Recent Podcast Episodes

The drive for military conscription has always depended upon the use of propaganda, since governments cannot make an honest and genuine case for the wars they start.

Mises Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Mark Thornton joins Lena Petrova to discuss Federal Reserve policy, rising government debt, and the risks of inflation and recession. Drawing on Austrian economics, Thornton explains how artificially low interest rates fuel market bubbles and examines energy disruptions, the AI investment boom, and the future of the dollar.

We are told that Americans live under a state that claims “consent of the governed,” but when does the government seek our consent for anything?

Dr. Mark Thornton presents Hayek's "Choice in Currency," which diagnoses inflation as an ancient superstition revived by Keynes and proposes a radical remedy — letting people freely choose their money — now finding modern expression in cryptocurrency and the return to gold.

Dr. Peter Klein walks through Hayek's landmark 1945 essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society," showing how the price system communicates dispersed knowledge and why that makes comprehensive central planning impossible.

Dr. Joseph Salerno unpacks Hayek's 1949 essay "The Intellectuals and Socialism," which explains why the intellectual class is systematically biased toward socialism, and why classical liberals must recover their nerve to counter it.

Dr. David Gordon examines Hayek's reply to Galbraith, "The Non Sequitur of the 'Dependence Effect,'" showing why the claim that advertising-created wants are less "real" would, taken seriously, dismiss all of civilization.

Dr. Jonathan Newman explains Hayek's "The Meaning of Competition," which dismantles the neoclassical "perfect competition" model and recasts competition as a dynamic discovery process.

Dr. Jonathan Newman presents Hayek's "Why the Worst Get on Top", a critique of socialism distinct from the calculation and knowledge problems — showing that collectivism structurally selects the most ruthless for power.

Mark Thornton argues the AI data-center bond boom is the latest techno bubble—cheap-money malinvestment dressed up as a new era.

Economist Jeffery Degner joins Ryan McMaken to discuss why government plans to increase the birth rate have never actually worked. But offering to give voters free money for having children is often good politics.

Dr. Mark Thornton called the housing bubble in 2004. For four years, he was told he was wrong. He now says every paper-dollar asset you own is facing a very difficult future, and the AI buildout is the clearest warning sign he has seen since.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, many seek to rehabilitate the War on Terror by appealing to the horror of 9/11, the right to respond, and the ideal of fighting terrorism. Many now demand that we judge an idealized “War on Terror” by its intentions rather than the war that actually occurred.

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Connor, and Tho discuss what appears to be a coordinated call to regulate AI. Is this a benevolent plea to save humanity, or a thinly veiled attempt to establish a cartel?

The top AI CEOs aren't acting like they genuinely believe their technology will soon cause human extinction. But they are acting like the successful cartelizers of history, who recognized that state power is the best way to protect market dominance.

Both Brazil and the US had slavery in the 1800s, but the US economy flourished while Brazil’s languished. If slavery was the engine for US economic growth, as leftists claim, then why didn’t Brazil's economy match that of the US?

The latest reminder of the Federal Reserve's record of failure, which now extends longer than five years, comes with the most recent inflation measure.

Stijn Schmitz welcomes back Economist and Senior Fellow from the Mises Institute, Dr. Mark Thornton. Dr. Thornton paints a dire picture of the global economy, arguing that widespread socialist policies are driving governments to extreme borrowing, money printing, and protectionism. He points to the trade war and real conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as direct consequences, which have disrupted diesel, crude oil, and fertilizer production. This creates a global pinch on agriculture and mining, threatening food supplies and crop yields, while strategic energy reserves are depleted, leaving economies vulnerable. The resulting higher fuel and food prices are squeezing consumers worldwide, whose wages are failing to keep pace with inflation, leading to a systematic harm of the working class while asset bubbles benefit the wealthy.

In the name of “saving” college sports, Congress steps well past its bounds to micromanage the NCAA.

Lenin wrote that the capitalists would provide the rope by which they would hang themselves. That certainly seems to be the case with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which received strong financial help from the center of crony capitalism itself: Wall Street.