Quote from JamesVU2000:
So its basically just a bunch of academic jibberish that has little application in the real world
No.
The Austrian school doesn't engage in the hubris that a central government can solve the ills of the world.
Take a look at the utter failure of every government which has tried.
The Austrian school believes that you are better at making decisions for yourself than a government can make for you (unless you're impaired or too young, of course). The belief is that the government has very limited power to improve your life and virtually unlimited power to make things a lot worse. Thus, it proposes a laissez-faire approach rather than government planning (in contrast to Keynes).
Had our government actually been more laissez-faire, we wouldn't have a centrally planned interest rate which was kept too low to hold off a mild recession in 2001 and for to long so as to encourage speculation in the housing market - indeed in credit generally. It wouldn't have created a Fannie and Freddie or the Community Redevelopment Act or anti-redlining laws which were designed to replace credit analysis. You can thank regulation, central planning and government guarantees (now more pronounced and explicit with the bailouts) for the current crisis. No lender would lend under these loose standards if he thought he could actually lose his money. And, before the government increased its intervention in the free market to effect political goals, nobody did.