Murray Rothbard once stunned me by saying that he thought the greatest economist in history was Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. The reason he gave, to the best of my recollection, was: “Böhm-Bawerk created a mighty system of economic theory and then successfully defended it against all comers.”  Noticing that I was startled, he asked who I thought was the greatest economist. I replied, “Ludwig von Mises,” Rothbard’s revered mentor, whom I thought would have been his choice. Rothbard acknowledged that an excellent case could also be made for Mises. 

Back in the summer of 2006, perhaps sensing momentum for Democrats going into the midterm, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas gave it a push by making a play for the libertarian vote. Considering the degree to which the Bush/GOP years disappointed, it made sense.

The Österreichische Mediathek, an Austrian archive for sound recordings and videos on cultural and contemporary history, has published a very short clip titled “Vienna Economics” featuring the voice of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. The 26-second clip, dated 1905, is in German, but it allows listeners the rare treat of listening to one of the greatest economists of the twentieth century.

A translation of the page offers this description of the clip:

Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Americans have been told countless times that public policy was based on Science (with a capital S) and that the public should just obey the scientists.

But the accuracy of their predictions and the consequent appropriateness of policies seems to have been little better than Ask Dr. Science and the 0 percent accuracy rate of its answers.

It has been a full century since Mises dropped the economic calculation bomb, but the argument apparently still haunts socialists. It should, since Mises managed to show that a socialist economy is not an economy at all but calculational chaos. Yet it is curious that it does, since most have (incorrectly) concluded that Mises’s argument, after decades of debate, was debunked.

Why does a presumably debunked argument still, drive even non-Austrian critics to pen new responses and deliberate on apparent flaws?

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

Most people have never heard of dialectical materialism. The term looks so obtuse that you’d be forgiven for thinking that only pretentious students loitering outside the philosophy department smoking hand-rolled cigarettes could imagine that it has anything to do with real life.

Ever since state and local governments began imposing social distancing mandates, the media and policymakers have consistently exaggerated the role of the federal government in these measures. Early on, we heard about how “the United States” was locked down, and we now hear about the gamble President Trump is taking in “

Fueled by unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages, the money supply growth rate ballooned in April to an all-time high. The growth rate has never been higher, with the 1970s as the only period that comes close. It was expected that money supply growth would surge in recent months. This usually happens in the wake of the early months of a recession or financial crisis. The magnitude of the growth rate, however, was unexpected.