There is not a single person in the world, or even a group of a hundred persons, that could make me. I am Mises University, the annual flagship week-long Austrian economics mini-university held at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. I start with online applications by students following an announcement on mises.org. I therefore require all of the technology that goes into producing internet communications that involves thousands of individuals, over decades, from all over the world.
Then there is the planning for travel (The Mises institute offers travel scholarships to some students), which involves all of the technology involved in automotive and airline travel involving thousands of individuals, over decades, from all over the world. There is all the human capital required by Mises Institute staff and faculty to arrange for all of this, involving decades of education on the part of all of them and everything that goes into that.
Students are housed at the Auburn University hotel and have breakfast at a pancake house a three minute walk away every morning. Think of all the know-how that goes into making available a great hotel and a great breakfast place with all the ingredients beginning with wheat farms, flour mills, the raising and marketing of cattle and hogs, the bakery industry, and on and on.
Once Mises University begins we have decades and decades of education, research, publication, and teaching on display by eighteen or so Ph.D. economists and teachers in a beautiful building with a state-of-the art lecture hall and state-of-the-art video and audio technology. Which of course is also the result of decades of efforts by thousands of individuals from all over the world. Then there are the lunches at the Mises Institute which involve, well, you must have caught on by now.
We give away books to students and they ship home hundreds from our bookstore as well. Think “I, Bookstore” and you get the idea of all that goes into that, beginning with the lumberjack industry and the production of paper pulp, the ink industry, etc.
A photo of all the students and faculty has been taken each year, going back to the mid 1980s. This requires even more technology that is the result of, well, you know. At the end of the week is an optional exam that has a written and an oral part with monetary awards for first, second, and third place. The awards are made possible by the generous donations of supporters from all walks of life and all occupations, from lawyers to farmers to entrepreneurs to just about anything and everything.
There’s a lot more to Mises University but by now, dear reader, you must get the point. Just as no one in the world could possibly make something as simple as a pencil all by himself, as the great Leonard Read explained in his famous essay, I, Pencil, so it is with Mises University. This massive cooperation and collaboration by thousands of people, many of whom are from all over the world, occurs every year not to make a profit, for we are a nonprofit organization. It occurs because there is still enough freedom in the world to be able to advance the cause of liberty through economic, historical, and philosophical education in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. There is nothing else in the world like it.
