The Human Action Podcast

Mises.org editor Ryan McMaken (Mises.org/McMaken) joins Jeff Deist live at Mises U to make the radical case for decentralization of political power. They tackle the Misesian view of self-determination, Professor Bryan Caplan's recent critique of decentralization as mechanism for liberty, how subsidiarity could improve the ugly culture wars in the US, and why smaller states—and smaller electorates—...

The Supreme Court is hopelessly politicized, far too powerful, and relentlessly hostile to liberty. Our legal expert Allen Mendenhall joins Jeff Deist to discuss the liberal and illiberal aspects of nominee Brett Kavanaugh's record, the limits of originalism, and the intractable reasons why changing the makeup of the Court won't save us from a rapacious federal government.

Daniel Lacalle joins Jeff Deist to discuss how and why central banks are trapped, stuck with ultra-low interest rates and expansionary policies that produce astonishingly little real growth. This is a hard-hitting and sober look at what rising interest rates will mean, why academics and bankers are so clueless about the monetary side of financial markets, and why Austrians need to offer real-world...

Public sector unions think it's okay to force employees who aren't union members to pay dues that fund leftwing lobbying. Libertarians support any voluntary associations, including unions, but oppose compelled speech and legislatively-mandated collective bargaining. Our guest Jacob Huebert is the attorney who won the enormously important Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court case, this week. He's also an...

Caitlin Long recently joined us in San Francisco for an inside look at how blockchain technology might blow up the financial service and banking industries. This is a presentation you won't want to miss from someone at the cutting edge of both blockchain technology and the legal landscape surrounding it.

Mises.org editor Ryan McMaken joins Jeff Deist for an entertaining look at the California ballot measure that would split the Golden State into three distinct parts. It's long overdue, says Ryan, and not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Danielle Booth, a veteran of the Dallas Fed and author of 'Fed Up: An Insider's Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America' (Mises.org/FedUp), joins the show to consider whether—or if—the Fed can ever return to "normal" monetary policy. Raising interest rates might slow or even crash equity markets, while causing US debt service to spike. But leaving rates low keeps the US economy in zombi...

The Left makes excuses for Venezuela, college students wear Che Guevara shirts, and polls show growing support for socialism among millennials. Our friend Yuri Maltsev, a Soviet expat with no illusions about the real nature of state planning, joins the show to explain why (deluded and rich) western progressives, academics, elites, and media won't let go of their socialist project.

Jeff Deist joins his friend John O'Donnell on Power Trading Radio to talk about everything from money to Marx to whether "unilateral" free trade is a good idea.

This week, Mises Weekends features a 1988 lecture from Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe on Marxist and Austrian class analysis. It might surprise some that Dr. Hoppe sees some "intellectual affinities" between the two, in the way that each identifies exploitation among a ruling class. Of course, for Austrians, we identify that it is the state - not the bourgeois - who is the threat to the masses. Tune in fo...

Sandwiched between progressive avatars Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR, Calvin Coolidge gets little acclaim. But Coolidge historian and biographer Amity Shlaes (AmityShlaes.com) makes the case for libertarians to view "Silent Cal" favorably, as someone who deeply and instinctively distrusted grandiose government. With the Great War over, Coolidge called for "normalcy" — meaning peace — st...

Our guest is Dr. Per Bylund of Oklahoma State University, who joins Jeff Deist to dispel some of the myths surrounding artificial intelligence and mass data collection. AI is just the next evolution of smart software, Bylund argues, and should be celebrated like all technology as higher order capital goods that increase productivity and wealth. He also argues that Hayek's knowledge problem won't b...

A week ago Trump tweeted about leaving Syria. Now the US and other western nations stand at the brink of a new war in Syria, one that threatens much greater conflict with Russia. Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute joins Jeff Deist to discuss whether John Bolton is now running US foreign policy, what Bibi Netanyahu told Trump on the phone, and whether cooler heads in the administration are...

At last month's Austrian Economics Research Conference, we were honored to be joined by Kevin Dowd, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at Nottingham University. Dowd presented a blistering critique of modern central bankers and their mania for monetary stimulus. In this excerpt from his talk, he explains how policies like negative interest rates not only reflect bad economic thinking, but also pos...

Our guest Michael Watson joins Jeff Deist after delivering a provocative paper last week at our research conference comparing Mises and Thomas Aquinas. They discuss Misesian praxeology, Catholicism, charity, altruism, and personal relationships in an attempt to decide what acts lie within and without the scope of economics. Are humans really super-rational Homo Economicus beings, per John Stuart M...

The great James Bovard addresses our annual research conference in Auburn on the dismal failures of government regulation — from farm subsidies to steel tariffs to FDA drug trials.

After watching students across the nation march this week against gun rights, are we seeing young Americans abandoning liberty? Joining Dr. Paul and Daniel McAdams on the Liberty Report, Jeff explains that he thinks the media exaggerates the appeal of the left to Millennials and their successors in "Generation Z."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was at it again last week, insisting that the supremacy of federal law is "settled"—which is his way of saying nullification and secession are illegal. But Sessions is hardly alone in his thinking, which would be right at home on the pages of Salon or National Review. Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center joins Jeff Deist to discuss how we can fight back again...

Economist Dan Mitchell joins Jeff Deist to discuss what might be the biggest threat of all to American prosperity: the shocking and unconscionable US government debt. What does $20 trillion in Treasury IOUs really mean for the private economy? Will the US government ever default and force bond holders to take a well-deserved haircut—or will the Fed continue to bail out Congress with low interest r...

The gun control debate is nothing more than a smokescreen: another divisive and emotional issue in a country obsessed with politicizing every human ill, all premised on the wildly irrational idea that we can get rid of 300 million firearms. But there is a market for safe schools and safe public spaces, a market security entrepreneurs could fill if government got out of the way. Mises.org editor Ry...

North Korea is not the poorest country on earth, but it is undoubtedly the most miserable. Michael Malice has been there, and joins Jeff Deist to discuss the bizarre economics of life in a country with virtually no outside trade. China and Russia provide critical imports, especially oil and grain, without which the DPRK would truly grind to a halt. But this is foreign aid disguised as trade for wo...

With stock markets in turmoil earlier this week, the Mises Institute's resident expert on booms and busts joins Jeff Deist to make sense of it. Will new Fed Chair Jerome Powell do everything possible to prop up markets, or will he be more hawkish than Janet Yellen? What kinds of indicators does Mark look for to predict trouble (hint: it's not the VIX). Why does the volume of margin loans matter, a...

Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute joins Jeff Deist for an unbridled discussion of the true costs of war. We know the US spends more on "defense" than many big countries combined, but what are the actual numbers? How long can the federal budget sustain empire and entitlements? Will rising interest rates finally force Congress to stop expanding wars, building bases, buying useless weapons s...

Jeff Deist joins his friend "Mance Rayder" to discuss the political and economic state of the union, the endless fractures within libertarianism, a different way to look at immigration, and how Rothbard's fans and detractors alike benefit from reading him.

By every measure extreme poverty in Third World nations is decreasing rapidly. But what about the US and the West? Economist and mises.org editor Ryan McMaken joins Jeff Deist for a wide-ranging discussion of what makes people rich, and how economists should measure wealth. This great discussion explains the decline of real incomes and savings rates in the West, the moral hazards created by centra...