Recent Podcast Episodes

A critique of the German “Socialists of the Chair” and their social policy—by way of the Methodenstreit, the clash of control versus economic law, and Max Weber—showing how “social liberalism” abandons liberalism itself.

Bob uses U.S. economic history, centering on the greenback era, to work through some subtle but important distinctions in Austrian monetary theory.

Mises examines the doctrine of a “hampered” or regulated market as a distinct third system and answers Schmalenbach’s thesis that free enterprise was giving way to a bound economy.

The central essay: interventionism as a supposed economic system, the real nature of intervention, and how price ceilings, minimum wages, and similar measures defeat their own aims—leaving only a choice between the free market and socialism.

Mises’s 1929 preface, written in Vienna for the original German edition, presenting the essays as a sustained critique of interventionism, then the reigning economic policy across Europe and America.

Hans F. Sennholz, the translator, lays out Mises’s target—the belief in a “third system” of a hampered market economy standing between capitalism and socialism—and why that middle way cannot hold.

Margit von Mises introduces the collection, recalling that these essays date from the 1920s and noting that the final essay was added to the later German edition.

Dr. Mark Thornton warns that the monetary system may be moving toward greater digital control, persistent inflation, and a potential monetary reset.

Mark Thornton warns that war propaganda turns citizens into dupes. Ludwig von Mises’s critique of statism explains why foreign conflicts keep returning.

Austrian economics does not share the same methodology as we see in the economics mainstream. The Austrian emphasis on praxeology provides a better explanation of economic events than does the mathematically-bound mainstream.

Ryan McMaken dismantles three persistent myths of American healthcare before tracing the origins of social insurance to Bismarck's deliberate scheme to bind citizens to the state "by the chains of gratitude" and closing with Mises' 1944 prediction that a population half-dependent on government healthcare would never vote to dismantle it.

Intervention begets intervention. This was the case following the American Revolution, as the consequences of inflation, credit expansion, and wartime disruptions set up for the depression of 1784 in peacetime.

While Adam Smith is celebrated in some circles as the “Father of Free-Market Economics” (Austrians would disagree), his writings on the “disadvantages” of the worker are misleading.

As AI becomes a more important and visible part of our lives, the movement to regulate it also grows. The standard regulation narratives—that government regulates things in the name of the public interest—clearly do not fit the facts.

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Connor, and Tho discuss the recent SCOTUS decisions as well as JD Vance's recent praise for the economic views of Alexander Hamilton.

Every July 4th, politicians climb podiums, flags wave, a hundred million dollars’ worth of fireworks scatter across the sky, and somewhere between the hot dogs and the stadium-rock anthems, it becomes easy to confuse the theater of freedom with the substance of it.

Democratic socialist candidates are becoming a serious political challenge in Democratic Party primaries. Have Americans suddenly become convinced by the arguments in favor of command economies, or is there something deeper going on?

The media tells us that the rape allegations that brought down Graham Platner’s Senate campaign just came to light. Actually, the media had those allegations for months, but sat on them to protect Platner’s campaign.

"The main aim of American foreign policy is to impose the will of our ruling elite on the rest of the world." 

How the Industrial Revolution and foreign investment made some nations rich while others stayed poor, closing with Mises’s defense of capitalism.