Recent Podcast Episodes
Role of Interest in Entrepreneurial Calculations
The drop in interest rates makes unrealizable projects appear profitable and realizable. Entrepreneurs embark upon the execution of such projects.
Privatizing Rivers, Voluntary Slave Contracts, Environmentalism
As interviewed by Dan Cofall on the Wall Street Shuffle radio program; CNN Radio; Dallas, Texas, 10 May 2010.
Mercantilism in Spain
When the influx of silver and gold from the Spanish colonies in the New World dried up, little or nothing remained. But that was not all.
The Education Bubble
The average range of tuition inflation is normally 8% annually, and prices have not fallen or stabilized once since 1977, regardless of economic cl
Thank Goodness for Capitalism
There are thousands of people around the world wishing to live in the average American household, where bread is just a fraction of one’s inc
The Nature of Interest
Men are always forced to choose between satisfaction in nearer and remoter periods of the future.
Karl Hess and the Death of Politics
"Some may wonder why it took Hess 20 years to notice all this, why it took a man this obviously intelligent so long to grasp that the Republicans were pretty much the same as the New Deal Democrats he opposed, but with window dressing."...
Mercantilism as the Economic Aspect of Absolutism
As the economic aspect of state absolutism, mercantilism was of necessity a system of state-building, of big government, of heavy royal expenditure
Is Healthcare a Basic Human Right?
When government assigns positive rights to others, some of us will be forced to pay for it. No right to healthcare is a legitimate right.
Why Free Markets Matter
A free market is just people making voluntary exchanges. Woods makes an example out of the creation of a ham sandwich. Welfare and warfare undermine the natural economic harmony of large scale social cooperation - the free market.
What is Sound Money?
Sound money even sounds heavier than unsound money. Gold and silver originated on the market and reigned as the preferred money because the metals were easily portable, homogeneous, highly divisible, highly durable, and naturally scarce. Paper has none of those attributes.
The Core of What Economics Teaches
Austrian economists do have a realistic way of looking at human action. A policy of getting further into debt when you are already deeply in debt just doesn't make sense to them.
Technology and the Market
Tech advances only happen under freedom, they do not just happen. Collectives do not make technology, only individuals do. Eliminating taxes would encourage investments. Tearing down all interventions and regulations would free enterprise.
Jean Bodin: Apex of Absolutist Thought in France
While Montaigne paved the way for the dominance of absolutist thought in France, surely the founder or at least the locus classicus of 16th-century
William Godwin (1756–1836)
"I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others; but that exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service." —William Godwin
Zamyatin Foresaw Totalitarianism and the Politics of Sex
We, this satirical and heretical dystopian futurist book, ends by resolving whether or not the protagonist can find penultimate happiness in the co
The Skeptic as Absolutist: Michel de Montaigne
It is a favorite conceit of modern, 20th-century liberals that skepticism, the attitude that nothing can really be known as the truth, is the best
Are We a Self-Hating Commercial Society?
In a few short hours, I was assaulted ten times with the demand that I display social consciousness.
More Free or Less Free?
Do we have perennial libertarian problems, like losing our freedoms year after year? The long view of liberty shows that overall Americans are more free, but getting our ideas out there is required. The remnant exists and they will find us.