 One of the really energizing and surprising and refreshing things about being associated with the Mises Institute is just all the young people that are involved. I know Tom Wood says this and I say it as well, that it's not just like a mere plug for it, but Mises University is the most fun week of the year of what we do. And we have what we always call post Mises U depression, that when it winds down, Tom and I are really depressed and leave. Partly because we're in a place where for a week everyone thinks we're special and then we go back to our normal lives, but it's really hard to contrast. And so we thought for this panel we would have some young professionals, we have a gamut here of what they're working in and they're going to introduce themselves in a second. But the title of this panel is a discussion on young Americans, progressive, libertarian or apolitical. So I'm going to ask our panelists here to briefly introduce themselves and then give their initial thoughts on this topic. And then I'll sort of just lead them in a Q&A sort of discussion just to help you gain some insight into what young people think these these crazy young kids. What do they think? So why don't we just go ahead and work this way. Hello, I'm Brittany Hunter. I am a graduate of the Mises U program and I'm also a graduate of the sub program, which is Judge Napolitano's course on the Constitution of the Free Market, which is an amazing opportunity if you get the chance to go. I highly recommend it. I am currently a writer in Washington, D.C. unfortunately, but I focus specifically on millennial issues for a free market, libertarian perspective. I was also a third grade teacher at a private school that focused on individualism, liberty and actually Austrian economics. So I have an interesting perspective of not only knowing my own generation, but kind of getting a glimpse into whatever awful name they're going to give the next generation. I'm not sure what that will be yet. But one thing that I have noticed the most is that millennials are very confused. And what I mean by that is nothing gets me more than when I see these Bernie Sanders fans in their Chay shirts that they got from Amazon Prime. And, you know, they're tweeting out Mark's quotes from their iPhones while writing in an Uber. And I'm thinking here you are championing something that is completely contrary to your actions. And so that's something I've really noticed and it's really gotten to me. But this election season, I think, is we're on the bridge of something big. And what I mean by that is I think the left is finally seeing that they can't trust their party either. And that's something that for all of us that got in through this movement to the Ron Paul revolution, that's something we already knew. You know, I know the media likes to credit Trump for kind of this implosion in the GOP, but we all know that that started with Ron Paul and with all of the youth and being ignored and we weren't going to take it. And now I think because the left saw Bernie Sanders and they saw him sell out to Hillary Clinton, they're kind of seeing that they can't trust their system either. Now luckily our candidate didn't sell out to anyone else he would never and there's did. So obviously I think we have the better perspective on that. But I do think we have the same end goals and that's to be left alone. Unfortunately, the left sees that as, okay, you pay for my income, my food, my shelter and then leave me alone. And I think us on the, you know, the libertarian and understand one that that's still theft because you're taking money from someone else as we say taxation is theft. I'm sure you've heard that before. And also, we also know that the government doesn't just provide you some things and then leave you alone. That's not how they work. So I think that we are on the verge of something where we're seeing the two party system completely crumble. And that that's great, but we still have a lot of work to do, especially on the left. So I am pessimistically optimistic. I guess I will say for my generation. Hello everybody. Again, my name is the other cut. I graduated from the University of Toledo a few years ago and it's not a very active school politically. So I wasn't exposed to much of the left, the cultural Marxism and the leftism that you see on many campuses. So my opinion is, you know, somewhat skewed, but at the same time, I don't think it is because those those universities are not. I mean, that the cultural Marxism is very common, but the extremities of it is not as much at, you know, most community colleges and small town colleges and universities. But my my opinion is they're the young Americans are definitely progressives. But despite that, I actually have a decent amount of hope nonetheless. Despite the fact that they're progressives, they're surprisingly somewhat principled. And I think that's a good thing and that's an opportunity for us. But the problem is that some of the principles that they hold now are the underlying principles are the problem and two of which are that the state is just a given. I mean, how many people do you know, aside from the libertarians, of course, that actually question even once whether the state should exist? No one does. It's just a given to default. So therefore, what's the morality with the state that we have? It's that we want the state to provide everybody with these goods that we want like food and shelter and healthcare and education. I mean, we all want these things and we want good versions of them, but they just assume the state is a given and that they do these things. And the other issue is that they're economically illiterate. I mean, unfortunately, they don't realize that if you believe in the division of labor and they obviously do because they engage in it on a daily basis, then it should extend to all goods and that they don't understand that government has no incentive to be efficient because they can't keep the profits. And all these other issues that they just simply don't understand, but I actually am still hopeful. I mean, I've had conversations with friends who are straight up socialists. I mean, they absolutely think the state is the ideal. But if you explain to them even just simple libertarian principles of leave people alone, they agree. They just make exceptions to that rule. So I think there's many approaches you can go with libertarian with the progressives. I mean, for some people that are much more moral and principled, you can explain to them libertarian non-aggression principle. And then from there, you plant some seeds on economics and they'll learn it as they go. And as they, you know, grow older and have more experiences, they'll figure out that, OK, maybe this doesn't work here and they'll make their way there. And then conversely, if there tend to be just more outcome based, then you can talk about economics with them. But I am hopeful actually. I think they are principled and we just need to, as peers to them, show them what the right underlying principles are and should be. Hello, everyone. My name is Ryan Griggs. I'm a first year PhD student in agricultural and applied economics at Texas Tech. I'm also applying for a minor in humor from Bob, in case you didn't know. I was an intern at the Mises Institute in 2013 for the entire summer. I put a lot of the, well, reorganized a lot of the courses to make the independent study options available. I attended the Rothbard Graduate Seminar and also Mises University and passed the written and then the oral exam with honors. I want to speak a little bit about those two programs in particular. I know we have a lot of young people in the room just looking around. If you're thinking of entering graduate school, I can't recommend the Rothbard Graduate Seminar strongly enough. And if you are a student in general, Mises University is where you'll learn really economics as opposed to what you are or could be learning at your local university. So I have to plug those two just from my own personal experience. It's shaped my own life and career trajectory. I somewhat disagree with my peer up here that young Americans will call them millennials are progressive. I think instead they're apolitical. Individual millennials in different given situations, urban versus rural, east coast and west coast versus the flyover states as they've been sometimes derisively called. We'll have different views, whether they're more libertarian, whether they're more progressive, more conservative or more democratic, we'll say. But when we ask what are young people of any sort of particular mindset as an economist in training, I think, compared to what? And when I hear young Americans I think, well, what about older Americans? You know, are older Americans in general one way or the other? And I end up going back to Ron Paul on this, that individuals come as individuals, not in groups. And so it's difficult to think about an entire generation of people. I was having this argument on Facebook earlier. Got all fired up about it. It's hard to talk about an entire generation or entire group of people in one certain way. But we can look at young people and say, OK, they've been exposed less so relative to the older generations to the various mechanisms of the state, various forms of propaganda that they have to undergo. And so, yes, while they do undergo a lot of public education and come out learning anti-economics and other forms of psychobabble, they're at least less conditioned just as a matter of time than our older individuals. And in there lies an opportunity. And that's why Jeff's message of libertarian populism speaks so well. Joe Salerno has an article on Mises.org. I'd recommend to you promoting or at least defending populism as a strategy while maintaining libertarianism as a philosophy. And it's so true. If you look at what's happening now with Milo Unopolis, the alt-right as it's called, younger rears of Breitbart, you see the sort of uprising in college campuses across the country with these sort of quasi-conservatives. I think they're sort of paleo-conservatives resurrected, but they're having a bunch of success and enthusiasm. And it's because there's a populist strategy. Protectionism isn't selling Trump. It's just not. It's the calling out the rulers and the aggressors and the crooks. That's what's having a success. And I think that we can apply that same strategy to libertarians to capitalize on their apathy. Well, I'm Marta Hidalgo. I come from Madrid, Spain. And I did law and business in college. Then I had my own business for four years. And then I'm now studying to become a management accountant. And I'm a Mises U university alum. I can't speak for American young people, but I would say in my country people are progressive because it's politically correct. It depends on where you're brought up. If you went to private school, you would vote for conservative people. If you went to public school, you would vote for socialists. But I would also say they're apolitical because the government has done a really good job in indoctrinating people, making them believe only chosen and really intelligent people go to government. So they just think we should let the ones who know what to do rule us. Okay, thanks everybody. So let me, I'm just going to raise some questions for our panelists to discuss. So I guess one thing that sort of older people were alarmed at in this cycle was, here you had Bernie Sanders, who clearly was like the cool candidate for a lot of younger people. And he was openly, apparently embracing socialism. There's a lot of people saying, where is this country going with now the young people these days? They're all into, not only do they wear their hair funny, but now they're socialists too. And so can you guys comment on that? Like, do they really know what socialism meant and are they socialist or was it? So I don't know if you guys want to react to that. Well, if you guys don't mind, I'll say this. So kind of playing on what I said earlier, I think that there's confusion there. I think that if they got their wish and capitalism was destroyed, they would hate their lives. And one thing that's always made me laugh is I have a lot of musician friends that are all socialists. I'm thinking, what makes you think you'd be allowed to play music in a socialist government? You know, you do what they wanted you to do, not what you want to do. And they just don't understand that. And I think that's largely because our public education system has done a really good job at making capitalism seem like it's responsible for everything that's ever gone wrong in history instead of highlighting the fact that it's lifted people out of poverty and completely changed the world. It's done so much for people and it's a miseducation and college isn't helping. They're not getting the truth. So I think that they call themselves socialists because it's cool and that that sounds really great. But I think at the end of the day, their actions speak louder than words and like I said earlier, they're using Amazon Prime. They're using the sharing economy and that they're utilizing capitalism in every aspect of their lives so that they are confused. Do you guys want to chime in? I don't think they're socialists. For one, I don't think they can even define what socialism is, is the public ownership of the means of production. And when I ask my friends that are all Bernie supporters or overwhelmingly Bernie supporters, sadly, their answer is I ask them, what's the difference between democratic socialism and regular socialism? And they always just say, well, it's just different. But I never get a reason, of course, because they can't define one or the other. But what they think, because they all say we're not actually socialists in the sense that when I explain to them what socialism actually is, they say, oh, no, we're not for that. And they want it because they think, again, the economic illiteracy, they think that there's market failures, they think that corporations are all greedy and all these other issues that they assume are all these bad things and in some cases they are bad things but because of perverse incentives because of the state. But I think overwhelmingly they're not socialists. I think they are capitalists in the sense that they want people to have their own businesses and do their own things, but they just want it heavily regulated because they think that capitalists have perverse incentives that harm consumers as opposed to provide them with a good that they actually value and are willing to pay for voluntarily. Okay. I think also Bernie Sanders doesn't really know what socialism is, too. So there's that. And I'm not, I mean, that's a throwaway line, but also when he was interviewed one time he said something, I forget the exact words, but it was something like, well, I mean like what they do over in Sweden or something like caring about people. That's what I mean by socialism. And I was like, well, okay, I guess I'm a socialist, but. Okay. So, Zia, you said something interesting caught my ear in your talk about how your friends, they have these so-called progressive goals, but they're completely ignorant of economics. So, and I've noticed that too that a lot of these people when they're speaking, you can just tell that, you know, a main problem here is like, how am I going to, you know, crack this nut if I wanted to get through this person is that they just, they lack even the basics of price theory and things like that, you know, people complaining about Uber surge pricing, for example, and, you know, just realizing that they don't understand the first thing about supply and demand. So you'd have to start from square one. So my question is, I'm definitely agreeing with that observation, but do they want to learn economics or is it that, you know what I mean? Is it just a matter of, oh, okay, so all it's going to take me is 45 minutes and then we're going to have a budding, you know, libertarian on our hands or is it the reason they don't know economics is because they prefer to engage in like emotional things rather than logical step-by-step deduction? The latter, definitely. I think for one, I mean, economics is in a, because we're taught poor economics in school, they have no desire to learn in the first place because they think that's what economics is and who wants to learn that? I mean, I don't know anybody that does, but at the same time, I think that they, because they take the state as a given that they are scared to question that. I mean, people are generally afraid of change and if it's something that we're taught at a young age by our families usually and by the state that the state is a given and that they're necessary and that they can provide a good and therefore when you challenge them on that, it scares the heck out of them and I mean, I can understand why, but nonetheless, I think we must, you know, continue to push through and teach them what is the right thing, but also at the same time, people tend to avoid conflict. You know, like tough conversations and that could be even close people that trust you. They still don't want to have that conversation, so usually kind of planting a seed or like pushing them in one direction and then kind of letting them go on their own, but unfortunately you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Yeah, I think a lot of young people are well intended and they do want to understand how things work. They do want to see those positive outcomes socialists they may not know or progressives may not know what that body of philosophy stands for, but they'll hold certain ideals, like they want a thriving market for healthcare. They want everybody to have access to healthcare. Well, so do we, we're not anti-human, but we have different opinions on how to get there and we're right, by the way. So it requires though as their peers, as their colleagues, as just their fellow students and so forth to one, not be afraid to tell them they're wrong, but then two, be able to explain if they're willing to listen what the correct way to think about it is. So a big question that often comes up at the end of conferences like these or at MisesU is what must be done? What is the thing that we should all go out and do now to change the world? And I think the answer is to go edify yourself. If you're a student, go to MisesU. If you're a grad student, go to RGS. If you're a practicing professional, frequentmeses.org. Read man economy and state, read human actions so that when others around you come with their well intended questions, you can provide a theoretically correct answer. And that is as much as anybody can ask an individual proponent of liberty to do. Okay, let me ask a question to Marta. I think a lot of people that I've talked to, they say, oh, if we could just break the people who are really big on the LP in activism in terms of, you know, this election's our opportunity. And they say, if we could just break the strangle heart of this two-party system, you know, then liberty's right around the corner. And yet I point out, well, in Europe, they have many political parties, and it's not that that's a hotbed of anarcho-capitalism over there. So I wonder, can you just give us a sense of, you know, how do things play out when there are, you know, multiple parties and they have to build a coalition and so on? Like, do you think in general that having multiple parties, like, restrains the state, or does that make it easier for the state to grow? Or do you have any thoughts? It's absolutely the same as what you have here. I mean, we have two big parties, the conservative and the socialist party, and now we have, like, a bigger communist party coming to power because the idea is that Spain is, like, leftist, which is not true. But in reality, they do exactly the same. The only difference is, like, you know, we have Catalunya, and they want to get out of Spain. So there's a really strong party there, and it's like only 2 million people out of the 50 we are vote for that party. So whenever one of the big parties don't have enough votes to get to pass the laws, they just make a pact with them. The reality is just the same. Yeah, in case you hit any glimmer of hope, we just want to crush it. We have a deal with the local tavern owners just to make sure that you're just going to go out of here and just drink your sorrows away. All right, let me, I had a question for Ryan, but of course you guys can, I think, Brittany, too might chime in. So when I was coming, don't let the hairline fool you. I'm not that old, but I am older than these guys. And when I first was in grad school and people would ask me, and I said I was into Austrian economics, they really didn't know what it was. Right, and I think we've made progress that now they know enough to make fun of it. Okay, whereas before, they didn't even know what it was. Now they know that, oh, that's that obsolete doctrine. So I'm just wondering, like, so Ryan, as he mentioned, he's getting a PhD at the Free Market Institute where I am. And so I'm wondering what your guys' thoughts on when you interact with people your age, like, do they know what Austrian economics is at this point or is it still, you've run to a lot of people, like, what do you study, the GDP in Vietnam? What is that? Yes, they do know what Austrian economics is. Or at least they think they do, is a better way to put it. There are departments that, and there's a few universities that are sympathetic to Austrian economics. And at those universities, there are still various departments and factions within each of them. Many of them are still hostile to the idea of Austrian economics. It's often lumped in with the sort of overarching free market sort of spectrum. You could throw a conservative in there and any other number of guilt by association sort of concepts or fields. So they know what it is. Of course, at Texas Tech, it's nice where there's a pretty solid presence there and we even get students who aren't in the FMI directly but who still come to events. I'm here with two students today from Texas Tech who are not PhD students but who still wanted to come. So, yeah, there's a presence. People know what they have an idea of what it is and that's progress. Just to chime in on this two quick anecdotes. When I was taking my first LSAT, because unfortunately I want to be a lawyer, I had one starting conversation with him before the test started and he said he's an economics major and I said, okay, I enjoy economics. I'm not a student of economics but it's something I do as a hobby and he asked me what school and I said Austrian school and he just started laughing at me and he said, oh, that kooky, that kooky brand of economics. Of course, I just did nothing but glare at him for the rest of the LSAT so that score was not too great. So that was an example of what my peers thought but something that I actually encourage all of you to do is I was able to petition my university and get them to accept my online Mises Academy courses. So in the process of doing that, he kept asking me, so what is this and I kept saying Austrian economics. Okay, so I need to call Austria. I kept saying no, you do not need to call Austria. Auburn, Alabama, let me, I'll show you the certificate I've completed, you know, Bob Murphy's course and he just kept saying, so I need to call Vienna and I need to call Austria. I had no idea what I was talking about and so after two hours I just gave up and went to another professor who helped me out but even, and this is a political science advisor who still had no idea what I was talking about. So I do think we have a lot of work to do as far as making sure people know that when it comes to free markets, there's not just a Chicago school. There's more to it than Milton Friedman, that there's a whole other branch so I think we could do a little better on that. Okay, Zeed, I want to go back. You said something about that your friends were progressives but they were principled and first of all, I wonder, why do you have friends who are progressives? I think we were all kind of, you know, I wouldn't have any libertarians in the neighborhood. Can you elaborate, what did you mean by that? And also, I'm wondering, some of this WikiLeaks stuff, I don't know how many of you have been following it but I think a lot of us are looking for the really juicy stuff about, okay, where did we put the dead body? But there's stuff in there too about just how much they were out to get rid of, to steal the thing from Bernie Sanders and so I think there were a lot of Bernie Sanders rank and file supporters who had their eyes open. They might have suspected that the Clinton campaign was a little bit dirty or whatever but to see just the way they talked about them in print. So I'm wondering, can you just comment on that and do you think that this is actually sort of, it's not just the DOP that's in trouble but even the Democratic Party too? Yeah, I do. I think, when I said they're principled, I meant that they hold their first principles of the state as a given and that they can provide public goods that the market can't. They hold their arguments relatively soundly and they hold them to the logical conclusions and they hold them for sort of the right reasons like moral reasons of everybody needs food and everybody should be educated and everybody needs to not die if they have a cut on their hand because of an infection. They need to have these healthcare provided for them but I do think that the left is also being hurt substantially. I do think, fortunately, Hillary is doing a lot of damage to just the image of a politician. I mean, there's nothing likable about her. I mean, out of all my friends that are progressives, I can think of one that actually likes her. Like the rest are just voting for her because Trump says mean things. But I think that they do concede that she is the epitome bad politician. She is corrupt. She's a liar. She acts in self-interest. All these things that everybody hates. So I think, fortunately, she is doing quite a bit of damage to the left and it's definitely more reason to be hopeful. So I think we will end with that ringing endorsement of Hillary Clinton and all the things. So let's give a round of applause for our panelists. Thank you.