Contra Krugman LIVE! at Mises U 2018

[Music] welcome to the podcast that takes apart Paul Krugman's New York Times column join us is Tom woods and Bob Murphy teach economics by uncovering and dissecting the arrows of Krugman Nobel Prize winner and newspaper columnist and destroyer of Nations it's time for a Contra Krugman hey everybody Tom and Bob here with an all-star cast here at Mises University where we are recording before a live audience hello [Applause] all right this is episode 148 and for this episode we're gonna talk about a generic topic we're not gonna do a Krugman column thank heavens instead with this illustrious panel we're going to talk about why Austrian economics ought to matter to just the average person yeah we're all nerds and scholars but why should some guy on the street care about Austrian economics that's we're gonna hash out today Bob Murphy of course is with me here I'm joined also by Dave Smith of the part of the problem podcast who is just the best guy in the world I mean so much fun to hang around he does answer probably one out of every 12 emails you send him and what so it makes it all the more special so Dave of course you got to get his libertas comedy special because it was the number one comedy album on iTunes for three weeks solid in 2017 he's the best so we're glad to have him and he's on CNN I don't understand how that's happening Jonathan Jonathan Newman of Brian College I'm glad is also with us he's one of the youngsters he has that beard to make him look older but he's like 15 or something and then Peter Klein we have all the old stir of the panel Peter Klein who has a PhD from Berkeley back when it by comparison to today Berkeley then was like Hillsdale but Peter is at Baylor University so we're gonna just hash out this topic and Bob now that I've done the easy part you figure out how we start this thing sure I what I think we should turn it over to Dave I'd like to ask him the first question first of all why do you keep following us around you you don't see us going on TV right so what no I certainly don't that is that is a very good point Bob I never see you on television at all wait so what what are we starting with I just wanted to get on the contra crew the cast finally because it's you know it's way overdue yes so you you are a stand-up comedian that your your job one might not have thought you'd it's like refreshing you see a comic occasionally flirt with something fairly too solid economically you actually read Rothbart and so forth so can you just give us a sense were you into like Milton Friedman first and got into this why the average person why should they care about Austrian economics okay well the Milton Friedman part no I was never into Milton Friedman and I'm still not but no I was just I would was not a super political person I was just kind of I guess a left-wing guy who hated the wars under george w bush and then I saw Ron Paul Ron Paul Giuliani moment and I was like who the hell is that guy cuz that was awesome and then he was just I thought he was so on point with the war stuff that I was like okay I'll hear him out on this Austrian economics that he keeps talking about and then I found like Tom and Peter Schiff and then Tom kept talking about this rothbard Jew and I was like well I I gotta check that guy out and then I started reading Rothbard and my life has been a nightmare ever since because you just like he's it's just like reading Rothbart it's like getting punched in the chest and like you I just never recovered from it so so that's how I got into libertarianism an Austrian economics kind of all together now to say why it matters to like the average person I would say this was also at a time where there was just the big financial crisis and I think if you give if you give the Austrians nothing else which I think it's all great but nothing else they figured out this boom-bust stuff that nobody else has an answer to and no matter who you are this stuff really affects your life like ever like I'm I mean I'm not as young as a lot of you guys I'm 35 but I've already lived through a couple boom bust cycles and there they're always happening and no one else has an answer for it I mean the mainstream answer is either something ridiculous about like what greed I think that's like the official CNBC response like I don't know these guys all of a sudden they started being really greedy or an 2006 and that there was a greed bubble and then like the lefty answer is that the most hyper regulated market in our entire economy was too deregulated like the 3000 and 200 regulations if we had just had 10 more we could have avoided this so they have no idea the Austrian economists are the only ones who get this right and that is something that you may not you know the majority of people aren't interested in maybe a lot of the topics that we are but they are interested in why all of a sudden the economy has wrecked every few years let's see I kind of like this idea of telling our so to speak conversion story so Jonathan your turn where did you come from philosophically let's say I was also a convert of the Ron Paul Reid Giuliani exchange in that debate it was just mind-blowing to me that somebody could have this sort of position and and be a Republican and so I I was sort of old old school so I went to Ron Paul's web site looked at the issues and he had and I'll it was sort of interesting to read all of the his different stances on issues and then I read his book the revolution and then there was some recommended reading in the back of that and I and so I read economics in one lesson which led me to mises.org and then I realized so I was I was in Birmingham Alabama at the time I realized that there was this great organization just down the road just down highway 280 that was sort of the center of all this thought and idea and so then I came to Mises University and the rest is history good man great okay maybe just to continue the pattern Peter can you tell I'm guessing it was the famous exchange between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas [Music] well you know Carl Menger the founder of the Austrian school with his famous book in 1871 his principles of economics Carl and I used to sit around the cafe's in Vienna he persuaded me step by step no it's interesting to me hearing about kind of Ron Paul lead conversion stories because there are so many for people who are in Dave's and Jonathan's generation and and for many of you in my day the the kind of gateway drug was more likely to be ein Rand and when I was a high school student a friend of mine handed me an rands book The Fountainhead and said oh I think you ought to read this and I read it and like a lot of adolescents who sort of were unsatisfied with what they were hearing in their in their in their classrooms and and from their parents or whatever I started reading those books and got very enthusiastic about kind of eine rands world view and i started reading her non-fiction books which included that famous essay on why the gold standard is so great by alan greenspan yeah the pre sellout alan greenspan and from there i was heard about Mises and so forth so I was kind of interested in free markets and liberty from a general perspective before I discovered the kind of technical writings of the Austrian school and I realized those were the the only solid foundation for understanding what's really going on around us kind of the same thing that Dave was saying on the eine rand point I recently I read Atlas Shrugged a long time ago but I recently reread what is my favorite thing I'm Rand ever wrote which is the speech in Atlas Shrugged by the worker at the 20th century motor company and this is where they tried to implement the principle of from each according to his ability to each according to his need and that sounds very noble on the face of it but you watch and you you read this story which there's nothing implausible about you can absolutely see it unfolding that way how it becomes more and more inhuman and horror as time goes on I read it to my 15 year old daughter and it's a long long long passage but I just kept going and reading it and reading it and she was just drawn in and drawn in and I felt like although she's already on board with this stuff but I feel like if people read just that they will be inoculated against socialism forever and I say that as somebody who doesn't mention Iran very much been on my podcast she doesn't come out much because I wouldn't say she was one of my major influences but that particular speech needs to be read by everybody now in terms of our general topic I agree with Dave that the boom-bust cycle that doesn't matter to the average person what does and that's really where you see the role of economic knowledge what in the world just happened to me what happened in my house price what happened to what pathetic portfolio I might have what happened and why you got to get that you got to get that right now I have other things let me jump in real fast on that point specifically to that's also an area where the Austrian school really sharply differs from the Chicago School so it's true there's a lot of areas you know people ask all the time like free markets what's the difference you guys are basically the same except for a minor technical but that's one where there's a huge difference and you can see that there were supply-side economist sin you know 2006 2007 George Bush had mildly cut tax rates or whatever so if if you didn't think that there was this issue with the Fed being there possibly screwing things up you wouldn't have had anything on your radar and also famously in the 20s your herbing Fisher and others you know people out of the Chicago tradition thought everything was great because they didn't have the Austrian theory of the boom-bust cycle so again an area where there is a distinction it's not that they're all the same they're all just anti Keynesian or something and this really matters it's relevant I was gonna say that a nice thing about the Austrian school by the way just kind of an added bonus in addition to helping you understand individual issues is that there's something extremely elegant about the whole thing but for one thing we don't say well we have microeconomics and then in a completely different unrelated matter we also have macroeconomics that seems to operate according to different principles or should be studied from a different point of view that's not really the way the Austrians think and it all goes back to some first principles that then get spun out and I mean for instance if you read man economy and state you see the you're observing the building of an edifice right before your eyes step by elegant step and that's I think what conveys more than anything else the idea that you are genuinely learning how the world works it's not a bunch of ad hoc propositions that might be changeable or testable or that don't seem to integrate with one another everything builds on everything else now I say that as a as a somebody who studies economics in his spare time Tom can I elaborate on that point a little bit something else that I think is really attractive about the Austrian approach to economics is that you know while it is you know very precise and very scientific in the correct sense of that word it's also very accessible and interesting to all sorts of people if you look at sort of most mainstream economists who teach at prestigious universities and so forth you know the style in which they write and argue they use these extremely complicated mathematical models that are almost designed to be incomprehensible to anybody but a very specialized group of experts you listen to the typical you know Treasury secretary or Fed official talk about the economy it's like a you know it's like a priest it's like the old days when you know only the priests could could read the Bible because only the priests knew Latin there's a sort of priestly class of economists who speak only to each other and then occasionally give these pronouncements to the late lay public you know and bleh publics supposed to just take it on faith that what these technocrats are doing and saying is is is right and that's why the Fed has to be completely independent of interference from the rabble you know us now while the Austrian school of course has its professors who write articles and books and teach it top universities and so forth Russian economics is also a lot more interesting to laypeople and it's funny among academic economists that's considered you know a great defect oh well the Austrian school that's got all these populist sand and sort of cranky people who write newsletters and have podcasts and blogs and so forth that sort of deal Ajith amaizing somehow in the eyes of the elite economists but to me that's a huge feature and not a bug I mean the fact that lots of people not only professional economists really care about what we're saying and are able to engage with us and we can engage with them and dialogue but that's a great advantage of Austrian economics as opposed to this other kind that is almost designed to be accessible only to sort of an elite an elite few yeah just to jump in on that so I've given plenty of talks to financial professionals and I'll walk through you know what we would all recognize as Austrian business cycle theory to explain the housing boom and bust and then here's what Bernanke's been doing and everybody oh my gosh and afterwards one of the common things I'll the feedback people will say I hated economics in college but what you just did that was great you know and they they they think that this I thought you can actually just all about drawing curves and so forth so I think Peters right about that they also sometimes say for an economist you're really funny and I'm wondering do you ever get people say for a comedian you actually know a lot about economics there's that brother cuz you do you know it's really it's charming i I mean I don't even think I'm going out on a limb and saying I am the most economically literate comedian in the on the planet there's no one else more [Applause] that's not really high praise like I'm not yeah there's yeah there's not like there's nobody else but but there is I mean I think your point and what you're touching on I mean for me personally like that is it was so true there was something about look I never liked school I was probably hated high school I hated college I never liked any of it and nothing to me was ever as interesting or exciting as like libertarianism and Austrian economics and the fact that it was something that like like what you were saying it wasn't just like okay here here's this very complicated thing and you either have to understand this and then you're in and if you don't you're out Austrian economics actually teaches you to think it's teaching you to actually think things through yourself and logically deduce them and as you were pointing out it's this wonderfully consistent ideology nobody else has and even in those Chicago guys I mean they wildly contradict their own worldview and so anyway I for me that that was like what drew me an yeah just just to follow up on that train of thought like notice for those of you who are here at Mises you the lecture obviously we all we covered a whole wide range of topics but notice it's not that at the beginning we spent five minutes saying here are my assumptions for this talk there's gonna be you know three firms and they have six different inputs and we're gonna have constant returns ask it where as in if you go and listen to you know may you went to a conference with a bunch of mainstream economists they would get up there and talk about different things for one thing oh this labor economics okay that way I know the kind of package assumptions we use here oh this is international trade oh this is macro this is micro and it's not just that the focus of what they're talking about would be different it's that their whole method in the assumptions they make to the types of models they build would be completely different wares again you're not getting that here we're all coming from the same starting point we're just applying the analysis to a particular particular area one other thing to garden what Peter was saying richard fineman the famous physicist nobel prize winner he tells me one of his autobiographical works that he was given a talk at some international conference on like solving the problem of inequality or something and they were just asking all these big thought leaders and so is a huge famous physicist he came over and and he gave us you know he gave his thoughts and other people are gonna be there and pontificating and afterward he was leaving and he said the janitors were cleaning up and one of them came over to him and said hey you know what we could kind of hear what was going on you were the only guy who I could even understand what you were saying up there then everybody else it was just gobbledygook and so that's I think to show that basically we're all smart as Richard Fineman what's been cool to see over the past few years is that especially in macroeconomics there have been a few of the top economists saying that the the models have broken down the models don't work specifically Paul Romer has a great paper and he's he's regretted the increasing math Yunus and economics and saying that that when economists are doing a paper presentation at a conference for example it's like they're doing a magic trick that nobody really understands how the model works is there's this big long equation or a big long system of equations and nobody in the audience knows how how this equation works and we're all just supposed to be amazed at the outcome just sort of like the The Economist just did a magic trick and many other top economists have also said that these mathematical models that were using to to try to guess what's going to happen in the economy or predict what's gonna happen to the economy totally failed in predicting the boom of us the most recent boom and bust cycle and so there there's there is at least some introspection in introspection going on it in the mainstream macroeconomics field just a touch on that so I have a friend of mine who was this is like right around I guess 2009 and he was he was getting a series 7 license to sell stocks and bonds and he was telling me this that is the guy teaching the course basically what they teach in the course is this like Keynesian like you can either have high unemployment or inflation but you can't have both and he said he just asked the the instructor of the course at one point he was like but don't we have high unemployment and inflation right now and he said the instructor just goes this is this is textbook stuff not real world stuff like that was his response to it it's like what like how it could any student how could you like not look at that and go this is just all ridiculous so anyway sorry I am a couple years ago at the opening talk I was given the topic of the role of Austrian economics in the Liberty movement and I was at pains to emphasize that libertarian and austere libertarianism and Austrian economics are of course two distinct things but at the same time I wanted to show that it's not complete coincidence that we happen to you know most of us be libertarian so why should that be so I was talking about different aspects of Austrian economics that even though Austrian economics is value-free seem to be congenial to us and one of those things is if you look through man economy and state it's not till the very last chapter the economics of violent intervention into the market that we even get the state at all it's not this benign institution in the background throughout the text it's not even there we're describing how production and well life proceeds and then all of a sudden it's own up by the way if you had a group of thugs here's what the economics of that would look like so that you know I get that that's not saying therefore be a libertarian but that's a pretty conspicuous omission throughout the text and so I think it's particularly helpful for the average person to be knowledgeable in s Austrian economics at least get the basics because it inoculates them against the worst kinds of populism where you have a demagogue who is promising you all kinds of benefits delivered via the state that on the surface of it sound pretty plausible yeah sure I'd like to get a free X or a free Y but when you see when we get the Austrian understanding of the world and the way it works and the benefits of voluntary cooperation you become instantly skeptical of anything outside that voluntary nexus so that's a good thing to have under your belt maybe following up on that I'm curious as the panel's thoughts why is it that it seems politicians can get away with promising stuff that's you know clearly absurd for those who are trained in economics or why is it so hard to get the public perhaps to be on their guard with that something just for example stuff that's happened in Venezuela you know they're running the printing press and then they put in price controls food disappears from the shelves I mean that is so obviously what's going to happen and so I just it seems impossible like how come the people they're not know that and they blame greed or speculators or oil prices collapsed or I'm just wondering is there something about economics per se that makes it trickier or you don't see politicians promising perpetual motion machines and the physicists having to say man you just get the public to stop so what what is it I guess some of the conclusions or claims that politicians make they can seem very easy and achievable just superficially that if you don't put you know at least five minutes worth of thought behind it then then you would you know just sort of nod your head yeah that sounds great I would love you know free health care I would love you know everybody to have a college education and so and so it it takes just you know just a few minutes of you know thinking critically about the claims that politicians make and I guess maybe maybe there's a deficiency of that sort of thing happening the analogy with like physics it's pretty interesting I don't know for some reason I think contrary to what most people believe economics in some sense is harder in that you've got to think through the consequences of different things I mean anybody can do it but it takes a few moments of reflection it's not like a bumper sticker thing right you can't most economic propositions don't fit on a bumper sticker I think everyone understands like you know why don't we have flying cars well it's just really hard to have flying cars okay I accept that but why can't we all have free health care and why can't we have free housing and why don't why don't I get paid more money it takes like a few steps to sort of explain that and I think sometimes it's hard people to have the patience and that's why when you know the I don't know the Bernie Sanders types or whatever come along and say oh of course vote for me I'll give you this they'll give you this you're gonna free this and free that it just sounds so great and people don't want to take the time to have to you know do sort of think through why that's impossible why that can't work but I think also it's because those sorts of things involve parts of life that they're intimately familiar with they know what health care is they know what education is they know what housing is but they if they had fifty eight lifetimes couldn't even conceive of how to build a flying car so that they're willing to let the experts deal with but when it comes to health care they say well look I see a doctor I see a patient I see a rich person well that's all I need why what would be the problem so that's the thing is that they that that's the case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing well also zero knowledge is even worse and by the way just the other day I was driving around don't you hate that bumper sticker do you think education is expensive try ignorant yeah I know so Tom gave it a try yeah call your bluff well now my stupid little punchline seems ridiculous but why don't just actually you know what won't seem ridiculous you know yo where you won't be following us this year that's right I'm so bummed but I won't be on the the Contra cruise this year I got to do this silly little thing having a kid and that's I I asked my wife well thank you yeah she's she's being a jerk she's making me come to the delivery so anyway I'm gonna but um okay now I completely lost my job Oh on the Internet well this is like what the the worst element well maybe not the worst but one of the worst elements of the state and and democracy in general is that we all you know people end up voting on stuff that they don't know anything about and we don't do this in any other area of life like if we were if we're in a car and the car broke down and there's like five of us in the car and one of the people in the car is a mechanic and he was like okay well this is what we got to do to fix the car I wouldn't be like let's just all vote on that and we'll see what you know it's like people are voting in things that they don't have any expertise in and there's there's a lot of things that everyone in this room doesn't know anything about I mean if everybody in the world were obsessed with economics the way we are we we are all starved to death and like we'd have some perfect model of why no one's producing any food or say but like people have to specialize in different things and the the problem is the state comes in and then it's like well you you everyone's going to vote on what sounds more popular and giving away free stuff is always gonna win you actually reminded me of something to happen I was at a Thanksgiving meal with relatives and you know people I was just meeting for the first time every button the guy next to me said Oh what do you know what are you doing I'm an economist and so we were talking about the Federal Reserve because this was when QE was going on and he asked me my opinion and I was believe me in social sector goal is not to convert people or anything like that I just try to keep my head down and so I lightly said something well you know I think it's kind of risky and it could lead to some problems down the road and you know that guy is something a truthful statement but not volunteering too much and so he goes yeah I don't agree with that and he proceeded to tell me his views on quantitative easing and I was thinking if I had said I was a heart surgeon and said something about valves work he wouldn't be like yeah I don't think that's how it worked and so I mean that is funny but on the other hand you can sort of give them the benefit that or you can see why people think that because he could go on TV and see economists saying diametrically opposed things where you probably wouldn't see two heart surgeons on TV disagreeing on such a fundamental level you know where they were saying one person said yeah we cut the heart out it'll be great you know I would say we put in 16 hearts that's what the person needs that's kind of how economists are sound you know in terms of the recommendation about QE we're now you know some are saying this is great we need ten times more other people are saying this is awful setting us up so you can understand why the public doesn't trust economists even though as these guys are saying it it does lead to the absurdity of people just you know voting on things where economists who know what's going on can say this clearly is not gonna work what do you think is gonna happen alright let me try this again you know where you will find some economists who know what's going on yeah I was thinking we could just ask the panel to tell you know why are we interested economics why should everyone go on the contra cruise I think that would be well you should go to contra cruise comm and then look at it lovingly and say I'm just a poor student so either I'll have to beg my parents or I'll just have to go out and work and some day you'll be able to come with us because it's so great and Jeff diced is coming this year I mean could you imagine a week hanging out with Jeff guys they probably have no idea a week with Jeff diced would that even be like all right what else we want to talk about anything well we have them here let me ask Dave this do you okay people you see people one sees people on TV and they're espousing things is it the case are they just putting on a show and behind the scenes they're more reasonable like people who say crazy stuff or Bill O'Reilly I'm not saying hidden in particular but the people you've interacted with is it like behind is they're doing Pro Wrestling and behind the scenes they're all in on the joke or anything along those lines because again I am NOT on TV like Davis so how would I know yeah I think there's a little bit of a split there are a lot of people who are straight up doing pro wrestling who know this is I mean I've had experiences before there was one military guy this is back when I was doing Fox News shows and he was talking to me backstage and he was he was like we were talking about waterboarding and he goes yeah waterboarding we were waterboarded it's absolutely torture there's no question about it and then he got asked on the panel do you consider waterboarding torture and he goes I consider it enhanced interrogation and you're like oh man what a liar and that so there is stuff like that and and I've had moments with people like like the I was on SE Cupp show the other day and it was it was you know she's going she had max boot on the show you guys know the wonderful max boot and yeah I was in a room with max boot and I felt dirty for the rest of the day but he and they're just going off about this crazy Russia hysteria and I came onto the panel and she just asked me like off-camera she was like well what do you think of the whole Trump Putin summit and I was like well I wish he would get as much scrutiny when he say bombed another country as to when he spoke to somebody and she just goes fair point fair point and but then she continued on with the crazy hysteria so I don't know the whole thing is wrestling it's ridiculous it's the whole cable news is the most ridiculous thing ever it's like these big red blue screens and you have like five seconds to talk about the most important issue ever it's like hey what's up cable they all you know what is it Jon Stewart said that thing where all the names are like hardball and crossfire and I'm gonna kick your ass news like it's just these ridiculous things and they're like hey what's going on everybody okay five seconds Dave Iraq war what do you think and I'm like bad and they're like good point next whatever and it's like this is just this is all insane and there's something interesting about this psychology of people who watch cable news who don't you know read further or aren't interested in things like this it's like they almost wanna they know they don't know anything but they wanna feel like not look like they don't want to feel bad about that so they're like oh now you know I watched Hannity so I'm good and but yeah it's all it is Pro Wrestling so then also aren't you afraid that if you in your zeal to get a word in edgewise you know and you've got all this pressure and sometimes it's live television if you say something that's a little bit off then Media Matters gonna slam you forward I mean you're gonna get smashed on all sides I mean it's risky yeah it is but I've always from the very beginning when I started getting these cable news shows I was just kind of like in my mind I I thought well it's a matter of time until I get fired from this and then I'll have an awesome like they can't handle what I have to bring to them story but they just never fired me and kept bringing me back and now I'm like I guess this is cool too but but truthfully it's you know what I think and I think part of the reason because people ask me a lot they're like why does SE Cupp keep having you on our show cuz like you you make her look bad and in times and like all and I think it's just that I'm interested and they at the end of the day they are driven by by ratings and and it's like it's so have you ever seen that show it would be so freaking boring without me on it it would just be the most there's people agreeing on nonsense and I at least make the panel you know but they kind of they can kind of since they'll be like four people and me they can kind of keep me in that box where you know it's it's almost like what they used to do to Ron Paul on the debate stages it's like where there's crazy uncle Ron you know but anyway I don't know as co-hosts I mean I get the privilege of telling an unrelated story totally unrelated nothing to do thing but they're people we know in the story years ago when Glenn Beck used to have his show on Fox News they want to do an a-hole hour on the road to surf them so they invited me to come on and then they said well so who else should come on is there anybody else so I thought you're emulsify mean he's a defector he got in true he had to read the Road to Serfdom in a special room at Moscow State University and arenas special room he had to sign something promising he would not disclose anything he had read to anybody else any of this nonsense so I thought he'd be great so they called him up and the producers called me back and said Glenn is gonna love this guy thank you for the tip so anyway so we did this full hour so as we went to the commercial it's live TV he said to me Glenn says to me during the commercial break go in the greenroom flip through whatever chapter was and just find three points that we'll talk about I kind of felt like shouldn't you have done don't you have like a staff of 35 why am I doing this so I win the greenroom and who walks in but Judge Napolitano and he says Tom woods you come to my backyard you don't even tell me you're gonna be here so then he's lecturing me about you know you really got it we should be having lunch and I'm thinking two minutes is tickin away live television is coming up I have not found one out of the three points so by the time I had 20 seconds by the time I got the judge to be quiet it was not fun that's it has nothing to do with anything but we know the judge and Urey so I thought I would tell it involves TV the point oh I have no idea I don't know no idea in fairness do any of us remember anything high growth down [Laughter] all right so basically what I've done by bringing that up is to give you all the freedom to say anything you like about any topic well I can see something relevant to what they've just said so he was talking about he's on the show when just the very fact that he has a different opinion than everybody else that makes it interesting and to connect that to the theme of this of this episode why should Austrian economics be important or why should the ordinary person care the ordinary person cares about diversity of opinion and it's interesting to at least see diverse views presented and so if you go to a history class or a literature class or really any other field they there's this people will value different perspectives on the subject but for some reason in economics if there's like one little bit of diverse opinion then it just gets you know knocked down and gets hammered down so so that's one reason why the ordinary person should should value learning about Austrian economics or at least be okay with it being presented alongside other views I guess also can I can you guys maybe suggest for people who are there who works oh yeah you know what this has really pushed me over the edge I want to either read my first thing or go watch somebody's lecture or whatever I'm the three of you guys you could just say what's your recommendation for a newcomer who's interested in this someone who listens to contra krugman actually has not done any other work the analog of time just cribbing in 20 seconds trying to like be Teddy knows Hayek well I think Henry hazlit's economics in one lesson is a very is the best introduction if you don't know anything about economics or even if you'd know a little bit about economics his book does a really good job of taking you through those you know the first at least the first two steps to think critically about different policy proposals I can't recommend that enough yeah and if you prefer other media besides reading if you go to the Mises Academy website we have a large number of courses many of them free including introduction to economics sort of economic principles level talks all the way up to more advanced talks and of course just the media archive on Mises org has lots and lots of material at all different levels but I agree Henry hazlit's book is extremely well done and a lot of Ron Paul's books which are not sort of academic books but they're very accessible and there's actually a lot of a lot of content especially about things like business cycles and inflation another phenomena that Ron Paul's interested in that also serve as great introductions to the Austrian theories yes so I completely great the first book especially if it's someone new getting into it as always economics in one lesson I just think is a great one because that's it just gets you thinking it's very easy there it's not a difficult read at all and it gets you thinking the right way unrelated to Austrian economics what the the two essays that I always recommend by Rothbart just because they had such a profound effect on me are anatomy of the state and was war peace and the state those two just really hit me hard and I think if you get into that that way of thinking it probably will make you more interested in Rothbart's other work but the other book that I would recommend specifically about economics is basic economics by Thomas Saul I thought was just great and it's pretty easy it's it's not like you know you wouldn't want to give someone man economy and state to start with that's just I think that might have the effect of just being like okay there's no way I can do this but if you do once you get into that stuff then I mean human action and and man economy and state are the ones that'll finish it off for you another great short rothbard book is what has government done to our money for money and macro is probably the best introduction I want to say a quick something about what do you do when you've read economics in one lesson but you still feel intimidated by human action and I think some people are in that situation where okay I've got the basics but man that book looks heavy so there are some intermediate texts that you might consider and of course the primary one is Bob's book choice and that way you can start getting into Mises Ian ISM without having to go all the way through human action and then you'll feel much more confident going through human action so that's that was a gap that needed to be filled from hazlit to human action is a huge leap and bob has basically given you some lily pads in between I might also mention I had a book in a bunch of years ago called the church in the market which you do not have to be a Catholic to read this book the idea is I was trying to explain not to left-wing Catholics I've given up on more or less I mean absent divine intervention but on the right the so-called traditionalists who won't listen to you because they think the free market came out of the Enlightenment which they hate so I was trying to explain a lot of basics to them and that I think is also a useful intermediate text because that starts off talking about proxy ology but then shows you how you get from human beings act to the law of demand you know cuz we people say oh there's this action accent but I'm not sure everybody knows exactly how you go from the action axiom to something like that and so I start from there and then go on so those are two intermediate texts and then I kind of came up with a bunch of good resources that would take you from beginner to advanced and I posted them at learn Austrian economics calm so we're gonna link to willing to that and we're gonna link to all the stuff that our folks here on the stage are up to at contra krugman comm slash 148 you're watching this streaming that page doesn't exist yet because we're recording it now this episode now but when this episode goes live at contra krugman calm we'll have that stuff up there so I'd like to say thank you to Peter Klein Jonathan Newman Dave Smith as always Bob any parting words before I wrap this baby up thank you Tom for all you've done I sure appreciate that thank you everybody [Music] thanks for listening to come to kidnap subscribe to the show for free on iTunes or stitcher at country treatment o'clock doses on detailed show notes pages our blog books by Tom involved and war at can't recruit muncom see you next week [Music]

Channel: misesmedia

Views: 7,778

Rating: 4.9057593 out of 5

Keywords: Krugman, Woods, Murphy, Dave Smith, Jonathan Newman, Pater Klein, Auburn, ContraKrugman, Podcast, Live, Mises, Mises University

Id: LT9ntAUhMcA

Length: 40min 24sec (2424 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 21 2018