Bob walks through a recent WIRED video on “the economics behind the Great Depression,” correcting its claims on lax regulation, Hoover’s alleged inaction, the role of the Fed and the gold standard, and the notion that World War II ended the slump.
Bob revisits capital and interest theory to show why the textbook result “interest = MPK” only holds in a one-good world, and why in actual markets the interest rate emerges from time, prices, and capital valuation—not raw productivity.
Equilibrium is an imaginary construct that should be used only for analytical purposes. Unfortunately, mainstream economists have claimed it should represent a desired state of economic affairs.
Mainstream economics is obsessed with “maximizing” so-called utility functions and discovering the ubiquitous “social utility curve.” In this week’s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon takes apart this “utility” fixation.
We must realize that the two most powerful motivations in human history have always been ideology and economic interest, and that a joining of these two motivations can be downright irresistible.
Prompted by an online debate about whether economics belongs with the hard sciences, Bob reviews common defenses of mainstream practice and explains why they don’t settle the scientific status of the field.
In 2004, Ralph Raico, presented a 10-hour lecture series on the history of political thought. “History: The Struggle for Liberty” presented a concise summary of the more than 400 years of political thought that underlies the political ideology of laissez-faire.
While some economists are celebrating the awarding of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics to three economists who are relatively friendly to free markets, we should not forget that most Nobel winners have been unrepentant statists and socialists.
Ryan and political scientist Joseph Solis-Mullen talk about how taxes, war, and the state are all part of a centuries-old formula for impoverishing the productive class while enriching the government class.
A long-enduring myth about money is that we need a flexible or "elastic" currency for the economy to grow. Economist Jonathan Newman joins us to talk about why this has never been true.
