Austrian Economics Overview

Recorded at Mises University 2008.

Recorded at Mises University 2008.

We want to train and motivate the leaders of the future.

Power & Market - this second section of Rothbard's book - shows the state was to be protector of the people and property, but the government is contradictory to that task. Government both taxes and demands a monopoly of defensive services within a geographical area.

How are money prices determined? The stock of the money commodity responds to demand and supply of the consumers and their preferences just as with any other good.

Progressive, proportional and regressive taxes. Rothbard is relentlessly not in favor of taxes. The state robs both rich and poor.

The uniqueness of the Austrian approach to taxation is to first cover Public Policy, then Antimarket Ethics and finally Taxation. It is a praxeological development approach. Robbery and counterfeiting are the revenues to the state. You can't look at taxation alone, you must look at expenditures, too.

Price controls, product controls, compulsory cartels, licenses, standards, tariffs, child labor laws, conscription, minimum wage laws, subsidies, penalties, anti-trust, conservation laws, patents, public utilities, eminent domain, and bribery are among the many triangular interventions by government that distort markets and reduce benefits to con

Main objection to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory is rational expectations - they can't prevent entrepreneurs from making use of loose credit because they would be left behind if they didn't.

Praxeology - economics - provides no ultimate ethical judgments: it simply furnishes the indispensable data necessary to make such judgments. Common criticisms of the free market are refuted praxeologically in this chapter. Absolute equality is an impossible goal.