Recent Podcast Episodes

If today they come for the smoker, tomorrow they will come for you. Neo-Prohibitionism has been long on the march.

For the entrepreneur in a market economy, nothing is a sure thing. Every business is only a short step from bankruptcy. No business possesses the power to make people buy what they do not want. All success is potentially fleeting.

Bob gives a guest lecture for Jonathan Newman’s MA course for the Mises Institute, on the history of, and new developments in, the pure time preference theory of interest.

The US has millions of idle workers. In a normal economy this would put a damper on demand. But in our money-printing economy, consumer demand is surging even as production falls behind. An employment bubble is the result. 

At the 2021 AERC, Jeff Herbener presented a defense of the pure time preference theory of interest, and mentioned Bob’s critique of it. This episode is a very informative discussion of their views.

Do huge wealth redistribution schemes like Biden's new plan actually make people better off? Some people will get a net benefit. How numerous are they? How many millions will take a net loss? The government has no idea.

Now that the average American voter is barely paying attention—and that the US is facing an economic crisis and weak recovery—it has become politically expedient to move further toward wrapping up a couple more lost wars. 

The ideas of critical race theory and critical white studies shield a ruling elite from vengeance by attempting to make the mass of white people the scapegoat for their own crimes.

Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government payroll. If elected officials no longer consider themselves servants of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, doles, and subsidies, democracy is done for.

Now that Cuban president Raul Castro has resigned the presidency of Cuba, will the US government lift its six-decade economic embargo against Cuba? Don't bet on it.

Patrick Newman and Tho Bishop join the show to dissect The Betrayal of the American Right, which is both a critical history and a fascinating political memoir of Rothbard's own journey to libertarianism.

People must still compete for resources in a socialist economy. In fact, the competition is intense. On the other hand, thanks to markets, basic necessities—and even basic luxuries—are now more more accessible than ever. 

It seems that governments want to convince us that they have saved the world when the reality is that the misguided lockdowns were the cause of the economic debacle and lifting them is the main cause of the recovery. 

The central bank has basically destroyed the business of risk, and commercial real estate remains a looming disaster. As a result, banks aren't lending to regular people. The economy increasingly relies on little more than newly printed money. 

The political climate that fostered panic and lockdowns a year ago is now changing. Legislatures are turning against governors and the public is no longer hysterical with fear. Politicians aren't sure what to do. 

Medium of exchange and store of value are very different products.

Jason Stanley's book on fascism is a jumbled mess which seems primarily to exist for the purpose of smearing everything Stanley doesn't like with the label of "fascism." 

Don’t expect Fauci and his supporters to give up on insisting that New York and Michigan are doing "the right thing" while Texas and Florida are embracing "human sacrifice" as a part of a "death cult." 

We all are too familiar with the approach to pandemics taken by governments at all levels in the US.

Since January there has been a concerted effort by Democrat leaders, former deep state officials, and America’s most despicable neoconservatives to push the Biden administration to utilize the power of the federal government against the supporters of Donald Trump.