The Human Action Podcast

You probably haven't read Carl Menger's 'Principles of Economics', but you should: it's a groundbreaking work that created a new theory of value and built a foundation for praxeology. Dr. Joe Salerno joins us for the definitive podcast on the founder of the Austrian school. Dr. Joe Salerno's brief biography of Menger: https://mises.org/library/biography-carl-menger-founder-austrian-school-1840-192...

Professor Peter Klein (Mises.org/Klein) joins The Human Action Podcast to explain how and why.

This is the last Mises Weekends episode! But don't despair, Jeff will soon be back with a brand new format: The Human Action Podcast. The new show is not radically different, but focuses more exclusively on Austrian economics, its great books, and its great thinkers–with longer, more in-depth interviews. But don't take our word for it, tune in next week to the first show with David Gordon! Your RS...

Dr. Joe Salerno will address the annual Students for Liberty conference (mises.org/LibertyCon19) this week on the topic of his seminal article, "Mises on Nationalism, the Right of Self Determination, and the Problem of Immigration" (mises.org/MisesNationalism). While Mises had plenty to say about nation states and liberalism, his wrote relatively little about immigration per se. Dr. Salerno and Je...

Jeff Deist joins Australian podcaster Stephan Livera (@StephanLivera) for a in-depth look at money in an era of crazed monetary policy. They tackle how Austrian economics relates to cryptos, why gold still matters, how deflation and "hoarding" are healthy for an economy, and how any challenge to the central bank cartel could create a political upheaval far beyond banking and economics.

Our great friend Daniel Lacalle (dlacalle.com/en/), author of Escape from the Central Bank Trap, joins the show to discuss the perilous condition facing central banks after a decade of their own malfeasance. Daniel and Jeff discuss absurd reactions to the Fed's tiny interest rate hikes, the fragility of central bank policy in the face of enormous sovereign, corporate, and household debt, why expan...

The great comic Dave Smith (ComicDaveSmith.com) is the proud dad of a newborn baby girl. Will she witness fewer American wars in her lifetime than a girl born in 1918? Dave and Jeff Deist discuss the astounding news from Trump about reducing troops in Syria and Afghanistan, the growing push-back against neoconservative foreign policy from ordinary Americans of all stripes, the impassible rift in C...

Professor Carmen Dorobăț (Mises.org/Dorobat) grew up in Romania—too young to remember Ceaușescu, but deeply aware of what socialism did to her country. Fortunately, she discovered Ludwig von Mises during her university years and found her passion for economics. She joins Jeff Deist to discuss how Mises's work and legacy paved the way for her and an entire generation of younger scholars.

Climate Change (née Global Warming) is based on three premises: the earth's atmosphere is warming; humans are responsible for that warming; and warming is inherently bad. But even if we accept these premises, what economic trade-offs are warranted in response? No more air conditioning or private automobiles? Heavy carbon taxes? Outlawing relatively cheap fossil fuels and mandating expensive renewa...

Former Dallas Fed official Danielle DiMartino Booth (DiMartinoBooth.com) joins the show just as Chairman Jay Powell faces his first major challenge: will he keep raising rates as promised now that autos, housing, employment, and even tech stocks look soft? And if not, will he effectively signal that the US economy is in big trouble? DiMartino Booth and Jeff Deist discuss Powell's performance to da...

The midterm elections failed to produce an overwhelming Blue Wave, and political rancor in the US remains feverishly high. Now an astonishing new article in The Intelligencer (nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/maybe-its-time-for-america-to-split-up.html) considers the idea of a "federated" America, broken up into several political entities associated via compacts. It's not a dystopian view of a poss...

The legacy media doesn't report news, it produces a show. "The Show" lies to us, divides us, inflames the culture wars, and creates political division. The old broadcast networks, cable channels, newspapers, and magazines all actively work against liberty and correct economics—so the importance of alternative sources for news, economics, history, and politics has never been greater. Jeff Deist spo...

Dr. Yoram Hazony's new book 'The Virtue of Nationalism' (Mises.org/HazonyBook) asks several provocative questions: are nation-states necessarily illiberal? Are globalism and universalism inevitable? If so, why do we blithely assume a post-national world will be liberal and benign? Are movements toward supranational governance, always ordered around western political conceptions, a new form of impe...

This week, we feature a recent episode of Ryan McMaken's Radio Rothbard podcast (Mises.org/RothPod). We continue to hear about how capitalism and industrialization distract us from the important things in life. In reality, the historical record shows that it was industrialization and capitalism that propagated the conditions under which we can afford to treat each other more humanely. Radio Rothba...

Silicon Valley used to be a hotbed of libertarian thought, a place where innovation mattered more than government. Today, companies like Twitter and Facebook serve as de facto editors, banning users like Alex Jones for "wrong-think." Google dominates search, but may steer search results. And Amazon serves nefarious clients like the NSA with its cloud infrastructure. And all of them employ plenty o...

Allen Mendenhall from Faulkner University Law School joins Jeff Deist to break down the hyper-politicized spectacle of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. How did the Supreme Court become so wildly powerful, even while rubber-stamping the excesses of the executive and legislative branches? How much longer can America survive having deeply contentious issues like abortion and gun control decided b...

We take a break from economics this week to welcome our old friend Jim Bovard (Mises.org/Bovard) for an unflinching look at the disastrous politicization of everything in America. The nasty fight over Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation is only the latest example of a trend Rothbard identified decades ago, one that intensifies in the Trump era. Can we ever make politics matter less again?...

This weekend’s show features Jeff’s recent appearance on the radio show Turning Hard Times into Good Times hosted by Jay Taylor. They discuss the big picture aspects of the US economy—namely, what's going on civilizationally with debt and central banking, and the seemingly endless civil wars in the middle east. They also deconstruct the poisoned political landscape in Washington DC, despite the la...

The intellectual landscape today is far more favorable to markets and Austrian economics than 30, 50, or 100 years ago. Our job is to take the digital means at our disposal and make economics the stuff of everyday life, something relevant to ordinary people. So let’s drop the scrappy underdog posture, the quietism, the retreatism, and the remnant mentality, and fully restore proper economics to it...

Mary Ruwart (Mises.org/Ruwart) is a PhD chemist who worked for 20 years in Big Pharma, and she's seen regulatory capture at the FDA up close. She joins Mises Weekends to discuss the sobering reality of our medical cartel, and what all of us must do in the fight for health freedom in the US. How does government thwart radical research that might eliminate cancer, HIV, and chronic diseases like diab...

Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins and head of Cato's Troubled Currencies Projects, is an Austrian—but he's an Austrian who looks at markets first and foremost. He also thinks QE was the right thing for the Fed to do in 2008, Austrians are all wrong to focus on the Fed's balance sheet instead of the M4 "broad money" supply, and US debt is a more distant worry than the risk posed...

It turns out the best book on Bitcoin was written by someone who thinks the cryptocurrency is not a particularly good form of payment, not particularly anonymous, and not a good investment for most people. Saifedean Ammous, professor of economics at Lebanese American University, wrote 'The Bitcoin Standard' (Mises.org/BitStandard) to cut through the hype and examine crypto technology through a rig...

As the events of recent weeks demonstrate beyond doubt, political correctness is very real, deeply authoritarian, and wedded at the hip to progressive government. PC is not about respect or inclusivity, but rather a naked attempt to consciously manipulate language in service of progressive ends. Worst of all, PC creates an atmosphere in which we mostly censor ourselves. When libertarians like Dani...

The Constitution represented a coup from the beginning, and it's a dead letter today. The Declaration of Independence, however, is a truly radical libertarian document still worthy of consideration. Judge Andrew Napolitiano, our Distinguished Scholar in Law and Jurisprudence, recently gave a rousing talk at Mises University on the Declaration's natural law tradition–and how federal courts relentle...

Even many libertarians dismiss gold and precious metals as irrelevant in the global monetary system. Ben Bernanke famously told Ron Paul that gold is a commodity, not money. So why do central banks still hold so much of it, Ron asked? Good question. Ronni Stöferle from Incrementum AG joins Jeff Deist to talk about everything related to gold: why it's still money, how it might react to rising inter...