Calculation and Knowledge

I am the first Englishman and the first professional philosopher to receive the Schlarbaum Prize. So it seems appropriate to begin by talking about the greatest English philosopher, John Locke.

The pessimistic scenario is not only that American businessmen, students, and tourists will forever fear to travel in any nation with a Muslim community. It could also mean disinvestment overseas, the further impoverishment of the developing world, a lasting world depression, a world split into major warring blocks, and police-state policies at home.

Government is far from the economy's savior.  Rather, it is a parasite, a cancer, that eats away at the wealth of its citizens with its fiat currency, its many billions of dollars of expropriated wealth, and its multitudinous directives.

Economists of the Austrian School not only understood that markets can fail if measured by an unrealistic and unrealizable standard. Ludwig von Mises emphasized the "uncertainty inherent in every action."

In the real world, it is not enough to have demand for goods: one must have the means to accommodate people's desires.

Recently, Paul Krugman published his own critique of the Bush tax cut in a short, popular book entitled Fuzzy Math.

Forbes magazine's Peter Brimelow and Edwin Rubenstein ask, "Does Hayek’s Law condemn the U.S. economy to a Japanese-like L-shaped recession?" John Cochran responds.

Only real savings and labor, not pieces of paper called money, can create new capital goods. Gene Callahan explains.

Doctors and patients fed up with the current medical system are negotiating something entirely new, and the AMA is very unhappy. 

Recorded at Mises University 2001.