What do you mean by "eventually"? I find Austrian ideas very interesting. Yet the usefulness of an economic theory can be demonstrated in two ways: 1. How wel

What do you mean by "eventually"? I find Austrian ideas very interesting. Yet the usefulness of an economic theory can be demonstrated in two ways: 1. How well the implemented ideas/policies work in practice. This is usually difficult to evaluate, as it involves counterfactuals (we never know what would have happened if other policies had been followed). Sometimes one may be able to draw a comparison between two similar economies/time periods that followed different paths, however. 2. How well the economic theory predicts the effect of certain policies / what is going to happen. The track record of the Austrian school is poor on this one; the most recent example being the prediction of the consequences of Fed's response to the "great recession" of 2009. As far as I know, both Austrian academics and practitioners (Robert Murphy, Peter Schiff) predicted that the Fed's actions would result in high price inflation, weak dollar, and would generally not be effective in promoting economic growth. Both have been wrong so far, and investors that have listened would have lost money. Of course, you can say that the economic growth has been "malinvestment" that will need to be corrected, but without a time horizon such predictions are useless. It's been a decade now since 2009. Has the US economy been malinvesting since the abandonment of the gold standard in the 70s? At what point can we say that the Fed did a reasonably good job at stabilizing the economy and promoting economic growth?