I've been searching around a bit, and it seems that each Austrian economist had a different angle on monopolies. Some argue that natural monopolies can exist, others (Rothbard) argue that without government support there is no such thing as a monopoly. I won't get in the middle of it, but it seems a pointless exercise to try to describe a unified attitude towards monopoly regulation if in fact they do not have a unified view on the definition of monopoly (versus free market competition).
Here's a source that compiles a bunch of points together.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache...nnaturalâ+Monopoly&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
His only conclusion was Austrians wanted complete repeal of anti trust (but I assume that i based on their assumption that monopoly occurs with government support only, which I adamantly disagree with).
If you aren't cool with regulating against monopolies, how can you be fine with regulating against the Fed / banking cartel ? I understand the ideal, that the government should stay out of capitalistic pursuits, but that is against human nature (look at soviet communism for evidence of this failure, where its corrupt leaders asserted hierarchal dominance in a system that was sold on virtue of equalizing the masses.) That inconsistency breaks the deal.
If you want government out, then you want no safety net. And if you want no safety net and a commodity backed currency (vulnerable itself to the whims of inherent human speculation boom/bust even without the influence of frac reserve dynamics) , you have to agree being fine with 35% unemployment and very very long recessions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions
Just look at those nineteenth century crashes. Even though the dollar has fallen, people's standard of living has grown, and while technological progress is responsible for the bulk of that, I think it might be fair to say modern Keynesian and other socialistic constructs may have had a hand in stabilizing things since the great depression.
As evidenced by the late nineteenth century, there were jarring shocks to the system were attributable to changes in commodity backing of the currency (1873, silver crash). That chart above does not point to me to the idea that a gold standard would mean smaller boom and busts. Those recessions looked pretty long and deep.
In conclusion, if you want stability, I think Keynesian policy is better. If you want wild gyrations, deep unemployment rates for long periods, a deflationary trend protecting the buying power of hoarders versus investors, creative destruction, and inefficient use of capital, the Austrians have a package for you. I'd rather have a supply boom of agriculture motivated by amped up investment seeking profit to beat inflation than a tougher incentive to grow the plant size.
At least in the end, we'll have something to eat (even if it means a deflationary spiral assuming they can't print enough money).
PS: In response to the notion Austrians are OK with non-government supported (and thus Frac reserve as an option is there) banks, I classify 'inefficent use of capital' under Austrian ideas because I think fractional reserve banking on any degree of leverage (ie 10% reserve requirement) would be too vulnerable to runs and collapses if privately done without government backing, and long term sustainable deposits in a leveraged environment would not exist without getting wiped out every few decades in natural panics. We learned that lesson in the great depression, and thus the FDIC was born in 1933.
Interesting place for some info on reserve requirements in 1929:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5461/is_1_44/ai_n28779679/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
Effective reserve requirements actually went up during the great depression from 5.4% in 1929 to 7.72%.
I've read some stuff speculating our effective reserve ratio is near 2.5%-5% rather than 10% due to 0% reserve requirements in time deposits.
