 I want to start by expressing my gratitude to the Mises Institute for this invitation and for their dedication to truth. I've benefited greatly from their libraries, publications, events like Mises University, research fellowships, and being able to participate in the new graduate program. It has been wonderful discussing Austrian economics with bright students like Elias and Trevor. You've accomplished something pretty amazing, and I don't just mean the impressive amount of reading and writing and learning that you had to do for your classes, but being the first cohort through a brand new, one-of-a-kind program in a field of study that is, in nice terms, a minority perspective among economists. In more realistic terms, Austrian economics is sometimes ridiculed, ignored, scoffed at, and even hated by some mainstream economists. But you knew that coming into the program, I'm sure. And that indicates something about you and your classmates. Understanding the real world is more important to you than the supposed tractability of sterile mathematical models of human choice. You prefer critical thinking to joining the bandwagon. You like reading old books instead of the statistical flourishes in the latest top econ journal articles. You have found that the media, the so-called political elites, and the ivory tower academics are not on your side, but instead shill and ever-changing, repeatedly contradictory and sometimes downright evil narrative in service of an emperor with no clothes, which in our case is not one person, but a host of people, institutions, bureaucracies, and the pretence of knowledge and lust to dominate that holds them all together. Most importantly, it indicates that you value truth over taking a conventional career path. It means that you have signed up to be the bold child in the crowd who declares what is obviously true, but for various reasons is unspoken by everyone else. It means that your future involves not giving in to evil, but proceeding ever more boldly against it. But let's first discuss the career paths open to you with this degree. What does this bold dedication to truth and vendetta against evil look like for somebody with a master's degree in Austrian economics from the Mises Institute? One option is academia. You can find a spot in the right school with the right mix of teaching and research, perhaps after attaining a PhD, where you can teach hundreds, if not thousands of students, solid, causal, realist economics and contribute to our understanding of Austrian economics, building on the foundation laid by Manger, Bumbavard, Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. This is the path that your Mises Institute faculty have chosen, and if it interests you, I recommend emulating and seeking the advice of the ones that seem to be in the type of position you want. My own advice is to take advantage of your friendships in the network here to find opportunities that suit your skills and interests. This is how I heard about and eventually interviewed for a position at a small private Christian college in beautiful East Tennessee. At my interview with the academic vice president, I noticed a Ron Paul campaign sign in the corner, and I immediately knew that this would go well for me. In my interview with the academic council, composed of the chairs of the different departments on campus, they asked me questions like, can you explain the difference between the monetarist in Austrian schools of thought? And after being hired and then writing a popular article about the disastrous consequences of Federal Reserve policy, the president of Bryan College literally pat me on the back and said something to the effect of it's good that you wrote that the Fed is dangerous and has got to go. I've used text by Sean Rittenauer, Robert Murphy, and Murray Rothbard as the main textbooks in my classes, with many other readings from Austrian economists. And contrary to what happens in many of the schools, this has been encouraged and not punished. It's very special. This is all because I heard about the position through Joe Salerno and Tim Terrell. So I know that my advice to take advantage of the network you have plugged into here is good advice. Another path is to actually be productive. Unlike us academics who sit around reading and writing, only occasionally standing up to drone on and on to our poor students about the stuff that interests us. Economics is not just for economists. Entrepreneurs, consumers, workers, investors, insurers, and even bankers could use a little Econ 101. Many of them already know the fundamentals of economics just without the vocab. Consumers understand subjective value and the effect of money printing. Workers know that they have to demonstrate their productivity to get the raise that they want. Entrepreneurs understand that production takes time, markets are uncertain, and that governments only get in the way. Whenever I chat with business owners like my father-in-law and friends at church and special guests that we bring to school for the business classes, I hear Austrian economics just in a different jargon or without the jargon perhaps. This by itself is enough evidence that Austrian economics has at least a large overlap with the truth if you weren't already convinced by the rock solid epistemological foundations as explained by Mises. So your continued pursuit of the truth can certainly take the form of consulting, working for, or even owning your own business. You are especially suited to navigate business cycles, appreciate the fact that your real boss is the consumer, and it might surprise some people in this room to hear me say this with the quantitative methods that you've learned, make sense of the markets around you and predict future conditions. Yet another career path open to you is to become or advise policymakers or to otherwise influence policy and inform the debates surrounding the role of the state. While economics is a value-free science, a point emphasized by Mises, we should hope that you value human life and flourishing families and communities unlike Lucas Engelhardt, who admitted yesterday that he has supervillain tendencies and advised all of the students at Mises University that if you want to destroy the economy, engage in hyperinflation. If you can find an issue that you're passionate about with some seeds of popular support and an institution or political candidate to channel your ideas into actually scaling back the size and scope of the state, then you should go for it. One built in problem with the Liberty Movement is that we have a strong distaste for politics and government, and it means that we avoid it while the state grows bigger and stronger. State policy is especially important these days because it can be a bulwark against an ever-encroaching federal government. But we can certainly use more Ron Paul's, Thomas Massies, Corey DeAngeles' and Thoe Bishops who are not disgusted by the messy world of politics like I am, or at least if they are, then they view the payoff of a smaller state and decentralization as worth it. And remember that Ron Paul had Lou Rockwell and Jeff Dice, among other and many other people helping him campaign and review and draft legislation, among other things. So choosing this path does not mean that you have to become a politician yourself. Failure is a possibility in all three of these career paths. You could fail as a teacher and researcher. Your business could fail. Or you could end up at a DC think tank writing white papers that nobody reads or that represent more of a compromise with evil than proceeding ever more boldly against it. So don't do that last one. If I can go back to the Hans Christian Anderson folktale I alluded to before, I think we can learn an important lesson. The 1837 story titled The Emperor's New Clothes is about a vain emperor who gets tricked by some con artists who promised to weave for him some beautiful new clothes made out of special thread. Let me read just a little bit for you. They said that they knew how to weave cloth of the most beautiful colors and patterns. The clothes made from this wonderful cloth would be invisible to everyone who was unfit for the job he held or who was very simple in character. These must indeed be splendid clothes, thought the emperor. He gave large sums of money to both the weavers in order that they might begin their work at once. The emperor's sycophantic officials checked on the project of the new, the progress of the new clothes, but they are too afraid to tell the emperor the truth that they cannot see the clothes at all. By the way, one of my favorite movie jokes is from the 1996 live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 41%. Glyn Close plays Carella DeVille and at one point she frustratingly asked one of her assistants, what kind of sycophants are you? To which the assistant replied, what kind of sycophant do you want me to be? Anyways, back to the emperor with the invisible clothes. When the emperor arise for his fitting, he too lies to himself and those around him when he cannot see the clothes as the con men pretend to dress him. Continuing the story, oh, the cloth is charming, said he aloud. I approve of it completely. He smiled most graciously and looked closely at the empty looms. No way would he say that he could not see what two of his advisors had praised so much. Everyone with the emperor now strained his or her eyes hoping to discover something on the looms, but they could see no more than the others. Nevertheless, they all exclaimed, oh, how beautiful. And advised his majesty to have some new clothes made from the splendid material for the parade that was planned. After being dressed, the emperor strolled out among his subjects who were also told that the threads were only visible to those of good character and who were good at their jobs. And the story ends this way. The emperor walked under his high canopy in the midst of the procession through the streets of his capital. All the people standing by and those at the windows cried out, oh, how beautiful are our emperor's new clothes. No one would admit these much admired clothes could not be seen because in doing so, he would have been saying he was either a simpleton or unfit for his job. But then, but the emperor has nothing at all on, said a little child. Listen to the voice of the child, exclaimed his father. What the child has said was whispered from one to another, but he has nothing at all on. At last cried out all of the people. The emperor was upset for he knew that the people were right. However, he thought the procession must go on now. The lords of the bed chamber took greater pains than ever to appear to hold up the train, although in reality there was no train to hold. And the emperor walked on in his underwear. The lesson is this, tell the truth. Even when it is an unpopular truth or an inconvenient truth, the outcome of telling the truth is that we can expose and embarrass the state, which is a nice result by itself, but has the added benefit of decreasing the power of the state over others' minds. And breaking that control is a prerequisite for more freedom and human flourishing. Sorry, Lucas Engelhardt. These days, we don't just have unpopular and inconvenient truths, but the concept of truth itself is viewed with hostility. That what does a woman documentary put this in high relief when in an interview, a professor recoiled at the idea of seeking the truth, calling it transphobic condescending and rude. And we've seen similar debates over the definitions of the terms recession and vaccination in recent years. Recently, a video of the prime minister of New Zealand was trending in which she said to dismiss all other sources of information because, quote, we will continue to be your single source of truth. Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth, end quote. So we have widespread hostility to the idea that there is truth or at least an objective universal truth. And we also have governments and their media chambermaids claiming to be the sole providers and arbiters of truth. Where do we fit in this mess? What can you do? You can tell the truth. You can tell the truth, whether you go into academia, business or public policy. You can tell the truth, whether your listeners like it or not. You can tell the truth, even when your government claims to have a monopoly on the truth. You can tell the truth, even when everybody around you seems unwilling to acknowledge it. It's important to note that there are two ways to not tell the truth. The obvious way is to lie. You could utter something you know to be false. And while this is bad, the ninth commandment says do not bear false testimony. The other way to not tell the truth is much easier and therefore much more pernicious. The other way to not tell the truth is to simply stay silent. I'm sure that many of the members of the crowd have viewed the naked emperor, and instead of lying by saying what magnificent clothes they just quietly watched the ridiculous parade. In the story, however, more and more people felt empowered to tell the truth when they heard other people saying it. But it all started with one kid saying something obvious out loud. The title of this talk is A Future in Austrian Economics because the Mises Institute wanted me to focus on what graduates can expect going forward and how their knowledge of Austrian economics can benefit their lives. But you might be familiar with a talk with a similar title. In 1990, just days after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ray Rothbard gave a talk at the end of the second ever Mises University called The Future of Austrian Economics. So my task is a little easier. I only have to give a picture of a future instead of the future. In the speech, Rothbard talks about a moving experience he had earlier in the year when the Mises Institute put together an event for a Lithuanian delegation that was traveling around the East Coast, visiting think tanks to get some advice on privatizing their economy. Rothbard mentioned that even though these anti-communist think tanks had been around for decades, they had never thought or written about the desocialization process. The Lithuanian delegation therefore was just shown the nice offices and Rothbard mentioned the plush carpets and rugs of these apparently thoughtless think tanks with no real discussion or substance to the meetings. But when the Lithuanians met with the Mises Institute, you better believe they had a lineup of speakers for them. Yuri Maltsev talked about privatization in the Soviet Union. Hans Hoppe talked about privatization in Germany and they had other speakers in discussions and meetings with some substance. They talked about privatization in central banking. And the Lithuanians were immensely pleased to finally hear some substantive content, some good advice, some truth instead of a show. Rothbard ended the speech on an optimistic note saying that he was noticing a remarkable growth and interest in the Austrian school and the Mises Institute and he attributed that growth to the fact that the Mises Institute does not cave in. It takes an uncompromising posture when it comes to the truth. He said that caving in and compromising may be viewed as a pragmatic approach but that it isn't pragmatic, especially in the long run. Rothbard mentioned that in addition to the moral failure of it and the long run compromising only leads to failure when it comes to your original goals. He said, if you follow what you believe, not only is it a very, if you follow what you believe, not only is it a very joyful thing to do, you also win out, which is why I think we're going to win. So now let me try to end on a similarly optimistic note which is unusual for me because teaching economics comes with a heaping dose of cynicism. We economists have some nice things to say about the beauty of the spontaneous order of the market economy and the way everybody has a spot in the division of labor due to the law of association, which is probably the closest thing we have to something that would show up on a hallmark guard. Despite the small handful of nice things that we can say, ultimately, we are the party poopers who have to remind everyone that there's no easy way to generate economic growth. There's virtually nothing governments can do to help the economy and that there's no escaping opportunity costs and scarcity. We are the Debbie Downers of social science. The upside to telling the truth besides the points I've already made, like the fact that it's the right thing to do, it exposes the state and breaks the state's control over people's minds. It's helpful to those who are looking for truth. It's pragmatic in the long run and it's the joyful thing to do. The final upside I'll mention is that the truth sets you free. This popular phrase was first uttered by Jesus in a disagreement he had with the crowds of people surrounding him. But before we unpack what it means, it's worth pointing out that apparently telling the truth can attract a crowd even if those listeners reject the message of the truth teller. The point Jesus was making is that we are enslaved by our sins. Telling the truth may be difficult in some circumstances but the consequence of telling one lie is that another lie must be told later on to support the first one. Later even more lies are required to prop up the others. Eventually we find ourselves in a tangled web of lies with all of the psychological stress, relationship troubles, lost joy and even separation from God that comes from it. So the solution is to not go down that path. The solution is similar to the Austrian prescription for business cycles. Don't engage in artificial credit expansion. Once you do, the bust is inevitable. But once you lie, the bust is also inevitable. The only question is whether you will hop off the path by telling the truth sooner and suffer lighter consequences or later and suffer worse consequences. But the best course of action is to never go down the path in the first place. Therefore telling the truth is freeing. You do not enslave yourself to a lie and you commit yourself to maintaining the lie with ever more moral degradation and failure. So if we like freedom, we should also like the truth. So to summarize, tell the truth. Go out there and tell the vain emperor that he is in fact in truth naked. Thank you.