The Free Market

This Libertas Award acceptance speech was delivered at the XXIII Forum da Liberdade, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on April 12, 2010.  Tyranny ends when we cease to support voluntarily our own serfdom.

We can date the second Austrian revival almost precisely to the fall of 2008. From that point on, the use of online Austrian resources on Mises.org abruptly doubled from one year earlier, as investors, media commentators, and the public at large frantically sought answers from all quarters while witnessing one iconic financial institution after another topple into bankruptcy.

The recent improvement of the global economy, with particularly high economic- growth numbers for the United States, is just one more deception in a long series of deceptions that have plagued policy makers and investors.

The Mises Institute is pleased to announce the multimedia content on Mises.org— thousands of hours of audio and video—is now available through iTunes U, a dedicated section within the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com).

There is no secure foundation in climate science for the current policy rhetoric; governments simply lack the knowledge to operate climate-change policy effectively. Moreover, policy is based on the neoclassical economics assumption that climate change is a case of market failure. However, it is not markets that have failed but governments in failing to protect property rights.

Given that the official House version of Obama’s healthcare plan, HR 3962, has now passed, a close examination of the effects of “Obamacare” on the labor market is important.

Most people would admit to hoarding money only with a tinge of guilt, because to be a hoarder carries with it the suggestion of being a miser—a Scrooge. And yet, every participant in an economy based on indirect exchange holds some amount of money and can be said to be hoarding it; that is, declining to spend it. Hoarding is a strategy for achieving personal goals or for dealing with economic uncertainty.

The Free Market 27, no. 8 (August 2009)

The Free Market 27, no. 7 (July 2009)

The Free Market 27, no. 6 (June 2009)

If you follow the Austrian recipe of allowing liquidation of bankrupt firms and debt, allowing prices to fall without monetary inflation, not propping up employment or subsidizing unemployment, and not discouraging hoarding, you will end up with the quickest possible recovery and minimize the magnitude of economic pain.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan tried to exonerate himself from the housing boom and bust. Even though more and more analysts are realizing that Greenspan’s low interest rates fueled the bubble, the ex-maestro himself uses statistics to defend his record.

He taught this lesson for decades, with stamina, consistency, and calm persistence in his belief that education was the key to freedom.

Consider what it means to live through our times in the light of economic understanding. Even in the face of calamity, there is no mystery, and hence fear is reduced.

The Free Market 27, no. 1 (January 2009)

This was the first book on economics that just jumped out and grabbed me. I had read a few before, but they were boring. Very boring.

This wasn’t an economic plan: it was a heist.

It turns out that making money is a business like any other, not something that only governments do. In a free world, it would be something done entirely by private enterprise.

When you do a lot of driving, $4 gas eats up a pretty big chunk of your disposable income and requires a few adjustments to the way you live. So how does the market coordinate these changes?

In sum, the real cause of continually rising food prices is the printing of money by world governments. And the real cause of actual food shortages is the prevention of profitable global trade in food by the ill-advised policies of the governments of the very people who are starving.