The Austrian Theory of Economic Progress

What makes a society prosper? Shawn Ritenour lays out the Austrian theory of economic progress, and its quarrel with mainstream growth theory. There is no single cause of prosperity, he argues—four “vehicles” drive it: the division of labor, capital accumulation, technological advance, and entrepreneurship. Conventional models can analyze each in isolation but miss the harder task of synthesis: how they must work together. And they leave out the one factor that coordinates the rest—the entrepreneur, the driving force who directs capital, labor, and technology toward what people actually want.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.

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