Two days ago I took my kids out to lunch. The place I took them is essentially a hamburger joint, with a very thin veneer of New York hip added on. While we were eating, a conversation in the nearby kitchen caught my ear. What I heard was, “In the 1930s, everyone thought this problem was solved.”
Wondering what sort of historical discussion was going on in the kitchen of a hamburger joint, I looked up. It was one of the owners talking to a waiter. He continued: “And then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. All of a sudden, a lot of people said, ‘You know, maybe von Mises was right.’”
He continued: “The question is, how do we know which new businesses, which new processes, which new inventions, are worth putting resources into? The answer is we don’t, but in a free market people have to risk their own money on their best guess.”
When he was free I called him to our table. He had never heard of the Mises Institute, but I gave him my card with LewRockwell.com on it, so he should arrive at Mises.org soon.
