Recent Podcast Episodes

Bob responds to a new working paper from the Geo-chartalism project, which claims to offer a complete theory of the price level by combining insights from Menger, Cantillon, and Warren Mosler.

The bulk of the US gold reserves held in Fort Knox are made up of impure “non-standard” bars that don’t qualify for use in international settlements.

The aggregate net worth of all Americans is $170 trillion. Total government liabilities (on and off the books) are $160 trillion. Rick Rule: "I just don't understand how that great big large number goes away." Neither does the Fed.

The UK does not have an energy problem, it has a freedom problem.

Luck egalitarians fallaciously declare property and wealth to be illegitimate or at least suspect due to a mysterious, unquantifiable force called luck. Their arguments fail even if what they claim about luck is true.

Ryan McMaken, Jonathan Newman, and Joshua Mawhorter of the Mises Institute take a look at the politics of "fedspeak" and what officials at the Federal Reserve really mean when they say they're going to fix the Fed.

The old republic is gone. The constitutional order of the Jeffersonian years—i.e., the so-called "American experiment"—was swept away long ago.

The dearth of child-bearing in western countries like the US is seen as a political crisis. Yet, if there is any place in our lives where government should stay out, it is in the area of childbirth.

The Trump administration’s downsizing USAID has brought the usual claims: that without US aid, millions of poor people around the world will die of starvation and disease. Not surprisingly, the claims are exaggerated.

In his concluding argument, Molinari envisions a society where security is provided by competing private firms chosen voluntarily by consumers.

Molinari describes the inevitable consequences of monopolized security: rising costs, declining quality, and the use of force against the very citizens the government claims to protect.

Molinari argues that majority rule is no more legitimate than royal absolutism when it violates individual rights.

Molinari distinguishes between society, which arises naturally from voluntary human cooperation, and government, which imposes itself through force.

Molinari describes how coercive control over defense led to the familiar abuses of taxation, war, and the suppression of individual liberty.

Molinari draws a parallel between monopoly and communism, arguing that both represent departures from the principle of free competition.

Molinari frames this choice as the central political question that determines whether a society will be free or oppressed.

Molinari confronts the common objection that security is somehow different from other goods and must be exempted from market provision.

Molinari applies the general principle of free competition directly to the provision of security services.

Molinari argues that the division of labor and voluntary cooperation form the natural basis of social organization.

Molinari opens by establishing that humans have a fundamental need for security of their persons and property.