Austrian Economics

Also known as the Austrian School, this alternative school of economics rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th century in Vienna, but its members now hail from all corners of the globe.

If you were to narrow the ideas of the Austrian School down to five central tenets, they would go as follows:

1. Austrian economics favour deductive reasoning (i.e. reasoning from general principles to specific conclusions) rather than the inductive reasoning of most economical schools of thought (i.e. starting with particular facts and figures and forming theories out of them).
2. They believe in sound money like gold and silver and see fiat currencies as unsustainable due to their centralisation and lack of intrinsic value.
3. They favour decentralised systems over centralised ones.
4. They believe in free markets as central to human freedom and are opposed to any form of government intervention. 5. They believe in individualism and are against forced or coerced collectivism by governments.