Grove City College will host the fourteenth annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference, February 16-17, 2018. Open to undergraduates and graduate students in any academic discipline, the ASSC will bring together students from colleges and universities across the country and around the world to present their own research papers written in the tradition of the great Austrian School intellectuals such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Sennholz.

Mises Institute-Peru is proud to present this English-language version of an article written by Ludwig von Mises that, until now, was only available in Spanish. The text was translated by Lucas Ghersi.

The November-December issue of The Austrian, now in mailboxes, is now also available online [PDF]. In this issue, we take a look at whether central bankers can really be trusted to centrally plan the global economy. Also included is the latest book review from David Gordon, and numerous photos from our 35th Anniversary Gala and from our Fellows program.

For listeners of Historical Controversies, it might be of some profit to discuss the Misesian approach to history. To the best of my (admittedly imperfect) ability, I try to employ Mises’s historical method — dubbed “thymology” — to the historical analysis I offer. But what is thymology, and how does it relate to praxeology?

Fighting poverty is a favorite pastime of government because politicians get to portray themselves as champions of the poor. However, the unfortunate few tend to be far fewer in number when aid is extended privately instead of through tax funded programs.

Is populism inherently bad?

Deirdre McCloskey, speaking earlier this month to a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Stockholm, certainly thinks so. Her broad and sweeping liberal critique of populism focused not on criticisms of current populist movements, but rather on the big-picture issues of tyranny and prosperity. And to her credit she willingly attacks two sacred cows that give force to populism, namely democracy and inequality:

Bitcoin and the blockchain technology are wonderful inventions; its anonymity, decentralised technology and speed of transactions just to mention a few features that have aroused supporters. The extension of competition into the domain of money that it represents is perhaps even more welcomed, coming as it does after almost a century of completely dominant fiat currency regimes (or feeble gold exchange systems).

THE AUSTRIAN: As Austrians, we’re often noting that we seek to explain and describe economic cycles, and not necessarily predict what’s going to happen next week. So, how would you describe and explain the state of the economy right now?

If everyone could just have a college degree imagine how prosperous America would be? That’s the idea behind free community college tuition and cheap government insured student loan debt. There is no sense stopping at undergraduate, maybe we should all have a law degree?