Podcasts about Interventionism

Murray Rothbard used his general-equilibrium approach with its emphasis on economic interrelations to erect a systematic framework of interventionism. He started by elaborating further on the concept of the purely free market and developing a comprehensive welfare theory. He then proceeded to create a typology of government policy, formulate a novel theory of monopoly that distinguishes between a monopoly price and a free-market price, develop an original theory of backward tax imputation, and analyze the calculational chaos caused by government expenditure. The capstone of Rothbard's analysis of interventionism was his integration of the Mises–Hayek theory of the business cycle into general economic theory. Rothbard was thus able to demonstrate how the boom could result only from credit expansion and not from an increase in the supply of commodity money such as gold. He also demonstrated how credit contraction during the bust promotes recovery. With these advances in the Austrian theory of the business cycle, Rothbard finally completed the monumental task of deducing the entire corpus of economic theory using the praxeological method.

Mark Thornton turns Austrian analysis on economic inequality itself—not whether the pie is growing, but how government intervention re-slices it. Drawing on Rothbard's distinction between specific and general factors of production, he shows the mechanism: any protection, license, tariff, or subsidy enriches the insiders of the favored industry while forcing the displaced resources out into the unprotected economy, where they compete down everyone else's wages and returns. He works the logic through healthcare, and frames the whole thing around the rise of democratic socialism in America's cities—arguing the young are right to be angry about the debt, Social Security, and unaffordable healthcare their elders voted in, even as the socialist cure would deepen the disease.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 24, 2026.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.

Everyone agrees higher education is in crisis—tuition rising ten times faster than the price level, administrative bloat, a looming demographic cliff, collapsing public confidence. Peter Klein argues these are symptoms, not the disease. Answering the claim that education is a special good beyond ordinary economic analysis, he shows that what markets actually deliver are discrete units of educational goods and services, and that standard Austrian analysis applies as readily here as to shoes. The structural problem is that there is no free market to speak of: state entities own most institutions, even elite privates draw nearly half their revenue from government, and a handful of federally licensed accreditors control entry. Following Rothbard, Klein's answer is the separation of education and state—with the Mises Institute itself as a working example.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2026.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.

Modern Monetary Theory's central claim is that a government with a printing press is never budget constrained — so the only real limit on spending is inflation, not debt. Jonathan Newman takes MMT on in its own words, working through clips of MMT proponents making their case before responding. He shows why "their deficit is your surplus" collapses once you ask how debt service is financed, why the WWII economy MMT holds up as a model was a depression for private citizens once government spending is stripped from GDP, and—drawing on his chapter in a forthcoming Mises Institute book—why the archaeological record of ancient Mesopotamia flatly contradicts MMT's account of where money came from.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2026.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.

Will Gen Z ever be able to buy a house? Timothy Terrell starts by clearing away the popular explanations—institutional investors buy under two percent of homes, the median first-time buyer is still 33, and a 1950s house was half the size, often without indoor plumbing. Then he turns to the causes that hold up: Federal Reserve inflation inflating home prices while first-time buyers sit on cash, zoning rules that let existing owners vote down new supply, and Dodd-Frank regulations that killed off the small mortgages starter homes depend on.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.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.

Drawing on his forthcoming book on environmental economics from an Austrian perspective, Timothy Terrell takes apart the standard case for environmental intervention. Following Roy Cordato and Rothbard, he argues the "best use" of a natural resource is not something a planner can determine—it's discovered through profit and loss—which leaves us unable to judge whether any given policy moves us toward or away from what people actually value. He then examines the two main attempts to price the environment without markets, contingent valuation and hedonics, and shows why both founder on subjective value and interpersonal utility comparisons. He closes with the history of federal land conservation, where Gifford Pinchot's Bureau of Forestry, the timber companies, and the land-grant railroads all found the same policy convenient.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.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.

Tate Fegley surveys the big ideas of public choice—politics analyzed with the tools of economics—and shows where an Austrian approach sharpens them. Rational ignorance, concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, rent-seeking, the transitional gains trap, budget-maximizing bureaucracies, and the logic of collective action each get a turn, illustrated with sugar tariffs, million-dollar taxi medallions, and Sowell's Benedict Arnold thought experiment. Fegley's throughline: public choice is strongest when it drops the neoclassical assumptions of perfect knowledge and static equilibrium and grounds itself in Austrian subjectivism.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 22, 2026.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.

Do free markets naturally tend toward monopoly, requiring antitrust to keep them honest? Tate Fegley makes the Austrian case that the whole framework is backwards. The neoclassical ideal of "perfect competition" defines away real competition—advertising, undercutting, innovating—and treats it as evidence of monopoly. Following Rothbard, Fegley argues the only coherent monopoly is one granted by the state, and works through the antitrust consequences, from Lina Khan's case against Amazon to the courts punishing Alcoa for serving customers too well.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 21, 2026.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.

With New York reviving a citywide rent freeze, Joseph Salerno returns to the economics of price controls. Following Mises and Rothbard, he shows how a single cap—on milk, say—triggers shortages that pull in control after control until the state is planning everything. He tells the story of postwar Germany, starving under price controls until Ludwig Erhard abolished them in a stroke, and then traces the surprising long-run damage of rent control: not just housing shortages, but frozen mobility, decaying buildings, black markets, and even more discrimination.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 21, 2026.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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ryan McMaken dismantles three persistent myths of American healthcare before tracing the origins of social insurance to Bismarck's deliberate scheme to bind citizens to the state "by the chains of gratitude" and closing with Mises' 1944 prediction that a population half-dependent on government healthcare would never vote to dismantle it..Recorded in Windham, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2026. Special thanks to Joe and Tracy Matarese for sponsoring this event.

The first principles of liberal politics—private property, freedom, peace, and equality before the law—with a critique of the doctrine of force, fascism, and the proper limits of government.

Mises argues that modern civilization rests on liberalism and capitalism, and can be destroyed only from within—by the spread of antiliberal ideas, not by any outside enemy.

Tom Woods frames Ludwig von Mises's book around a single question—when the state may legitimately initiate force—and the classical liberal's insistence on a very high threshold for it.

Ludwig von Mises's preface to the English edition: what classical liberalism is, why its program rests on private property, and how “liberal” came to mean nearly its opposite in America.

Mises defines liberalism as a program for material welfare grounded in reason, ties it to capitalism, and examines the psychological roots of antiliberal resentment.

The economic case for private property and the free market, including the impracticability of socialism, the failures of interventionism, and the problems of cartels, monopoly, and bureaucracy.

Liberalism applied to world affairs: national self-determination, free trade and freedom of movement as the foundations of peace, and critiques of nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism.

Why liberalism differs from interest-based parties, the crisis of parliamentary government, and the misleading charge that liberalism is merely the “party of capital.”

Mises defends his use of the word: true liberalism is defined by private ownership of the means of production, and he explains why he keeps the name despite its distorted modern usage.

Mises's guided reading list of the essential works of liberal thought, from Hume, Smith, and Bentham onward, for readers who want to study the tradition in depth.

While the pundits are insisting that the late Alan Greenspan was a committed free market adherent, his actions throughout his career spoke differently. In today's Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon exposes Greenspan for what he was: an opportunist.Original article: https://mises.org/friday-philosophy/greenspan-great-opportunist

While the pundits are insisting that the late Alan Greenspan was a committed free market adherent, his actions throughout his career spoke differently. In today's Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon exposes Greenspan for what he was: an opportunist.Original article: https://mises.org/friday-philosophy/greenspan-great-opportunist

Today on Uncommon Sense, we're taking a deeper look at the Israel-Iran conflict, the continuing questions surrounding the Epstein files, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We'll discuss why these stories continue to dominate public conversation, explore the political and geopolitical questions people are asking, and examine why these events should be viewed together rather than in isolation.--https://www.youversion.com/bible-app

While China's economy has boomed, many people wrongly associate that success with the Chinese government's industrial policies. Intervention has created many problems there—just as it has done elsewhere.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/chinas-industrial-policy-ambition-inefficiency-and-cautionary-tale-america

While China's economy has boomed, many people wrongly associate that success with the Chinese government's industrial policies. Intervention has created many problems there—just as it has done elsewhere.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/chinas-industrial-policy-ambition-inefficiency-and-cautionary-tale-america

Today on Uncommon Sense, we're discussing what may be the most consequential political moment of Donald Trump's career. With Trump's approval ratings slipping, the Iran conflict escalating, renewed questions surrounding the Epstein files, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk continuing to reverberate through the conservative movement, many Americans are asking whether these events are isolated, or part of a much larger story.In this episode, I examine the connections I believe may exist between these developments, including my view that the Epstein files may have been used as leverage against powerful political figures and that foreign interests have exerted significant influence over American policy in the Middle East.We'll discuss:Trump's declining support among his baseThe growing controversy surrounding U.S. involvement with IranThe unanswered questions surrounding the Epstein filesThe political impact of Charlie Kirk's assassination and its aftermathWhy I believe these stories intersect in ways the mainstream media refuses to exploreMy goal is not to tell you what to think, but to encourage you to question narratives, follow incentives, and examine who benefits from the decisions being made in Washington.--https://www.bible.com/

Washington is pursuing industrial policy again, this time being an attempt to form a minerals consortium with other countries to secure minerals vital to US manufacturing. No doubt, this initiative will end up on the ash heap of bad policy.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/minerals-consortium-will-result-malinvestment

Washington is pursuing industrial policy again, this time being an attempt to form a minerals consortium with other countries to secure minerals vital to US manufacturing. No doubt, this initiative will end up on the ash heap of bad policy.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/minerals-consortium-will-result-malinvestment

Ryan McMaken argues that the American constitutional structure has become a suicide pact: states cannot secede, cannot protect themselves from neighboring states' policies, cannot adopt genuinely federal internal governance, and cannot redraw their own borders. It's a system that guarantees growing conflict and provides only one approved solution: more centralized power in Washington.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

Bill Anderson offers a ground-level view of California's decline, arguing that the state's deep entanglement of government with water, energy, housing, and transportation has created a self-reinforcing system where every new crisis produces more regulation, more spending, and fewer productive citizens.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

Connor O'Keeffe argues that California's wildfire crisis is not simply a climate story but a government failure story. The state has monopolized nearly all wilderness land, refused to manage it adequately, and then distorted insurance markets to push more people into high-risk fire zones, making fires both larger and more deadly than they would be under a private property regime with real liability.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

Peter Klein traces the ideological transformation of the UC system from a world-class research institution to a cautionary tale of government-subsidized capture, arguing that the real culprit isn't California's culture but the funding, ownership, and governance structure that insulates universities from market accountability and rewards ideological conformity. Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

Chris Calton links California's housing crisis to three books published in the 1960s that spawned three ideological movements — the democratization of urban planning, the politicization of environmentalism, and the no-growth movement — each of which handed activists and bureaucrats new tools to block development and destroy private property rights one permit hearing at a time.Recorded in San Diego, California, on April 25, 2026.

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/revolution-was

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom."Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/revolution-was

A foreign policy that seeks to maintain a global empire is entirely incompatible with the laissez-faire, free-market system at home that many hawkish self-described libertarians claim to support.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbard-was-right-libertarians-must-never-warm-warfare-state

Just as, for them, liberty must be the highest political end, peace must be the highest end of foreign policy.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/libertarians-must-never-warm-warfare-state

In this time of war and uncertainty, we should expect to see the prices of precious metals rise and fall and the only certainty will be uncertainty.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/precious-metals-work

It took centuries to end the idea that taxes kept the privileged class in comfort and financed their wars. But now we're told taxes = civilization.Original article: https://mises.org/mises-daily/taxation-robbery