The Human Action Podcast

Our guests are Luis Cirocco and Dr. Rafael Acevedo, two Venezuelans who attend Mises University last week. Their report from that troubled country is chilling and depressing: food shortages, a lack of medical care and prescription drugs, soldiers and police running black markets, and an entrenched elite made rich after decades of crony socialism under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Oil prices remain very low, and the country's economy is so bad that civil war looms.

But our guests remind us that the opposition, pushed by the US CIA, is hardly better—"socialist lite," as they term it. Intellectuals in Venezuelan universities, many of them (badly) trained at Ivy League social science departments, offer nothing more than support for price controls and currency pegs. Horrific hyperinflation is the result.

What Venezuela needs is a wholesale intellectual revolution, toward markets and away from deeply ingrained socialism. Listen to this interview and better understand just how quickly Venezuela is unraveling—and how it could happen here.

Recorded live at Mises University 2017 at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. Jeff Deist interviews Mises Institute founder and Chairman, Lew Rockwell. Recorded on 29 July 2017.

Lysander Spooner called it "The Constitution of no authority." Conservatives fetishize it, but don't follow it. Progressives want it annulled. So, what should libertarians think about America's founding document?

Our guests Brion McClanahan and Allen Mendenhall give us the unadulterated history and unpleasant truths about constitutionalism—but also consider its underappreciated benefits.This is a discussion of the Constitution you won't hear anywhere else.

Dr. Mark Thornton joins Mises Weekends to explain the "business cycle" for what it really is: a series of booms (credit expansion) and busts (debt de-leveraging) engineered by central banks.

There's nothing natural, real, or sustainable about the current Yellen boom—so stay tuned for Mark's explanation of how it can all unravel.

Our old friend Richard Ebeling joins Mises Weekends to discuss the health of—and future prospects for—the Austrian school. There are far more Austrian and Austrian-friendly thinkers in academia, business, and the financial industry than ever before. Richard attended the famous South Royalton conference, so he knows just how far we've come. But are Austrians making real progress against the dominant neo-Keynesian orthodoxy? Are we growing on a per-capita basis? And what would Hayek, Rothbard, and Margit von Mises—all of whom Dr. Ebeling knew and spent time with—think of Austrian economics today?

Dr. Ron Paul joins Jeff Deist to talk about his decades as a congressman fighting the Fed, his efforts to legalize the use of gold and silver as untaxed currency, and his involvement with sound money initiatives in states like Arizona and Wyoming. Plus, Dr. Paul shares some great anecdotes about Reagan's Gold Commission, Alan Greenspan, and Paul Volcker.

The US criminal justice system is hopelessly broken, riddled with bad incentives and bad actors. In the wake of recent police shootings, Dr. Ed Stringham joins Jeff Deist to help us understand how and why private security firms could create vastly better outcomes for crime victims, society, and even perpetrators. This is a fascinating discussion you won't want to miss.

Recommended reading: Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life

Arguments for a "rules based" Fed are gaining momentum on both the political Left and Right— and even among some libertarians. Would the adoption of ideas like NGDP targeting and the "Taylor Rule" really make make the Fed less dangerous? Would they be an improvement on the Fed's current discretionary approach? Can monetary "rules" really contain booms and busts, or would Yellen and Co. simply break them at the first sign of the next crash? Professor Peter Klein joins Jeff to discuss.

David Gordon joins Jeff to consider the important philosophy—and philosophers—libertarians need to know. Starting with Mises's influences in Human Action, Dr. Gordon moves through the 20th century with a great discussion of John Rawls and Robert Nozick. He also suggests the books that Austro-libertarians need to read, even if they're primarily interested in politics or economics.

Dr. Joe Salerno and Karl-Friedrich Israel join Jeff Deist to discuss Mises's Human Action, perhaps the greatest treatise on economics ever written. But the book can be daunting for many, given its length and the sheer enormity of the systematic thought it presents. Our guests break down how and why everyone should read it, echoing Mises's belief that economics was the proper area of study for every thinking person. This is a great discussion of the history and behind a masterpiece of economics, epistemology, and philosophy. Read it free, here: https://mises.org/HumanAction