Mises Media

Why is a lecture on banking scheduled for the very first day of Mises University? Because, Jonathan Newman argues, banking is where money gets strange. Following Rothbard's Mystery of Banking, he separates the two things a bank can do—safekeeping your deposits and lending out savings—and shows that neither one expands the money supply. The trouble begins when a bank promises your deposit is available on demand while quietly lending most of it away.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Where does money come from? Sandy Klein walks through the Mengerian answer: not from a king's decree or a social contract, but spontaneously, as traders gravitated to the most saleable good until one commodity became universally accepted. Along the way she shows why barter can't sustain a real economy, why gold and silver kept winning out, and why—following Rothbard—there's no such thing as an "optimal" money supply.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Why teach entrepreneurship on the first day of Mises University? Because for the Austrians, Peter Klein argues, entrepreneurs aren't niche figures from the world of startups and venture capital—they're the driving force of the entire market. Following Mises, Klein defines entrepreneurship as the bearing of uncertainty: the act of combining land, labor, and capital in advance of an unknown payoff. It's not a personality trait or an industry, but a fundamental category of human action.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 19, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Is a market economy a war of all against all, or the very thing that makes peace possible? Shawn Ritenour makes the Misesian case for the latter. Building from specialization and the law of comparative advantage—why even a person outdone at everything still has a place—he shows how the division of labor turns our inequalities into the glue of society, and why the only way to profit in a market is to serve someone else first.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Jeffrey Herbener builds Austrian price theory from the ground up—starting with the single acting person weighing ends against means, and arriving at Mises's calculation argument. Value is purely subjective, he shows, so no producer can gauge whether he's serving consumers well by feeling alone. What makes economizing across a division of labor possible is money prices—and the profit-and-loss accounting they enable.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

David Gordon lays out praxeology—the science of human action—and the deductive method that sets Austrian economics apart. With characteristic wit, he distinguishes valid arguments from sound ones, weighs Rothbard's "it's just self-evident" grounding of the action axiom against Mises's a priori approach, and shows why economic truths deduced by pure logic can still be genuinely surprising.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

In the opening lecture of Mises University, Joseph Salerno returns to 1871, when Carl Menger's Principles of Economics launched the Austrian school. Salerno shows how Menger's law of marginal utility solved the ancient "paradox of value"—why life-giving water is cheap and useless diamonds dear—and, in doing so, moved economics away from the classical focus on the businessman and cost, and toward the acting, wanting human being.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 20, 2025.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Opening the 40th Mises University, Professor Hülsmann tells how the Austrian school came back from near-extinction—and why Mises U was central to its revival. Drawing on his own front-row experience, he traces the network of scholars who trained in Auburn and then carried Austrian economics across Europe, from Madrid to Prague to Vilnius.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 19, 2025. Sponsored by Olivier Pinson. Includes a welcome and introduction by Joseph T. Salerno.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.

Mark Thornton looks at the growing strength of democratic socialism inside the Democratic Party and asks whether the United States may be entering another era of major party realignment. Drawing on Rothbard's analysis of long-term ideological change, Mark explains how younger voters, burdened by debt, unaffordable housing, healthcare, and education, are understandably angry—but are turning toward policies that helped create the crisis. Mark also examines how war, inflation, government intervention, and broken political promises are reshaping both major parties.On Side B, Thornton joins the Liberty and Finance podcast to discuss monetary disorder, central bank digital currencies, programmable money, AI-driven surveillance, the war on cash, and the need for education and resistance against the next monetary reset.Additional Resources"Keith Knight's Top Ten Problems with Democratic Socialism" (Human Action Podcast) with Bob Murphy: https://mises.org/MI_186_A"How Democratic Socialists of America Has Developed Into a Movement Party" by David Duhalde: https://mises.org/MI_186_B"The Myth of Democratic Socialism" by Murray Rothbard: https://mises.org/MI_186_C"How Democratic Socialism Created California's Housing Crisis" by Chris Calton: https://mises.org/MI_186_D"Democratic Socialism IS Totalitarianism" by Bill Anderson: https://mises.org/MI_186_E"How to Fix the Economics of Healthcare" by Bob Murphy: https://mises.org/MI_186_F2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of The Origins of the Federal Reserve through July 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/issuesfree20% off listener offer on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark's books: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

Democratic socialists insist the horrors of the twentieth century were a betrayal of their ideal—that their version would be staffed by good people, to good ends. In this 1977 essay, Murray Rothbard argues the brutality is inherent in the system, not the personnel, which makes "humanistic" or "democratic" socialism a contradiction in terms.Originally published in the Libertarian Review.

While people claim they want the "virtuous" state with citizens to match, what we really get is realpolitik, whether we want it or not.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/evolution-politics-civic-virtue-realpolitik

Bob sits down with the managing editor of the Libertarian Institute, Keith Knight, to sample arguments from his recent four-hour video cataloguing sixty-four problems with democratic socialism.Related:Find More from Keith Here: Mises.org/HAP559a64 Arguments Against Democratic Socialism: Mises.org/HAP559bKeith's Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism: Mises.org/HAP559c

On this episode of Power and Market, Ryan, Tho, and Connor discuss the death of Lindsey Graham, the questions around Mitch McConnell, and provide a preview of next week's Mises University.

While we speak highly of “rule of law” and the “limited state,” the unfortunate truth is that the modern state is a law unto itself. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/predatory-logic-state

Murray Rothbard saw government as a predatory, criminal entity and the Microsoft lawsuit of 1998 proved to be a classic example of government organized crime in action.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbards-definition-government-organized-crime-microsoft-antitrust-case

To deny local self-determination to the Catholic Vendean rebels was to support the imperialist impulse, just as the opponents of the American revolutionaries embraced imperialism over freedom. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/vendee-french-war-national-liberation

World Cup tickets are a hot commodity with prices through the roof. Naturally, governments want to do what governments always do unsuccessfully: levy price controls.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/fifa-world-cup-price-controls-ticket-prices

The standard narrative is that policing and imprisonment are necessary tools to keep the public safe from criminals. But it also would seem that these things are useful tools for a state that wishes to dominate its citizens.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/foucault-panopticism-and-carceral-society-rise-surveillance-state

Ryan McMaken, Timothy Terrell, Charles Sauer, and Robert Murphy take questions from the audience on healthcare economics, free market alternatives, and the prospects for reform. Moderated by Connor O'Keeffe.Recorded in Windham, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2026. Special thanks to Joe and Tracy Matarese for sponsoring this event.

America's elderly political class is only the most visible symptom. The deeper problem is a government built to transfer wealth from younger Americans to a caste of older, wealthier generations.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/americas-gerontocracy-goes-deeper-aging-politicians

If avoiding a repeat of the excesses of the French revolution is an important goal, we need a thorough understanding of its causes. Edmund Burke and his conservative followers don't offer this. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/what-conservatives-get-wrong-about-french-revolution

Bob makes the case that American healthcare's dysfunction is not a market failure but a pricing failure manufactured by government. He closes with practical reform proposals designed to restore market signals without waiting for Washington.Recorded in Windham, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2026. Special thanks to Joe and Tracy Matarese for sponsoring this event.

Why do so many intellectuals despise the market that sustains them? Ralph Raico weighs Hayek's theory of "scientism" against Schumpeter's portrait of a resentful, over-produced intelligentsia—and finds both wanting, pointing instead to the harder puzzle: why capitalism's most successful intellectuals are so often its fiercest critics.Excerpted from chapter 3 of Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School.

Great Britain's “Equality Act” is not simply a civil rights bill gone too far. It is, as Murray Rothbard would have put it, a “monstrous” piece of legislation that looks to create a social and economic equality that could never exist.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/uks-monstrous-equality-act

Charles Sauer profiles four healthcare entrepreneurs who built functioning free-market alternatives to the broken hospital system before turning to Washington to explain why Capitol Hill is not the solution, walking through the government-created distortions that sustain the status quo.Recorded in Windham, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2026. Special thanks to Joe and Tracy Matarese for sponsoring this event.

Since abandoning socialism 30 years ago, Poland's economy has grown, as one would expect with a market economy. However, there could be more economic freedom there that easily would translate into a booming economy.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/poland-now-its-still-paper-tiger

Lolcows, part of the world of internet personalities, would seem well beyond the world of economic analysis. Yet, much of what happens can be explained by the paradigm of Austrian economics.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/austrian-perspective-lolcows

Timothy Terrell traces the historical origins of the American healthcare cartel, beginning with Ronald Hamowy's 1979 article documenting how the AMA used state licensing laws not to protect patients but to restrict physician supply and raise incomes.Recorded in Windham, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2026. Special thanks to Joe and Tracy Matarese for sponsoring this event.

Contrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty. No matter whether it is their intention or not, almost anything that the rich can legally do tends to help the poor.

Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School of economics, served as the tutor for Austrian-Hungary's Crown Prince Rudolf, the only son of Emperor Franz Joseph. But Rudolph's untimely death in 1889 would end up changing the ruling dynamics of pre-World War I Central Europe.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/carl-menger-crown-prince-rudolf-and-marginal-revolution-never-was

The essay added later to the collection: a critique of proposals to nationalize banking and credit, weighing bureaucratic against profit management and warning of credit overexpansion and immobilization.

Mises's focused analysis of price controls: why fixing prices produces shortages and demands for still more controls, and what that reveals for the theory of social organization as a whole.

How German “anti-Marxism,” including national (anti-Marxian) socialism, absorbed the very Marxian ideas it claimed to oppose, with Werner Sombart as the case study of a thinker Marxist and anti-Marxist by turns.

A critique of the German “Socialists of the Chair” and their social policy—by way of the Methodenstreit, the clash of control versus economic law, and Max Weber—showing how “social liberalism” abandons liberalism itself.

Bob uses U.S. economic history, centering on the greenback era, to work through some subtle but important distinctions in Austrian monetary theory. He also addresses whether free-market economies have a natural tendency toward price deflation under a commodity standard, why the stock-versus-flow distinction matters for understanding gold production and the price level, and how to distinguish "bad" policy-induced monetary deflation from the "good" price deflation that accompanies genuine productivity growth.Related:Patrick Newman, "The Depression of 1873-1879: An Austrian Perspective": Mises.org/HAP558aClarence Long, "The Course of Money Wages during 1860-1890": Mises.org/HAP558bBob's Understanding Money Mechanics: Mises.org/HAP558cBob's Article, "Hayek's Plan for Private Money": Mises.org/HAP558dThe Charts Shown in this Episode: Mises.org/HAP558e

Mises examines the doctrine of a “hampered” or regulated market as a distinct third system and answers Schmalenbach's thesis that free enterprise was giving way to a bound economy.

The central essay: interventionism as a supposed economic system, the real nature of intervention, and how price ceilings, minimum wages, and similar measures defeat their own aims—leaving only a choice between the free market and socialism.

Mises's 1929 preface, written in Vienna for the original German edition, presenting the essays as a sustained critique of interventionism, then the reigning economic policy across Europe and America.

Hans F. Sennholz, the translator, lays out Mises's target—the belief in a “third system” of a hampered market economy standing between capitalism and socialism—and why that middle way cannot hold.

Margit von Mises introduces the collection, recalling that these essays date from the 1920s and noting that the final essay was added to the later German edition.

On the latest episode of Minor Issues, Mark Thornton examines the “dupes of war”—citizens trained by government, schools, and historians to accept false stories about the causes, costs, and supposed benefits of war. Drawing on Ludwig von Mises, Mark argues that war is not caused by isolated incidents or sudden crises, but by statism, nationalism, interventionism, and state worship.He challenges the standard narratives around World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, wartime “prosperity,” and government-funded innovation, warning that war benefits politicians, bankers, the military-industrial complex, and global power elites while destroying lives, capital, trade, and civilization itself.On Side B, Thornton joins Kai Hoffmann to discuss the three Austrian “bust signals”: asset bubbles, price inflation, and the K-shaped economy. He also covers gold, silver, commodities, war-driven supply shocks, Fed propaganda, and why younger people are increasingly hungry for real economics.2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray's 100th birthday—and we're celebrating by giving away free copies of The Origins of the Federal Reserve through July 31. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/issuesfree20% off listener offer on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Mark's books: https://mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler. Use coupon code Thornton.Be sure to follow Minor Issues at https://Mises.org/MinorIssues

Austrian economics does not share the same methodology as we see in the economics mainstream. The Austrian emphasis on praxeology provides a better explanation of economic events than does the mathematically-bound mainstream.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/praxeology-within-physics-social-sciences