Video

Carl Menger (b. 1840) dared to create something he called the Austrian School of Economics. His was a new way of doing economic analysis. He sided with Aristotle’s realism.

Why did Mises do certain things in response to certain events?  This first full biography of Mises seeks to answer those many questions. In the first four chapters, Hulsmann covers Mises’ roots.

Somehow I can’t stop watching this

A debate between Dr. Walter Block and Dr. Boyd Blundell at the Loyola Economics Club at Loyola University, New Orleans, in 2007.

We have today a hybrid of two forms of banking — loan banking (non-inflationary) and deposit banking (inflationary if not 100% reserve holdings).  The cause of booms is the credit expansion by central banks that is not backed by pools of private savings.

In the history of money, bartering was awkward because wants were not divisible. Direct exchange depended upon a double coincidence of wants. Demand for a medium of exchange grew until a general medium of exchange emerged, like gold and silver.

Competition can mean rivalry or freedom. All firms must serve the preferences of consumers in order to exist. Monopoly has historically been an artificial privilege granted by the state.

Time preference says that individuals prefer satisfaction now to later, present to future. This explains the loan market. In the structure of production, the capitalist pays wages now, despite the fact that he himself does not get paid until the final stage when the product actually comes to market.

Causal-realist analysis allows imaginary constructs like the ERE — Evenly Rotating Economy — in order to isolate certain factors like interest.  There would be no profit or loss in the ERE, because those can only exist under conditions of uncertainty.

As with all government intervention, price controls do not achieve what their originators think they will. Trying to maintain a supply of milk by putting a price control on it will cause shortages, which are the very situations the price manipulators said they wanted to avoid.