Free Markets

Interviewed by Michael Beitler on the “Free Markets” internet radio program; 18 June 2009.

Working closely with other fellows and resident Mises faculty, sharing concerns and solutions, networking as a Mises summer fellow is a big leg up for the young Austrian in meeting the challenge of launching a successful career in an academic world that is again growing increasingly hostile to the market economy and society.

Libertarians have been critical of zoning laws, which restrict the ability of property owners to develop their property or use it for their desired purposes.

True prosperity did not return until "the federal government relinquished its stranglehold on the American economy."

The wealth that strip-club patrons and strip-club moguls thought they had to throw around was but an illusion, and the reality is sobering for the entertainers, cabbies, politicians, and others who have been riding the strip-club boom.

"There is no incentive for bank depositors to go to the trouble of determining a bank's soundness if the government is going to guarantee deposits."

"Like all things designed to suit the taste of the masses, advertising is repellent to people of delicate feeling."

The progressives demanded efficiency in government and spurned traditional American practices as obstacles on the path to needed reforms.

"A manager is a junior partner of the entrepreneur, as it were, no matter what the contractual and financial terms of his employment are."

But what happens when government sanctions, and in effect legalizes, counterfeiting, either by itself or by other institutions? Counterfeiting then becomes a grave economic and social problem indeed. For then there is no one to guard our guardians against their depredations of private property.