Calculation and Knowledge

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 21 July 2015.

The only thing defense spending actually defends are the profits of defense contractors.

It’s a great time to be studying entrepreneurship. Today as never before entrepreneurs are confronted with “grand challenges” both in the marketplace and society more broadly. And despite constant efforts to stifle their work, entrepreneurs rise to these challenges, thereby showing their vital role in solving some of our deepest economic and social problems. 

Many claim that great advances in technology come primarily through government spending on research. In fact, government tech spending crowds out other innovations while favoring certain interest groups at everyone else's expense.

It is now commonplace for governments to measure economic prosperity with GDP metrics. Numerous arbitrary rules and faulty assumptions behind these measures, however, skew our view of how economies grow and living standards improve.

Garrison has given economists a useful way to illustrate Keynes’s theory, but there are two fundamental problems with Garrison’s interpretation.

The Fed has been messing with interest rates for a century and suddenly they have forgotten how to raise interest rates?

For those new to Austrian economics, there are few modern scholars whose work I would recommend more enthusiastically than Salerno’s.

"Giving back" is big these days, but how can we know if we’re really making a contribution that someone values? Economics, fortunately, gives us an answer: the best way to "give back" is to earn honest money.