The Human Action Podcast

Michael Boldin from the Tenth Amendment Center (http://TenthAmendmentCenter.com) joins Jeff Deist to discuss the philosophical, electoral, and logistic realities standing in the way of creating a more politically decentralized America. Beyond thorny questions about federal land, federal entitlements, and "national defense," there are a million small ways to move power away from Washington. Both conservatives and progressives claim to want just that—so what holds us back? Michael, a onetime progressive, has the strategic and practical answers for liberty-minded people.

Our final show of the year features a talk given by Dr. Bob Murphy at a recent Mises Institute event in Orlando. His topic is the culture wars– and if you think America is divided now, just wait until we have another crash like '08. But Bob is ready with a prescription: less politics & smaller polities. It's time to stop hating each other and start reducing the political power wielded over us, as Bob conveys in his own unique and humorous style.

Wall Street Journal and USA Today writer James Bovard joins Jeff Deist to diagnose what's wrong with our body politic today. From relentlessly tribal voting to rank hypocrisy and "whataboutism," Americans are angry bunch. And their credulous belief in the sanctity of authorities like the FBI is almost entirely determined by whether their party holds the presidency. Is there any political system that can survive the division created by politics in the first place? Jim Bovard brings his Menckenesque perspective to Mises Weekends to discuss our slavish devotion to politics. And don't miss Jim's great article on the FBI as America's secret police or his new book on political perfidy.

Find Jim's new book at Mises.org/Frauds.

So far, the federal investigation into Russian collusion during the 2016 election has been a farce. Lawless and corrupt federal prosecutors—and their pet police agency, the FBI—dominate the headlines. Yet, the Constitution never provided for a federal police force, and lists very few federal crimes. So, how and why did federal prosecutors and agents become so powerful? Mises.org editor Ryan McMaken joins Jeff Deist to discuss.

For further reading, see Bill Anderson's Mises Wire article, "Federal Prosecutors Are Running Amok" at Mises.org/Run-Amok.

Professor Lucas Engelhardt, a popular lecturer at Mises University (Mises.org/MU18), joins Jeff Deist to discuss the monetary policy landscape. Janet Yellen makes jokes about $20 trillion in federal debt, but what about the trillions the Fed added to its own balance sheet since the Crash of '08? What will happen to the extraordinary amount of bank reserves parked in no-man's land, not being lent by banks? Can Mises's work help us understand what happens when the supply of money increases much faster than demand for it? How does new money and credit flow into the economy unevenly, benefiting those closest to the government and central bank troughs? And is there an ugly endgame scenario, where rapid asset price inflation (i.e. equity and real estate markets) devolves into rapid consumer price inflation?

Fifteen years ago Gabriel Calzada was a Fellow at the Mises Institute who aspired to bring the Spanish Scholastics' tradition of liberty (mises.org/library/spanish-scholastics) to Latin America. Today he is president of Universidad Francisco Marroquín (ufm.edu/index.php/At_a_Glance), the truly remarkable private school in Guatemala. All students at UFM, regardless of major, take a core curriculum in libertarian thought. The board of directors and almost all professors are entrepreneurs rather than academics. And UFM's charter provides the freedom to experiment and think outside the box, resulting in projects like a business cycle observatory and MOOCs (massive open online course) on subjects like Don Quixote (donquijote.ufm.edu/en). If you're interested in what entrepreneurial education grounded in free-market economics can look like, don't miss this interview.

Chris Calton, host of the Mises Institute's "Historical Controversies" podcast, is back with a second season. If you enjoyed his revisionist view of America's drug war during the first season, you'll love his take on U.S. history during the latter 1800s. This episode, titled "The March to America's Civil War", is a fascinating account of the antebellum era. Tune in and find out why this podcast series is creating one of Stitcher's fastest growing audiences.

Historical Controversies is available online at:

https://Mises.org/HCPod

via RSS: https://mises.org/itunes/622

on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/historical-controversies/id1304510096?mt=2

Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/I3vmki7pz7jxond4x7qx5dfjv7y?t=Historical_Controversies

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/misesmedia/sets/historical-controversies

and Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=147145

Dr. Liliana Stern, professor of economics at Auburn University, joins Jeff Deist in studio to discuss the realities of life under communism. Growing up in Ukraine, Dr. Stern experienced privations that would be unthinkable to her undergraduate students. Even today, hot running water remains a rationed luxury in the region.

But if recent polls are correct, many of her students don't understand at all the horrors of collectivism. And they sometimes scoff at her terrifying depiction of what "single-payer" healthcare really means. Dr. Stern considers it her life's work to make Americans understand how good they've got it under (relative) capitalism, and to save young people from profound ahistorical ignorance.

You don't want to miss this show—and be sure to listen for her description of Ukrainian dentistry without anesthesia.

Our guest Trey Goff drafted a remarkable "Voluntaryist Constitution" designed to serve as the foundational legal document for a private society. Trey attempts nothing less than to define the characteristics and rules underlying a common law society, in the form of a polycentric constitutional order as envisioned by Murray Rothbard and legal scholar Randy Barnett. His goal was to create a blueprint for libertarians organizing startup or breakaway societies, one that deals with private property, rights, contracts, justice, and coercion in a rational and humane manner. The result is an inspiring and controversial document, as discussed in this great interview.

Read the Voluntaryist Constitution at Mises.org/Goff-VC.

Switzerland is no libertarian paradise. It has bureaucrats and a wayward central bank. But it remains an astonishing modern example of the principles of federalism and subsidiarity in action. In fact, it exemplifies Lew Rockwell's daydream: nobody much knows or cares who is president. Its federal administrative state demonstrates humility instead of hubris. And virtually all political decisions, from taxes to welfare to immigration, are decided locally. Claudio Grass joins Jeff Deist to discuss what libertarians can learn from Switzerland, and how neutrality in two disastrous European wars shapes Swiss DNA today.