This is why its important to read the history of the subject -- Austrian economics is a left-over from a 19th century intellectual debate. Specifically, Austrian economics is a sub-category of Von Mises's' social science theory he called praxeology, which was developed in reaction to the Positivist movement of the 19th Century (a/k/a German School), which grew out of the natural sciences. And the debate between them is like a broken record that has been playing for the last century. Here is more than you want to know about it written from the Austrian perspective: https://mises.org/library/philosophical ... -economics
The Positivists believed that with enough knowledge/data, etc., life could be perfectly predictable and managed on a grand scale. The modern version of this is scientism. Look up La Place's Demon for more on the origins of this. On the economic side, this was first picked up by Marx and others who viewed "state management" of the economy in a scientific manner as a laudable goal.
Von Mises posited/assumed two important things: (1) the human mind is a black box that is inscrutable in its working, but that Aristotle's description of humans as "rational animals" is essentially correct and we should just go with that; (2) the empiricism associated with science is essentially doo-doo and everything we need to know about human interaction can and should be deduced logically from our assumptions in (1). Basically, Austrians claim than logical deduction is "real science", while empirical work is a mere placeholder. Again from the perspective of the Austrians self-reported history:
"Another Aristotelian theme exercised great influence on the Austrians; and this one, fortunately, is easier to document. The characteristic method of Austrian economics, carried to its culmination in Mises, is deduction. One starts with a self-evident axiom ("man acts") and with the aid of a few subsidiary postulates, deduces the entire science of human action.
Where does this notion of science originate? Although, as earlier mentioned, it is very difficult in intellectual history to demonstrate direct influence, I think it is no accident that the idea of a deductive science is found in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Aristotle argues that a complete science must start with a self-evident axiom and, by the use of deduction, exfoliate the entire discipline. Often conditions force the use of mere empirical hypotheses, but this is a mere expedient. 10
Empirical science exists as a placeholder for true science, which must work through deduction. When Brentano and others revived the study of Aristotle, this view of method became available for study in Austrian universities."
Both of these ideas (Positivism vs. Praxeology) have proved to be intellectual failures in the latter half of the 20th Century and 21st, largely because they are overly simplistic and do not account for either modern complexity theory, or what we now know about the workings of the human mind, which is that it is "Predictably Irrational" in the words of Dan Ariely, but best described and discussed for the lay person in Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Basically, we ought to know better now based on the good work of many who have devoted their careers to "looking under the hood" of human behavior and complex systems (like even simple economies) since the 1960s.
Yet both Positivism/Scientism and Austrianism/Praxeology still attract considerable followings, which Kahneman would explain as a System 1 heuristic -- attractive narratives that are cognitively easy to grasp and are readily aided by confirmation biases. The internet has aided this, along with the Dunning-Kruger effect; everybody can claim to be an expert in economics now with a few clicks and pick up a few basic slogans/memes/stories. Others have noted that these competing ideologies could be viewed as substitutes for religion. (In fact, they are mimetic rivals -- compare the plots of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Jungle" and you find the same damn story/plot told from two opposing perspectives, and both pretty much ripped off from the story of St. Paul -- but I digress.)
As Max Planck once said "Science advances one funeral at a time." IMO, the process is even slower in the social sciences. We may have a long way to go before these ideas are finally abandoned and remain only of historical interest, like the Physiocrats and Mercantilists of the 17th and 18th centuries. I doubt it will happen in our lifetimes.