According to the New York Times (NYT) article July 17, 2022, “The pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end,” a major threat to our living standard is the obsession with economic growth. Herman Daly—an economist that has been exploring for more than fifty years the relationship between economic growth and individuals’ living standards—is of the view that the pursuit of economic growth causing ecological harm.

In September 2008, the worsening global financial crisis hit a new phase when Lehman Brothers collapsed and it became undeniable that “hard times” had arrived for most ordinary people. By then, the unemployment rate had been climbing for months, foreclosures had skyrocketed, and the yield curve had been inverted through much of 2006 and 2007. Months later, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) declared that what we now call “the Great Recession” had begun in December 2007.

Jeff Deist: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to The Human Action Podcast. We’ve got an excellent guest; he’s a friend of mine and also a friend of the Mises Institute, Stephan Livera. Many of you know him from the bitcoin world, from his eminently successful podcast, The Stephan Livera Podcast, but also, he’s a managing director at Swan Bitcoin International. And our topic this week is political freedom, economic freedom, and personal freedom and how these three things juxtapose.

John Mearsheimer recently gave an important lecture on the Ukrainian war. He warns that “the United States is now effectively at war with Russia.” Mearsheimer argues, “The United States is principally responsible.” Alexander Stubb contends in a reply to Mearsheimer, “The only place to blame is the Kremlin, Putin, and Russia.”