Calculation and Knowledge

The Ludwig von Mises Memorial Lecture sponsored by James Walker.

Statistics, so vital to statism, its namesake, is also the State's Achilles' heel.

If allowing markets to operate represents an "ideology" to most people, so be it. I would argue that markets represent a lack of ideology. More importantly, markets provide far and away the most practical approaches to difficult problems like terrorism.

The aftermath of the recent recession has brought renewed skepticism to EMH, even leading some to redefine it as the “inefficient” market hypothesis. We demonstrate that such a course of action is misguided.

For some economists, the fact that entrepreneurs make cinnamon rolls instead of selling only celery sticks is a “market failure.” These economists have appointed themselves the arbiters of what is “best” for people, and therefore, what should be sold in the marketplace.

Many people mistakenly think of Austrian economics as nothing more than a radical defense of free markets, though it's really a framework for studying human action and its social implications.

Whatever the Fed imagines they can control and whatever their real intentions are, a central authority cannot optimally set prices that are in line with people’s preferences. This is especially important for interest rates, which have far-reaching influence throughout the economy.

The world waits to see if next week is finally the week that the Fed announces its rate hike. Can the economy survive whatever small bump the Fed deals out? Perhaps, but that won’t change the inherent instability of our current monetary regime.

We've been told that with enough data, we can use sophisticated computing methods to predict the future. That often works with the physical sciences, but predicting human action is something else altogether.

It’s not a coincidence that wherever war and socialism are implemented, the results tend to be the same.