Recent Podcast Episodes

In Ayn Rand and the World She Made Heller goes to bat for Rand as a fiction writer. Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns is a poorer book because it is confused.

The Industrial Revolution and the development of the modern banking system were the two big things that happened in the Eighteenth Century in Britain. Why does the boom-bust cycle emerge? Is the cycle just a natural part of industry, or is it caused by the banking system?

Rothbard explains why he is optimistic. The norm of civilization has been despotism and statism. The quantum quality change in history has been the Industrial Revolution from mid-18th Century to mid-19th. Only the free market, libertarian society can expand this viable and moral industrialism.

We are witnessing a great tragedy: more and more people being driven by indignation about the suppression of political and intellectual freedom joi

Despite the drive for monopoly, only oil, sugar and corn products ended up dominated by a particular company. Bigger was not better. Biggest was not best. Smaller and more mobile was more competitive. Major inventions are still coming from small firms.

The progressive period birthed the cancerous growth of the welfare/warfare state, fake capitalism, the middle way, neomercantilism, and the corporate state. Morgan and Rockefeller men warred with each other over many issues and many generations.

In the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, the rise of big business on the free market could not create monopolies and cartels. Only government could do that. Government tried. Government failed.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

Starting with Crusoe economics, Rothbard builds the economic concepts which can be developed by this analogy. These concepts are the axiom of human action. Among them are: man acts, man acts by virtue of his existence, man acts with purposeful behavior,...

What causes business cycles? Keynesians say the cycles happen because the free market economy does not spend enough. Thus, pump spending in. Additionally, Keynesians say that animal spirits cause these cycles. Government must fix things. Nobody could understand Keynes' General Theory. What was simply obscure was wrongly considered deep.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

Costs are always ex ante. There are no such things as social costs or social benefits. Costs are determined by how much entrepreneurs think consumers will pay. Costs are not determined by supply and demand. Nobody waits for costs to raise prices

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.

Rothbard continues the Crusoe analogy. He covers subjectivity of value, and the concept of marginal utility.

Deficits are equal to expenditures minus taxes. Reagan spoke of cutting government spending, but meant only cutting the rate of growth of government spending. Stagflation appeared in 1957-58. Inflation during a recession was not supposed to happen. It happened again in 1973-75.

From The Failure of the “New Economics”. Narrated by Josiah Schmidt.