[This article is excerpted from a talk given June 17, 2021, at the Mises Institute’s Medical Freedom Summit in Salem, New Hampshire.]

Ladies and gentlemen, why are we here today?

Most readers are familiar with the notion of the “trickle-down effect.” This caricature is usually employed by left-leaning economists to denounce tax cuts for the entrepreneurial class. Writing for the Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham tells readers that slashing tax rates for the wealthy fails to stimulate employment, though rich people become more affluent.

[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in 2021.]

We’ve all heard about the newest insult to our lives and our children. I refer, of course, to the growing adoption of “critical race theory“ as part of public school curriculums. Why should we be surprised? Many of our top colleges have been adopting what can only be called Marxist indoctrination of their students for many years.

Can the type of money used change the culture of a society? This might seem like an absurd proposition, but it is supported by the arguments of proponents of the Austrian school of economics. 

First, let’s contextualize the importance of sound money as opposed to fiat money. Mises notes in The Theory of Money and Credit: “It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.“

In a previous installment, I pointed out that in On Liberty, John Stuart Mill advocated for minority opinion to be specially “encouraged and countenanced,”1  and thus that Mill was not an absolute free market thinker where opinion is concerned.

[This is a transcript of a talk given June 17, 2021, at the Mises Institute’s Medical Freedom Summit in Salem, New Hampshire.]

On behalf of everyone at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma and the Free Market Medical Association, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.