Entrepreneurship

Interviewed by host Justin Longo, Peter Klein discusses liberty, entrepreneurship, and why they go hand in hand.

Economics is a logical, deductive, human science about real people acting in the real world, with all the dynamism, unpredictability, and creativity that entails. Markets aren’t static, lifeless mathematical constructs but lively, vigorous spaces where people interact and coordinate.

The James M. Rodney Lecture, presented at the 2012 Mises Institute Supporters Summit. Recorded at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, on 26 October 2012.

The fascist speaks of the Nation with a religious reverence. Just listen to Obama and Hillary.

If we seek to eliminate or regulate insider trading, we have only to allow free competition among stock markets and eliminate legal barriers to entry. Companies would choose what stock market to list with depending upon the behavior and rules of each. Consumers always win when there is competition.

Government officials talk about more entrepreneurship, but they pick particular firms, industries, or technologies, and give them subsidies and benefits. What entrepreneurs need is secure property rights, the rule of law, and sound money. The best government can do for entrepreneurs is get out of their way.

The state’s creation of patent and copyright interests doesn’t prevent innovations, but it does erect hurdles that discourage research. The “traditional enemies of innovation [are] inertia and vested interest,” factors contributed to by the government practice of giving inventors protection from competitors.

The Bernanke Fed followed Keynes’s advice. The way to avoid a new slump is to keep interest rates low for as far as the eye can see as a way to overcome a lack of “animal sprits” and thus sustain a quasi-boom. As long as inflation is low, no harm, no foul. In fact, as the thinking goes, more inflation might be beneficial.

The notion that unpatented medical technologies are not feasible is historically false. The <em>British Medical Journal</em> challenged its readership to submit a list of the most noteworthy medical and pharmaceutical inventions throughout history. Only two of them have remotely <em>anything </em>to do with patents.

Block’s Defending the Undefendable has needled and irritated an entire generation of readers and compelled many to re-examine long-held beliefs in favor of the logic of libertarianism. Now comes volume 2, with a foreword by Ron Paul, that promises more such irritation for future generations.