This last part of chapter 3 finishes out part one of the book, and should be the last bit of really heavy lifting in economic theory. The next part starts Rothbard’s historical examination of the circumstances leading up to the Great Depression, so we may find things less dense, but who knows!
My notes can be found here.
Trying something a little new for this video–I’ve got a lavalier microphone and my phone set up in my office instead of in front of my PC. The audio quality is a bit worse, but the background is nicer. Is that an improvement?
Aaaaaanyway…
Today we’re covering the first half of Chapter 3. We’ll be looking at Rothbard’s arguments against Overproduction Theory, Underconsumption Theory, and the Acceleration Principle (which is actually a variation of Underconsumption Theory).
Check out my notes here.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a convenient way to access W.H. Hutt’s “Coordination and the Price System.”
The best I could find were listings from a few university libraries: https://search.worldcat.org/title/28785415
However, the Phillips/McManus/Nelson book Banking and the Business Cycle is available free at the Mises Institute.
This video is available on Odysee and BitChute as usual.
Now, also available on YouTube!
I was inspired by part of a Lew Rockwell speech that was posted at the Mises Institute website last week!
Today, I’m talking about the dangers of positivism in economics. Basically, in complex systems like the economy, you need a logical, causal framework to evaluate ideas. A purely positivist (i.e., each idea must be tested empirically) approach can be disastrous.
Why? Because empirical testing of uncontrolled systems can lead to counterintuitive and non-generalizable results!
The temptation to fiddle endlessly becomes a source of wealth for the fiddler and a source of poverty for everybody else.
Not only are there unlimited legions of bad ideas to “test,” there are an equally unlimited number of statistical tests to apply to the subsequent data, and a finite confidence interval means some of those statistical tests will give you false positives!
Anyway, check out the video up top, and the show notes here.
This video covers chapter two, including an in-depth explanation of Figure 1 on page 48, with additional visual elements to help make it easier to understand.
I’ve been reading a bit about Modern Monetary Theory lately, and one argument I’ve seen a few times is that inflation and taxation are merely methods to transfer goods from the “private sphere” to the “public sphere.”
It continues, on a reasonable time scale!
Welcome to the second part of my tutorial/study guide on Murray Rothbard’s seminal book, America’s Great Depression.
I’m trying to figure out fun things to do for blog entries, and I thought it would be fun to go through books and create video notes or study guides.
“Exploitation theory” is something I see being constantly used in socialist arguments, even today. What you won’t hear is that exploitation theory is an uneconomic mess that was completely destroyed by advances in price theory that happened while Marx was still alive.
Oddly enough, even Marx’s opponents, like Kropotkin in The Conquest of Bread, use this faulty idea of exploitation to make their arguments, and it’s kind of painful to watch.
Above, in a ~16 minute video, I’ll break down the problems with exploitation theory and provide a concrete example where a person might choose to rent a tool from another without either person exploiting the other, and with no aggression or differences in ability.
The bottom line is this: anytime someone tells you somebody is exploiting someone else without providing evidence, you can simply dismiss them using the arguments in this video. Their attempts to label certain relationships as exploitative is just them trying to steal a base, and you shouldn’t let them.
My notes and script, if you want to read them.
Video also available on BitChute.
In this article by Frank Shostak, I think he’s made a bit of a mistake. It may be that I’m missing some subtle point, but I really do think I’m on to something here.
I saw this post today and I feel like I had a bit of an epiphany.
As silly as it might sound, I’ve been trying to put up reasonably original stuff, without repeating myself too much. Kind of a “dissertation” attitude toward posts.
Honestly, it’s caused me more often than not, to tell myself it’s not worth saying something that’s been said before.