Other Schools of Thought

The General Theory is not a book explaining economics to his followers at all, but a propaganda tool to lead them to his vision of a non-Marxist socialist nirvana.

Population growth and specialization are not enough to make economies grow. The key ingredient is entrepreneurship.

One of the great and most persistent errors of classical liberals is to believe in "good government," a government that does "what it is supposed to do." But no state empowered to do what is supposedly necessary will restrain itself to those things. It will expand as much as public opinion will tolerate.

Dressing up the history of the world, and its economic development, in terms of transaction costs is mostly not very helpful.

"Herein lies the key to changing society — changing public opinion or people's preferences toward government. And the only way people are likely to change their preferences is through education and persuasion; force is ineffective."

Things might have been much worse were it not for the efforts of a relative handful of intellectuals who have fought against socialist theory for more than a century. Without them, it might have been 99% in support of socialist tyranny.

Bob Murphy and Ben Powell discuss Ben's newly-released book Socialism Sucks, co-authored with Robert Lawson.

The characteristic principle of capitalism is that it is mass production to supply the masses. Big business serves the many.

Henry Hazlitt's The Failure of the "New Economics" published in 1959, is still the best refutation of Keynesian economics to be found anywhere — sixty years later.

Presented at Mises University 2019.