Philosophy and Methodology

Recorded at The Mises Circle in Manhattan, on May 22nd, 2010.

"Keynes argues as if the government — or rather, 'forces outside the classical scheme of thought' — could control the volume without affecting any other aspect of the market economy. What sort of powers would government have to wield to be able to exert such a force?"

The drop in interest rates makes unrealizable projects appear profitable and realizable. Entrepreneurs embark upon the execution of such projects.

If you behave as a sovereign individual in your personal relationships, you will be contributing to your happiness and also to the transmission of the concept of individual sovereignty. That chain of good, I am certain, will abolish the chains of evil.

The abstraction called the "ecosystem" — which never seems to include mankind or civilization — has done far less for us than the oil industry, and the factories, planes, trains, and automobiles it fuels.

"The essence of 'immediate convertibility' is the difference between what Austrians call a claim transaction or warehouse receipt, like a demand deposit, and a credit transaction, like a time deposit."

Like school vouchers, the flat tax, and other pretenders, the AFV assumes the necessity of state intervention and tries to bend liberty around such strictures.

In a few short hours, I was assaulted ten times with the demand that I display social consciousness.

"There is a great need for an introductory economics text that begins with the fundamentals of human action, develops economic principles in a way that students can understand, and then applies these principles to economic policy."

At this point it no doubt seems like economists are the wet blankets of the world, but one of the most important implications of careful economic reasoning is that often, your schemes and programs will not just be ineffective, they will be positively destructive.