I have never had much enthusiasm for following politics; I found that a blanket condemnation of the whole subspecies Officeseeker stood me in good stead and saved me time to focus on more useful things, such as Lindsey Lohan’s current status.[1] I have never willingly given money to any politician, never pitched a chirpy phone call to a fellow citizen reminding them that today is election day, never joined any political party whatsoever, feeling that those who do missed the whole point of the Federalist Papers.

Austrian economists argue that individuals’ preferences are relevant to resource allocation only to the extent that they are demonstrated through action. Economics is, after all, about the process by which subjective preferences are converted into objective, observable market phenomena like prices and quantities (see Joe Salerno’s comment here). The Walrasian model, by contrast, takes consumer valuations as explicit magnitudes.

If Garet Garrett (1878–1954) is known at all today, it is by those who are captivated by the handful of in

Robert Higgs, Schlaurbaum laureate, delivers his address: The state is the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised — a fire that, at best, can be controlled for only a short time before it o’erleaps its improvised confinements and spreads its flames far and wide. Whatever promotes the growth of the state also weakens the capacity of individuals in civil society to fend off the state’s depredations and therefore augments the public’s multifaceted victimization at the hands of state functionaries.

Around the world there are many academics who make a living from Austrian economics. They write books, publish articles, organize conferences and are the people at the forefront of the movement. By constantly critiquing themselves and others, they build upon the Misesian framework, enriching, developing and deepening our understanding of praxeology. This group of people could be referred to as the producers of Austrian economics. There is another group of course: the consumers of Austrianism.

2007 Nobel Prize winner Leonid Hurwicz was a participant in the Ludwig Mises’ seminar at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Hurwicz tells us in his remarks commenting on a paper by Israel Kirzner published in the CATO Journal (pdf file). Hurwicz says he participated in the Mises seminar in the period 1938-1939. Curiously, Hurwicz also says he attended Hayek’s classes at the L.S.E. during the academic year 1938-1939.

A person’s education, wrote Murray Rothbard, is the “entire process of growing up, of developing all the facets of a man’s personality.”1

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007 jointly to Leonid Hurwicz, University of Minnesota, Eric S. Maskin, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Roger B.

The text of my contribution to the Mises Institute’s 25th anniversary conference is now online.