he has to agree with evolution. I myself have not known anyone who did not believe in evolution, but on the other hand I am not going around asking people abuot it constantly... In any case I don't think breeding is a good example since it does not really explain what evolution is about. The problem with evolution is that its consequences cannot be observed in one lifetime, thus making it hard to keep track of without very dedicated studies. If it was me I'd try the educational approach by explaining dna and genes impact on human development finishing with modern studies that show, that if you had changed less than 5% of your dna you'd be a dolphin. If someone responds that the earth is 6000 years old... well, I really do not know that to do about this :) I think it'll boil down to the level of devotion one has for his/hers religious beliefs, because i don't see anything else holding someone back from understanding basic concepts of science.

@ Qi:

I've been trying to make a date with piggy for almost a month now, atm I have no time nor motivation required to make/take challenges.

@ PROGAMER:

Every economic discussion is a very subtle thing, it is very easy to transform it into a meaningless brawl, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. I'll partition my answer into 2 parts, first explaining why some people do not believe in the superiority of market proces, then I'll move to how to debate in economics, which is especially important if you have an austrian background like me.

It is true that empty ideology is the #1 enemy of the free market, but it is not always the case. People sometimes make a misatribution mistake, by which I mean blaming free market for somehing that was not its fault to begin with and truth be told without context it is relatively hard to distuinguish one from the other, last financial crisis is a prime example where people blame deregulation most of the time not knowing the structural source of the problem. Also considering maintream methodology, it is no surprisse people want exemplification of market failure/success and they point to scandinavian countries as an example of "good socialism" while presenting african countries as a source of "market failure" (the latter actually has some point to it). So basically the things you have to be aware of are misatribution and lack of context, which are imo the 2 biggest mistakes people make while formulating arguments. Of course it can be said about any discussion, but considering the nature of an economic debate it is especially true when you discuss economy/politics.

Now keeping in mind wgat I said about misatribution and lack of context you already should know how to formulate solid and convincing arguments, it all boils down to objectivity and precision. Austrian economists fed by their methodology have a degree of objectivity, but what they lack among many things is precision, that is exactly why austrian economy is not considered mainstream, which basically makes most austrians something I'd call "hipsters of the economy". A very good example is the theorem of reswitching which was a mainstream critique to the term "roundaboutness" used quite often. Even by how it is formulated you can instinctively see there is at least some lack of precision in it, but the problem with austrians was that they made consecutively the same mistake, they wanted to be methodologically pure while formulating non-precise terms. And here is where the problem in communications lies, the names austrians and mainstream uses sound the same, but are not the same. For example interest rate, in mainstream it is used in models in so many different contexts there should be at least 5 different definitions, while austrian definition is so abstract it is borderline not possible to observe in real life (see the problems with trying to make an empirical validation of austrian business cycle theory?). In any case I advise to do what I do, I study both austrian school and mainstream extensively but I try to use mainstream language to explain economic phenomena, just be aware that some austrian terms may have a horrible lack of precision, sometimes it is not needed, but more often than not without precise arguments you will not win your audience over, especially if they do not know what you're talking about beforehand. So to sum up, I'd try to advise joining my long-term project of translating and enriching austrian ideas into mainstream language, not only it is good from the point of view of an average listener, during preparation you will always find another angle you should have analysed a certain phenomena before.

Tlast financial crisis is a prime example where people blame deregulation most of the time not knowing the structural source of the problem.

I'd be really interested in what a contemporary austrian would identify as the structual source of the problem and how he or she argues for it. If you or anyone could provide me with a relatively layman-friendly yet thorough source that would be cool (blog entry, JSTOR, springerlink, what have you - as long as it's not an entire monograph).

Austrian economists fed by their methodology have a degree of objectivity, but what they lack among many things is precision[...] the problem with austrians was that they made consecutively the same mistake, they wanted to be methodologically pure while formulating non-precise terms. [...]For example interest rate, in mainstream it is used in models in so many different contexts there should be at least 5 different definitions, while austrian definition is so abstract it is borderline not possible to observe in real life (see the problems with trying to make an empirical validation of austrian business cycle theory?).

So praxeologists are the scholastics of social science then? :P