Calculation and Knowledge

The drop in interest rates makes unrealizable projects appear profitable and realizable. Entrepreneurs embark upon the execution of such projects.

It is a favorite conceit of modern, 20th-century liberals that skepticism, the attitude that nothing can really be known as the truth, is the best

But the centrality of the knowledge-corrective character of the market process for both Mises and Hayek cannot seriously be doubted. Whatever the differences between a Hayekian articulation of the market process and a Misesian articulation, the centrality of the notion of the corrective process for both, is the crucially important circumstance.

Competition is a process of the formation of opinion: by spreading information, it creates that unity and coherence of the economic system which we presuppose when we think of it as one market.

Hence, it is scientifically meaningless to say that the "probability of Jerry Ford being elected in 1976 is three-eighths," since elections are not homogeneous events repeated a large number of times. And yet a large amount of modern social science and of its mathematizing rests on this faulty view of probability theory.

"The state has only one role in the novels and it is entirely negative: it makes and enforces the fugitive slave laws."

The demand for a medium of exchange is the composite of two partial demands: the intention to use it in consumption and production and the intentio

If pushed too far, Cowen's line of thought could lead to an undue subjectivism, in which people's perceptions and classifications, rather than what actually occurs, would be the sole issues of importance.

Interviewed by Terry O’Neill and Ron Gray on the “RoadKill Radio” internet radio program, Vancouver, Canada; 11 August 2009.

Recorded at Mises University 2009.