Recent Podcast Episodes

The right to be able to enter into contracts with others is fundamental to free markets and a free society. That means people should be able to engage in discrimination.

The United States survived the first Great Depression, although it permanently changed the role of government. Will excessive government spending and money creation lead to Great Depression II?

New York City’s government has imposed draconian rent controls. The natural outcome, as economists note, has been massive shortages, as apartment owners no longer have an incentive to rent empty apartments.

"How do I explain why private ownership and decent​ralized ownership of weapons is a good thing without using the Second Amendment?"

Ryan McMaken takes a broad theoretical and international view of the topic of secession.

Mark sees reasons to be optimistic about the future.

Christian Sandström is a Swedish economist who joins Bob to make the case that massive government funding projects aren't necessary to promote science or industrial growth.

On this week's Radio Rothbard, Ryan and Tho reflect on the fourth anniversary of the political response to covid. 

Governments in the US subsidize immigration through a bevy of welfare programs. The effect of subsidization is predictable: you get more of what you subsidize. This is true for student loans, ethanol, immigrants, and more.

Paul Krugman claims that the real factor determining inflation is the rate of unemployment, not increases in the supply of money. As usual, he is wrong.

Few economists—even the free-market advocates—understand what caused the Great Depression. No, the Fed didn’t cause the Depression by failing to inflate the currency. Instead, it was the Fed’s inflation that led to the disastrous early events.

As Murray Rothbard has noted, there is an important distinction between nation and state. The former is a voluntary association of people while the latter is coercive and predatory. Progressives, of course, claim the opposite.

Many economic think tanks espouse that national defense spending benefits Americans at large. It doesn’t. The notion that military spending "bolsters" the economy is yet another Keynesian fable.

It is during "emergencies" when we learn who really holds political power, and how ineffective are constitutional measures designed to limit the regime.

Many of the high-flying businesses that received massive publicity turned out to be the creation of a bubble economy. Not all businesses are flashes in a pan; many of them continue to serve as the backbone of our economy.

Mark discusses Ludwig von Mises's important contributions to free trade theory.

We may be governed by incompetent elites, but even they have not taken away our free will and ability to think for ourselves. We can look to Mises and Rothbard for inspiration.

Activist pro-immigration groups in Great Britain, while being heavily funded by government money, are using that money to stop orderly immigration and replace it with chaos. Taxpayers are not only on the hook to fund these groups, but also bear the brunt of immigration failures.

Central banks have had the chutzpah to claim credit for slowing down the rise of consumer prices. The truth is they have taken advantage of the supply boost from fading pandemic dislocations to pursue continued monetary inflation.

Next month, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether New York regulatory authorities can target the NRA simply because of the organization’s political viewpoints.