 Thank you all for your speeches, they were all great, really appreciated all of them. I would like a sanity check for me. So I have been against Russian sanctions from the beginning, I have been very vocal about it, written about it, I think Europe's policy has been insane, I think it's been driven by Washington, which I think is clearly evident, and I think a lot of what's happened in Eastern Europe has been because of American policy. But European politicians are acting in a way, to me, that are completely contrary to the interests of Europeans, and I just want to know, what am I missing? Am I missing a huge piece here that I'm just not getting? These questions would be appropriate tomorrow when I give my speech, but none of these gentlemen said a word about this problem. So I think this question is not appropriate to this audience, okay? That doesn't mean that I don't allow them to have an opinion, but they should just express their opinion in private and wait until I'm done tomorrow, and then anybody can say whatever they want and condemn me or not condemn me or whatever it is, so alright. So next question please, or if you have another question, you can ask that as well, okay? But in fairness to the gentlemen, I have to, huh? No comment. Yeah, alright, I think, no, I think so too, yeah, alright. Next question. So I will try to keep my question on the topic. I have a question for Professor Karl Friedrich Israel with a hat-tip to Torsten Polite also. The inflation is one thing, but unemployment is also a statistic which could easily be fudged. It happened in the 26th of April 2007 that the empirical economists hired by the state of France went on strike because they were forced to publish unemployment numbers that were so fudged that even by their own exalted standards they refused to do so. So when I go to a private statistician named John Williams, who has his website Shadow Government Statistics, he thinks for the US currently the unemployment is at 24% instead of the official 4%, and he also thinks that the CPI is at 12% compared to the official 8%, although he also has a 1980 technology which puts it at 16%, so I don't know. I think the 12% is the Boschian commission that you described. I'm not exactly sure how he gets to the 1980 numbers because he doesn't publish his methodology. So obviously this is all the violation of the Phillips curve which says that you can have high unemployment, low inflation or the opposite, but here we have, according to John Williams, very high unemployment, very high inflation, so who should I believe John Williams, the private statistician or the Phillips curve? The easy answer is they are all wrong, so it always depends. I cannot really give an informed opinion or response to the question of unemployment, but as far as the inflation rates are concerned that John Williams publishes on his website, I have looked into those as well. I think it's a problem that it is not quite transparent the way he calculates it. I'm also wondering where he got the data, because a lot of the data that is necessary actually to recalculate these statistics is not openly available. Might be different in the US. In Europe, in Germany in particular, you don't get the data. What you would need is data of the individual items that are in the baskets, not only the prices, but also the weights, and both of these are not available. You can ask for a special permission to look at the data, and the conditions are really not very inviting. You have to pay a lot of money, first of all, and then you get permission to come to some office somewhere and look at a computer without internet connection for a specified amount of time. I'm not even sure you can take the data away on a USB drive or something like that. It almost seems as if the official offices are not interested in being transparent about this. So, whom should you believe? None of them. The truth may lie somewhere in between. I have a question for Professor Hulsmann. With regards to the dualism of scientific knowledge, the natural sciences on the one hand, and then economic science, praxeology on the other hand, I was wondering, are economists who carry out empirical research, are they contributing to economic science or true economic science, or are they contributing to the third option, namely meaningful facts, like statistical facts? Are they contributing to economic theory or to history? These words by and large are worthless as far as economic theory is concerned, because you cannot derive any regularities from these observations. Even if you find regularities, that's something that you have to explain in itself, which you could do only in the light of economic reasoning. For example, if you find a regularity between the variations of the money supply and the variations of the price index during a certain time frame and say, yes, this has something to do with the quantity theory of money. But as we have heard this afternoon or this morning, there are other factors that also come into play. So it's the compound effect of different universal mechanisms. But statistical work and econometric work can be helpful as a description of the factual situation that you had at a certain period or a certain moment in time. So therefore I think the Austrian take on econometrics would be to take it as a point of departure, not as an answer. It raises questions, but it doesn't give you answers. The answers need to come from theoretical reasoning and from understanding. I have another question. Would you or would Mises categorize psychology or as you call it, teamology or timeology or mathematics, would you categorize these disciplines into natural science or like the rational philosophy as as praxeology is an example of? Thymology would be part of history. So the purpose is precisely to gain understanding of the meaning that the acting person attaches to his situation and to understand why he acts and the way he acts. Mathematics is more complicated. I'm not enough of a mathematician. I've seen very interesting articles on the topic. Some people claim it's just an emanation of logic. Some say, well, mathematics numbers have a logic of their own. So it's some mathematical realism and so on. So there are different things. I wouldn't be able to classify Mises as, I think his take would be that mathematics is an outgrow of logic in case it's different from national science on the one hand and economics on the other. But the interesting thing would be indeed, if you think through his argument in the ultimate foundation of economic science, that epistemology and logic therefore have a praxeological basis, whereas the praxeological basis in mathematics, but I don't have the answer. And I have a third question for you if this is allowed with regards to Mises' critique of quantum physics. Can you or could Mises imagine or can an instrument exist in our possession, in a human possession that can disprove the universal and time invariable constancy principle that all laws are always and forever true? Then can we ever get to an instrument or make an instrument that could disprove this? Yeah, it's a good question. His take would be, well, when we do research of any sort in the natural science, we need to approach our observation with the hypothesis that there's an invariable concatenation of cause and effect. There's no exception. So otherwise, so then the question is, where do we get this regularity postulate from? And he says it's implied in the category of action, and I don't agree with him on this. So I think you have to assume this, but it's not something that comes from action. So my disagreement with him would be there. And in my eyes, this is where also belief comes into play. I think I'm siding there more with Augustine than with Mises. Augustine once famously said, I believe so that I understand, I understand therefore I believe more strongly. Here we have to believe that there is a constant relationship inanimate objects don't choose. And they always produce the same consequence, but we don't know this, right? It's not something that we can know, and it doesn't follow from the category of action. I have a question for Carl Friedrich, about the inflation. I must say I love inflation myself. It's dangerous to say this in an arco-capitalist environment, but I made some money by buying assets with borrowed money, and inflation did the rest. But my question is, could there be, I don't know if that's true, but how do you see they keep the inflation lower than it really is? Could it be the reason that they want to keep the interest low, so the states can borrow money for free money almost, and then the inflation does the rest? So it pays off all the debts by itself. Yeah, there obviously is a conflict of interest there on the part of the government, because the government is one of the big beneficiaries of low interest rate policies. And you cannot really increase the interest rates right now without causing a liquidation crisis and lots of problems also for governments in terms of public finances. So that is one reason why the ECB officially changed the strategy. Going back to 2% as fast as possible, as soon as possible, to a gradual approach. So what I mentioned in the talk, they gradually want to reduce the inflation rates, and they want to slowly increase the interest rates in order to get there over time, so not to provoke this crisis. So yeah, that's all I can say about that. It really depends on the willingness to bring about such a liquidation crisis, to really get rid of the problem. It would be very harmful in the short run. I believe that it would be good in the long run if people understand the necessity of the liquidation crisis. If people don't understand that, then of course, such a short term liquidation crisis can cause a lot of problems politically and economically as well in the long run. But if people understand why it is actually important and useful, beneficial in the long run to go through this, then that would be great. But I'm afraid people don't understand that. Again, the question for you, Carl. So talking about inflation, and the financial market would say, oh, we cannot raise interest rates too rapidly because that would induce a systemic risk, blah, blah, blah. But when I look at, you know, I come to Turkey since 2012, and you know, Turkey is famous because they have high inflation. My friends here seem to, I mean, they survive. I know they're just paying, but I mean, you know, you don't see riots on the, at least I don't see riots on the street. So what would happen if the ECB think, oh, then we just go the Turkey way, just let it, I will keep printing, just let it go. Is that, there is a possibility and what would be the consequence if they go to Turkey, Turkish way? Well, excellent question. I think that's exactly the route they will go. Get used to higher inflation. It's not that bad. Look at Turkey. They make it work somehow, so we can do that also. I think, yeah, this is very likely as a scenario for the future because it is in the short run less harmful to those people who make the decisions. And that's why I think it's going, it's very likely, it's a very likely scenario, yes. Yet other panel speaker could also comment if you like. Other panelists, you may want to comment. I do agree that maybe a solution of free rein of inflation is possible, I don't know if likely. What I see is they will try as usual in these situations to make other kinds of interventions especially on prices. In some European countries, for example, in Italy, my country, they are already talking about maximum prices and so this will be part of a manufactured scarcity crisis because if you set maximum prices, this of course causes scarcity especially in the food market which is what is the discussion right now. So probably we will see food scarcity artificially created by the stupid intervention of governments which try to solve the problems. It's a very ancient story, I talked about Roman history. The Emperor Diocletian tried to solve the horrendous inflation of the third century after Christ by setting maximum prices. The penalty was death penalty if you tried to sell something beyond the maximum price and he failed miserably as always price controls fail. I would argue that inflation is an evil. And if you say people are fine with inflation, I recommend go to a little shop and ask the average guy over here and he will give you a very different answer what he thinks about inflation. Inflation is a problem, it's not only that the currency will be debased so you get fewer and fewer goods in exchange of your currency, it leads to a redistribution of income and wealth among a country, a society, an economy and it's a fraud. Inflation only works if it takes people by surprise. If people are surprised by actual inflation coming in higher than expected, in this case there is this redistribution of income and wealth going on. And that is the reason why governments who would like to get rid of their outstanding debt must rely on surprise inflation. But people learn sooner or later that they have been tricked, that they increase the inflation expectation. In the next round the surprise inflation has to become even higher and so this is the path towards hyperinflation. I would argue that Turkey is already in hyperinflation. There's a definition in textbooks saying hyperinflation is if goods prices rise by 50% per month. On an annualized basis that implies an inflation of 12,900%. That means if your cup of coffee costs $3 today, in 12 months it will cost $390. That is what 12,900% inflation means. So hyperinflation, I think we are well advised to think of high inflation at a much lower level, maybe by 5% goods price increase per month. And I would argue we are on the way towards hyperinflation. Because if inflation has gone up it becomes very, very costly to bring it down again. You need a stability recession as they call it. You have to crush the economic system in order to break the upward price expectations of firms and private households. It's very, very costly. And I think we have reached on a global level a situation where most economies are in a situation of over indebtedness. And that is why central banks raise interest rates only gradually. And I fear that you won't see a stabilization recession that sooner or later they will stop with hiking interest rates. And high inflation will remain, is going to here to stay. And the downward risk is really that we move towards a hyperinflation scenario. There is, of course, a redistribution effect. So there are some people who benefit from this sort of thing. Otherwise, we would not be able to explain why the whole thing happens in the first place. I mean, why is the money supply increased at all? And the answer is, yeah, for some people that's good, for most of the people, it's a disaster. I wanted to make that same comment. So the argument that Thorsten made is the textbook argument for inflationary stimulus. So you have to have a surprise inflation so that the real economy is stimulated and you have higher economic growth than you would otherwise have. But as far as the redistribution effect is concerned, that works whether or not people expect the inflation rate or not. It doesn't depend on whether the inflation comes as a surprise or the expansion of the money stock comes as a surprise. By the very expansion of the money stock, you set in motion this redistribution effect. Hi. I got a question for Sandro. You talked about how Caesar had to kill two to three million people in his campaign through Gaul. I'm guessing he was killing them because they were resisting. So I was raised in the colony of the British Empire. And there are times in which I heard from my teachers that they were British that sometimes being ruled by an empire is good because that's what happened to England. We learned a lot from the Romans and that was partly justifying why the British went out there and got themselves an empire. So as a person who lived in the colony, I appreciate things like the common law system, for example. How many generations did it take or how long did it take for a typical person in one of these provinces, conquered provinces, to realize that the Roman system was superior to what they had previously? The British obviously acknowledged that, but I don't know when they acknowledged that. Was it a matter of months? Were they a couple of disputes with the Roman judge ruling very wisely with test cases previously and they think, wow, this is a great system. What did it take generations? That's the first question. And the second question concerns the redistribution of spoils, especially land, to soldiers. How did that actually work? Because if I was a soldier and someone was given farmland that is productive from day one and I was given a forest in which I need to chop down, then how do I reconcile that with my fellow colleague in the army? And how big was that piece of land? I mean, was it like as far as the eye can see or was it like 48 acres in a mule? That kind of thing. I mean, logistically, how did they divvy up the spoils? Well, first question. I don't know if it really worked that way. Romans de facto, by means of military might, colonized most of the known world at that time. It is interesting to note that this worked in a certain way in the west of Europe and in another way in the east of Europe, where in the east, especially the superior strength of Greek culture at the end created a new civilization, the Hellenistic civilization and the Byzantine civilization, which was a derivation of the Roman order. But for example, already at the time of Justinian, the emperor who is the author of the Corpus Eurus and the compilations of Roman law, the main language was Greek in the Eastern Empire. So it was completely different, whereas in modern Spain, in France, the penetration of the Romans was very strong, not different than the one the British had, for example. I'm not sure that there was a realization that the imperial system was better. In fact, there have been lots of rebellions, lots of revolutions, attempts to get rid of the Roman system, which meant basically taxes, because this is the main issue about all empires. They could extract lots of money from the provinces. So the military might establish the Roman way, the Roman language became necessary because you had to deal with your overlords and so you had to adopt their language, it couldn't be different, and gradually the ancient Latin morphed into the modern Romans languages, but I don't think that there was sort of a realization or acceptance. Yes, there was an acceptance, but it was based mainly on military might, and on the superior strength, this is clear of the Roman armies which for a long time were invincible. It's interesting to note that when bureaucracy took over the armies during the second, third century after Christ, this destroyed the Roman empire together with inflation, with big taxes and so on. Second part of the question, what did you ask? How did the land redistribution? The land distribution, well it was a very bureaucratic and regulated system. For example, at the end of the republic there was one very important distribution of lands to the veterans of Pompeii, and they established a commission of 20 magistrates who had to a lot of lands in southern Italy near Capua, where they had these very good lands, very fertile lands. It was all strictly and very regulated in the tiniest details. The Romans they have many bad characteristics, but they were wonderful organisers. They were people of engineers, of builders and of lawyers in part, so nothing was left to chance. It was very, very strictly organised, and this superior organisation of the army as well as of the government is one of the reasons of their success. You just have to look at their buildings which still stand after 2,000 years, whereas the Italian buildings of 50 years ago are crumbling. I would like to ask a very unAustrian question of all of you, and like you to all comment on this question, per your particular lens, in other words per your particular lens of focus, history, philosophy and economics, monetary theory and IP. What do you see happening in the next two years, one, two years? What do you see the trends that are existing right now manifesting in any landmarks that we might recognise? And why would they be important? Okay by Apple and Bitcoin, no I'm joking. On IP I see no progress except the continued march of technology in 3D printing which will allow patents to be evaded like torrenting and the internet has allowed copyright to be evaded, but I see no institutional or legal changes that will make things better. So copyright patents will continue to slow down, patents will continue to slow down progress and be a big factor in distorting the market and making the COVID vaccine more expensive. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but so that's all I have to say. What trends in the next two years do you think will happen that you can invest on? No, I think inflation has come to stay, it's going to be high, it will erode the purchasing power of the dollar, of the euro, of all major currencies in the world. People will get the short end of the stick, the state will be enriched by inflation and raise the question of who benefits, of course the government in particular benefits because if we have a progressive income tax for instance, nominal wages will go up to compensate the increase in overall prices and so there will be this bracket creep, real taxation will increase and the benefit goes to the government. For instance the financial industry will also benefit greatly if there's inflation, there's more money around the nominal volumes, they have under management increase and they earn 1% of the nominal value so they benefit as well. The banking industry may in particular get some additional windfall profits, assume inflation goes up and people can no longer afford the houses, they go bankrupt and so the banks will get the owners of housing and real estate and so I think this is another sector that will benefit from inflation so inflation, that's just a footnote to referring to Hans' question, inflation I think is going to stay high and in some parts of the world you will get hyperinflation and the political reaction I think you mentioned that already is governments will interfere into the market, they will impose maximum prices for food, for energy, they will rationing gas and oil and I think the western world will transform into something we have seen in the 1930s in Germany namely a controlled economy, they called it the fields on Lenkungswirtschaft where the government is in charge basically of calling the shots, who produces what and under which conditions and who is allowed to consume what kind of good, what kind of quantities and so that's the underlying trend I see at the moment and one of the biggest challenges is of course to get some protection against the debasement of the currencies. I don't have much to add other than even if it doesn't come to outright government control and regulation in all markets of the economy this inflationary trend also will lead to the concentration of market power generally speaking so because the inflation benefits big businesses at the expense of smaller competitors so what the Marxists predicted would happen in a market economy will actually happen, we will have a kind of monopolization of markets, big businesses will benefit, smaller competitors will be ruined but it is of course not because of the market dynamic, it's because of the inflationary interventions. I do agree with the previous speakers, I see going on since a few years a deliberate attack against small businesses and against the medium class. The idea is to destroy these both categories by means of regulations, by means of inflation and during the next winter I see energy crisis and shortages and food shortages coming up and so the world will be a very dangerous place to live in and I don't see anyone who is capable to stop this development because most of the governments who still call the shots are in the hands of exactly the same people who want to reach these effects. The big hope is the creation of something else, of independent communities, of sort of free states on the model of John Galt's idea of somewhere to hide. It's not easy because technology is not that of the 50s and 60s when Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Park but still there is maybe the way to exploit technology to get rid of the influence of the states. For example we have lots of doctors who are prevented from working because they didn't get the shot, they can do it anyway and so there are lots of people who would rather go to a doctor who didn't get the vaccine and who has some independence of mind and maybe there is the possibility to build some parallel system. It will be very difficult but I see this as the only hope. In fact I don't have much to add so we better get to the next question. I have a question for Professor Gita Hoardsman. So it's a two part question. The first part of my question is rather I suppose I'm playing devil's advocate in asking this. Professor Rothbard in I forget the title of the particular essay in which he makes this point but he remarks that he disagrees with Professor Mises' view that praxeological laws are derived from facts about the logical structure of mind. Professor Rothbard instead says that he is an Aristotelian or a Neotomist so he views the action axiom as a law of reality rather than a law of the mind and therefore Professor Rothbard at least in his work on economic methodology emphasizes the importance of metaphysics more than Professor Mises did. And I'm curious as to whether you think adopting Professor Mises' Kantian foundation I suppose you could call it is necessary for developing a praxeological system for analyzing economic phenomena. And the second part of my question is even if Professor Mises emphasizes the primacy of practical reason over metaphysical speculation in economic science is he still not engaging in a type of metaphysical speculation when he says for example that man is a purposeful being when he says that man acts purposefully. To me it seems as if he is implying seems that he is implying that what man essentially is the essence of man is a purposeful being and therefore he is engaging or saying something ontological about about man and therefore metaphysical. And in order to I suppose analyze economic phenomena or develop economic laws it seems to me that one would have to affirm the existence of a reality that is common to all men. And the affirmation of such a reality would require metaphysical speculation in my view for example a Fichte Johann Gottlieb Fichte the German idealist builds upon Kant's work and says that reality is tat han lung is pure liveliness or activity and it is not substance but yet it is still a theory of reality in a metaphysical position which fakes to I suppose builds from or constructs from Kant's work. So I suppose to summarize do you think adopting Professor Mises' Kantian framework is necessary for developing a sound praxeological system and is Mises also not engaging in a type of metaphysical speculation when he for example when he analyzes or calls man a purposeful being? Yeah thanks for the thoughtful questions I start with the second one first it's a good point that you make right but I guess Mises himself would or could reply that he was focusing only on the difference on the observable differences and we know that human beings do have purposes they pursue projects they consciously choose between objectives and men's and so on. And that sets them apart from animals who react only to stimuli and to from minerals and so on who do not react at all. I think because they were that's the only I was only relying on this on this difference so it's not really an ontological proposition which would be which would get him into trouble by comparison to his own standards right. Now as far as the first question is concerned I actually think the vocabulary that Mises uses which is Kantian is completely superficial and he himself says let's not stay let's not place too much importance on this however we call this that's really not that important and he was using a language that was standard certainly in the German language university landscape which was his in the 1920s 1930s and even after World War II which was very widespread right so I mean you use these terms and even the logical positivists were not Kantians they use these terms as well only to say well but Kant was wrong as far as natural research and so on is concerned. Now I think there are lots of elements in Mises that indicate where he does I mean certainly he has elements of a Kantian approach but they are not very strong right and you find it in other of his works for example in the theory of money the first part of his money book is the title the nature of money the essence of money now that doesn't sound very Kantian right so it sounds very Aristotelian and he also emphasizes in the ultimate foundation of economic science there are various passages that you can give a Kantian reading but he also emphasizes that he's talking about the real structure right the logical structure of the human mind there's something that is not something that is a mental construction but that is something that is in nature there right now again the important point is that the logical structure of the mind is such that we operate with meaning that we do make choices that we do value now is this something that is a thought construct certainly not is something that is there in reality so I think you can give him a Kantian excuse me an Aristotelian reading right and Rothbard when he says well it's not a priori in the sense it comes from mental but in the sense that it's before all experience but that what we know about the structure of the mind is itself subject of experience I think Mises would concur right and if you read the ultimate foundation of economic science says yes we know this it's something that is part of human knowledge right not empirical in the sense that it comes through the senses but empirical in the sense that we gain knowledge about it through reflecting on our on the structure of our mind yeah I think as far as difference between Mises and Rothbard is concerned I think purely semantic is meaningless but they are of the same opinion in this regard they use slightly different vocabulary that's all it is and as far as the teleological structure of humans is concerned anybody who denies it would have to say this sort of stuff and by saying this whatever that you are teleology or disputing it would refute himself he tries to dispute it because he says something that is aimed at a certain goal uses means to do it the statement can be right or wrong attempt to persuade other people can be successful or unsuccessful so I think it is indisputable that men is a teleological entity being or whatever it is last question this is to mr. Kinsella what do you think of the title transfer theory of contracts compared to the definition you presented I'm sorry could you repeat that what you think of the title transfer theory of contracts it's Rothbard has touched on compared to the the theory you presented cyber transfer no title transfer oh yes no no this is my I think it's one of Rothbard's greatest contributions he he actually he was very humble because in ethics of liberty he wrote a chapter restating and building on Williamson ever's work but in research I've done it looks like Rothbard came up with it first and sort of talked with ever's and ever's developed it and then Rothbard built on it now neither one is a lawyer so there's some imprecision and there's some mistakes and they are operating without a net and I wrote a big article trying to build on that but I think it's one of his greatest contributions actually I've written I had a tom woods episode about it and I've I've written about it so no I think it is the way to reformulate and understand contracts and my talk today was largely based upon that so anyone who's interested in uh contract theory you know read my article and read and read Rothbard's article in ethics of liberty okay I want to thank the panelists and I want to take one one little remark about what to expect in the future to come back to what you asked before it will be cold in Europe and and keep in mind Erdogan did not participate in the sanctions because of that oil and gas still flows to Turkey and you can take hot showers for a few more days here it might not be so certain once you get home but I can you can still use it so take advantage of the of the Turkish Turkish way they have their problem with inflation but the hot waters will flow for a while