Biographies

Bob Murphy explains how he got into Austrian economics and libertarianism.

Writing about the cultural background of Ludwig von Mises, an eminent former compatriot of mine, poses some difficulties: how to present you with a world radically different from yours, a world far away, which in many ways no longer exists.

Teaching literature has changed now that the humanities have become a species of what is known as grievance studies, concerned with whether a given author is sexist or racist or classist. This is a cultural shift in education, and not for the better.

There is no other means to attain full employment, rising real wage rates and a high standard of living for the common man than private initiative and free enterprise.

Presented at Mises University 2019.

"He loved liberty as other men love power," was the judgment passed on Benjamin Constant by a contemporary. His lifelong concern, both as a writer and politician, was the growth of human freedom. 

Without Rothbard Austrian economics and libertarianism would have taken a very different turn.

It becomes evident from Richard von Mises's fundamental work that mathematical probability theory can never be applicable to economics, or to any other study of human action.

Unlike Hamilton, Jefferson did not believe that state coercion should be used to re-shape and control society and markets.