 Good evening everyone and welcome to Mises University the best week of the year Dr. Woods would want me to add on land at the very least but For those that don't know me. My name is Stowe Bishop I'm an assistant editor for the Mises wire and on behalf of the whole staff here I just want to tell you guys how excited we are to have you here in Auburn this week I'm just gonna be an experience that you're gonna remember your entire life Being a student Mises you you become a part of an important legacy This program is the largest program for Austrian economics in the world And has been vital to the revival of this tradition Not only have we managed to grow the recognition for the ideas with the Misesian tradition But we have Mises you alumni placed in positions of influence Not just in academia in the us and abroad but also in business policy and even culture And the impact here is truly global And no small part due to the investments made in this program Luig von Mises is the most searched economist in the country of brazil And even on some months Murray Rothbard is searched more than Milton Friedman. I can't imagine I can't imagine anything that moves the overton window more than that feat Or to borrow another expression that lights the index card of allowable opinion on fire More than that We also see it in the influence the austrian scholars have on policy in places such as eastern europe where we have explicitly austrian organizations with Playing a role in policy making that have been unheard of prior to the start of the Mises Institute In fact, we've recently been able to publish new audio that we've got from lectures early on in the Existence of the institute where we had delegates from lethawania and other Baltic states come to the united states Looking for help on how to desocialize an economy Murray Rothbard actually mentioned in the 1990 mises university final lecture Gleefully, you know consider how much money was spent in washington on anti uss our projects very little was put to this question The mises institute filled that void We also see the impact of mises you and we have mises you alumni in china Translating the works of mises rothbard hapa kline others in the austrian tradition Inspiring a new generation of radicals Exploiting the cracks that the communist party cannot fill We even see a play out in the online battle of ideas on a daily basis I'm extremely proud that there is no school of economic thought Better represented and mean warfare than the austrian school And for those of you in the audience that have contributed in that battle Let me just say thank you for your service In fact, this leads me to my main reason for being up here I'm going to ask you personally for two things to help show your generosity For having the opportunity to be here first and foremost, you're going to be asked to fill out Thank you letters to the donors that make this all possible Once you fill it out and enhance to mises bishop at the front desk downstairs Please make sure that you write legibly. Okay, we are able to get patrick newman to translate Murray Rothbard's handwriting But his time was way too valuable to work out yours. Okay, so please please write nicely Secondly, in my humble opinion, there is no better place in the entire world than the mises institute particularly during this week And I want the entire world to know including to quote our president the haters and the losers Help us show your help us show what we're all about It was social media using the hashtag mises you on all platforms In particular if you're on twitter, I love retweeting student stuff during this week So again, help me help you boost up your followers And I'm also really trying to take advantage of instagram stories Now i'm going to be giving updates throughout the week on instagram But I would love to turn you guys into correspondence for us You know the more I can share your content again using that mises you hashtag i'll find you The better off you the easier you make it for me And I will reward you with mises swag throughout the week for people who are particularly helpful One last PSA, you know, we are one of the largest private universities in the southeast And we have an active archive so because of that we have to keep the ac up For for the help of the books so it it can get a little chilly So if you have a sweater or a jacket you may want to consider bring it for lectures But with all the important stuff taken care of it is my great honor to introduce Man who in my opinion is the greatest living Austrian scholar true erinemore Rothbard our academic vice president dr Joseph Simarno Thank you I left the 25 dollars on the table over there for you To begin with um, I would like to thank Those people without whom this would not be possible and that's our generous donors So please join me in giving them a round of well-deserved applause To give you an idea of what things were like in the bad old days before mises university I want to talk a little about one of my favorite topics me When I first discovered Austrian economics in my junior year of college There were no educational conferences available like mises university My first Austrian conference was actually very small During the summer between my junior and senior years. I worked as a janitor I would have finished I would finish my work early and then hide in in a windowless and stuffy Closet amid brooms and mops and cleaning fluids and read marie Rothbard's america's great depression You know, I felt so alone. I was alone. I was in a closet reading a book by myself Um until I graduated college. I had never met another living austrian I finally was able to come out of the closet janitor's closet um As an austrian and meet other real live austrians in 1974 when I as a very young person I was like three Attend I don't want to date myself attended the first austrian conference held in north america It was held in a tiny The tiny and very spooky town of south royalton Vermont that was called now it's it's called the south royalton conference The place had no street lights and you could hear the wolves banging on the edge of town at night The inhabitants you met never acknowledged you and just stared blankly ahead like those pod people in the invasion of the body snatchers Anyway, the austrian movement has grown beyond belief Since the south royalton conference. This is my 30th anniversary Of teaching at mesis universe versity I remember the first place that that I taught was in stanford to bed You're here in oil burn during the middle of july um And it is my 15th year of of of actually directing the program Thousands of different students have gone through the mesis university since it started in 1987 More than a hundred different faculty members have taught at mesis university over the years As a number of professional austrian economists has grown in no small part due to mesis university And austrian research has expanded to new areas The faculty has become larger and the variety of courses we offer have expanded or has expanded This year mesis u features courses on topics From praxeology and the socialist calculation debate to the opioid crisis and the gree new deal Amid all of this progress and change One thing has remained constant And the mesis university has remained true to the founding vision of murray rothport Now rothport designed This venue as a way of teaching and disseminating the praxe what he called the praxeological economics And you'll find out what that is this week of ludicron mesis Let me say a few words about the relationship between ludicron mesis and murray rothport because recently there has been a lot of confusion About this some of which has been intentionally Forged Let me rothport always considered himself a student and follower of mesis. He's very humble in this way He just thought of himself as someone who was following mesis and trying to develop his system He devoted himself heart and soul to advancing and applying mesis mesis his praxeological approach to economics rothport doubled down on this mission in the late 1970s and The early 1980s When some austrians began to downplay mesis because they thought he was too radical and uncompromising And therefore would not appeal to mainstream economists Would not engage them in a dialogue or conversation as they said and therefore would not appeal to donors to the austrian movement The uncompromising mesis was supposed to be replaced as the guiding light of austrian economics By his student Frederick Hayek Hayek was supposedly much more tolerant towards mathematical and kanesian economists and more restrained and tactful in his criticisms Hayek was just as uncompromising as mesis. Okay, his tone was a little bit different, but not much else was different To give you an idea of the attitude toward mesis that prevailed in those dark days. I'll recount two incidents One day I met with two other austrian professors after I had just completed reading mesis's intellectual biography Which I recommend to everyone notes and recollections All three of us were involved in starting a program in austrian economics funded by outside money at Rutgers university in new jersey When I praised the book to my two comrades, they both just smiled indulgently as adults would when a child says something silly They then told me that the book was a complete disaster for modern austrian economics because mesis sounded like a cranky and tolerant and bitter old man Similarly When lu rockwell announced that he intended to found the mesis institute. He was literally ordered Not to do so by representative of a big donor to the austral libertarian movement Incidents like these Explained why ross rothbard literally clapped his hands for joy when lu roth rockwell informed him that he was founding the mesis institute Well, what about mesis's attitude toward rothbard? Mesis considered rothbard to be his intellectual heir In the past decade This has been denied by some of the austrians who had earlier tried and failed to read mesis out of the movement But there is an abundance of evidence some of which has come to life very recently That suggests that these critics are very wrong and that mesis himself explicitly regarded rothbard as a brilliant contributor to praxeological economics Mesis even indicated that he himself had learned from rothbard's writings mesis reviewed and let me go through some some some some things that mesis said that gives you an idea of his attitude toward toward rothbard Mesis reviewed rothbard's treatise on economic theory man economy and state and enthusiastically endorsed it He praised the book as an epical contribution to the general science of human action He then went on to declare and i'm quoting Henceforth all essential studies in these branches of knowledge will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms Expounded by dr. Rothbard Unquote anyone at all who's familiar with mesis writings. No knows that mesis was rarely lavish in his praise of other authors Um other economists in particular. In fact mesis once remarked quote They're never lived at the same time more than a score of men whose work contributed anything essential to economics Okay, yet mesis Extravagantly praised rothbard's treatise despite the fact that parts of the book Were intended to correct improve upon and fill in the gaps that rothbard found in mesis own human action This interpretation of what mesis thought about rothbard um is reinforced when we reexamine um mesis reaction to the most notable instance in which rothbard Explicitly rejected one of mesis doctrines and i'm referring to the theory of monopoly price um mesis believed that the formation of a monopoly price Was conceivable theoretically in an unhampered market economy although This was highly unlikely to occur in practice rothbard argued to the contrary That the distinction between a monopoly and a competitive price was conceptually meaningless in a free market economy Monopoly price can only emerge as a result of a government grant of legal privilege now mesis was once asked his opinion of rothbard's disagreement with his theory um of monopoly price Joaquin rice the spanish translator of human action um Told the following story. He was at the mount pelar on society meeting in 1965 the spanish economist Jesus worked at the soto reported that rice himself used to recount this incident And when he did he quoted mesis's response as i agree with every word professor rothbard has written on the subject Unquote so in other words mesis conceded that his theory was wrong and that rothbard had had further developed it and and corrected it Just one uh two more pieces of evidence Have turned up recently confirming mesis's approval of rothbard's interpretation of his economic theory and method In a letter he wrote in late 1962 to a fellow mont pelar in society member the french positivist philosopher louis rougier louis rougier mesis responded to criticisms of one of his books by rougier The book in question is probably mesis's last book the ultimate foundation of economic science Which was published in 1962 in some of his position mesis wrote The proof of the pudding is in the cake I can only refer to the systematic exposition of the whole doctrine of praxeology in my book human action And nowadays in the brilliant book of a younger man marion rothbard man economy and state So mesis clearly considered rothbard's treatise as an updating and development of his own system of economic theory But this is not all after a paragraph recommending to rougier His earlier book on the methodology of economics that is mesis's earlier book Mesis closed the letter with a plea to rougier He said but please first of all read the book of rothbard It is very interesting also from the epistemological point of view that is from the point of view of how you go about doing economics And and what economics means and and how important the laws of economics are Given the evidence including the words of of mesis himself I think there that there remains little doubt that the main line Meads-essian tradition in Austrian economics runs through marie rothbard When the last few weeks in fact, uh, we have found a small treasure in the rothbard archives that we have here At me at the mesis institute, which includes his private papers and memos and letters Um, and this evidence corroborates the evidence that I just cited This is in the form of mesis charming and pithy inscription rothbard's copy of the third edition of human action Which reads and you can read it yourselves The marie rothbard pioneer of praxeological analysis with all good wishes um, ludwig mesis so Given this evidence I cannot understand how an economist like israel kurzner, for example Claims that rothbard misunderstood mesis in an interview in 2006 professor kurzner Whom I have the utmost respect for and who was mesis's graduate assistant at nyu. He made the following statement Um, quotey kurzer now marie rothbard was a genius. There's no doubt about it. I don't believe that he fully understood mesis I believe that he struggled honestly to do so, but he didn't provide a satisfactory mesisian economics as far as i'm concerned Well, I think mesis would would disagree with that given the evidence that i've talked about Okay, now I want to get to a real pleasure and that is the introduction of the faculty This week you'll hear lectures from a very distinguished faculty of economists historians philosophers and a very brilliant legal scholar I'm I'm especially proud to inform you that more than half of the faculty has attended mesis university as students Some as recently as 2010 and 11 on the other hand some of the older faculty Have sat in murray rothbard's living room at the very beginning of the austrian economics revival way back in the early 1970s But regardless of age all the members of the faculty have devoted themselves to studying Teaching and writing austrian economics for their entire adult lives and all have been greatly influenced by the works of mesis and rothbard So this week you have a wonderful opportunity to learn from the leading lights of the modern austrian school All we ask of you is that you take full advantage of this program i.e. don't party too much at night get a halfway decent night's sleep and show up on time Before I introduce the mesis university Present faculty present. I have several reminders for students austrian rather Auburn university is a smoke-free campus including outside the dorm. No alcohol is permitted In the dorm our group will be asked to leave if this policy is violated Students who have a car at the door must have a parking pass or you will be towed Email pat at mesis.org if you need a parking pass Please remember to wear your name tags when attending mesis university Sessions and meals and all students on scholarship are required to attend classes each class period Now if you should violate any of these policies a crew specially trained by professor hans hapa In the a priori of argumentation Will physically remove you from the premises Okay, so now without further ado. I wanted to introduce the wonderful faculty for the week Mark brandley I'm mark brandley. I'm a professor of economics at ferris state university I had the pleasure of getting my phd here at Auburn so I could hang out at the institute for several years I specialize in public finance and international economics I'm a mesis u graduate. I attended my first mesis university in 1991 I had the great fortune of studying under these some great austrians at the time I won't tell you who they are, but some of them are still here this week And uh, uh this week I'll talk about uh, I'll give a talk on free trade versus protectionism I'll argue that the austrians give us the best set of arguments for free trade And I'll talk about the oil and gas industry and say that there's a lot of austrian lessons to be learned by thinking about this industry One of the old guys that joe alluded to I've been teaching here for almost 30 years on now I think at mesis university And when when lou and murray started the mesis institute I was on the faculty at george mason and I got a postcard announcing the creation of the mesis institute And so I sent them a small donation very small And uh, they sent me back a a mesis tie And I wrote them a thank you note and I told murray rothbard that I'll wear it proudly in the halls of academe And I said it'll have the same effect there as as flashing a christian cross in front of dracula And and and pat pat tells me they still have that note that I wrote Whenever that was in 1983 or something like that a long time ago so i'm a professor of economics at loyala university in maryland And uh, I'm going to talk give a couple talks this week one 10 things you should know about socialism It's based on my book the problem with socialism, which was uh written a couple years ago for the millennial generation Uh, especially those who think uh the half of them or so according to some opinion polls Prefer socialism over capitalism And I have to think this because they don't know what the heck they're talking about and uh another another my lecturers is on sort of the the myth of market failure, and I'm going to talk about why why it is that uh Mainstream methodology Really is kind of a scam when it comes to the so-called literature on market failure And then my third lecture is on uh economic nationalism And when donald trump uh first announced his economic plan platform, whatever you want to call it He did it in louisville, kentucky And why louisville because that's where henry clay was from and he claims to be an aficionado of henry clay or at least his speech maker Wrote the speech for him like that and henry clay was a mercantilist and so uh economic nationalism is my topic And so when I when we talk about the american version of economic nationalism It's a lot of bad stuff And and so I've been trying I written a few articles trying to convince trump to us uh walk away from that But I haven't heard back from him yet. I don't know why I'm timothy terrell. I teach economics at wafford college in spartan merc south carolina I think the first mesas you I was at was in 1995 when I came to auburn university to be a graduate student I did my phd here My specialty area is regulation particularly environmental regulation. I'll be giving three talks this week one on um healthcare finance Another on uh environmental resource economics and the third one on the crisis in higher education I'm david howden Well, they can applaud for me I'm david howden I was uh actually just thinking that mesas org saved me when I was an undergrad learning economics originally and had so many questions that I needed Answered I went on to do my phd with heizu's worked at a soto a well-known austrian economist And while I was doing that I came here and I spent two summers as a mesas fellow and attended mesas university Uh, I went on to get my phd and econ. I teach uh economics for st. Louis university at their campus in madrid spain And I will be giving lectures on uh banking and austrian business cycle theory I'm lucas engelhardt. I was a 2003 graduate of mesas university When I first started teaching here, I said oh, it wasn't that long ago Then I realized that most of you were probably three or five years old then so proves that i'm just old Oh, anyway, but 2003 I was a mesas u graduate 2004 I was a fellow here My interests are largely in business cycles or center around business cycles and connect with that So here I will be giving a talk on international business cycles And kind of what we can learn about business cycles by looking at how they transmit across international lines And then also two related to monetary policy one is Looking at the debate we find a mainstream between rules versus discretion And then the austrian third way that we could think about doing monetary policy and allowing markets to do it and then finally When I was asked by what I wanted to talk about this year. I suggested that Dr. Murphy would give a really good talk on modern monetary theory So i'm giving a talk on modern monetary theory So i'll be talking about that as we know it's certainly been in the news been brought into the news by Basically all of the democratic candidates here in the united states Hello, i'm shan ritenauer. I teach economics at growcity college I teach with uh, dr. Herbner and I was a professor of lucas engelhardt So if he's old i'm i'm like elderly. I don't know. It's I don't know what the other i'm dead perhaps But uh, my uh, I I guess right. I can't tell which one but one of them is in the grave and the other one's not. Um, I Also got my phd here at auburn. My first mrs. U was uh in 1993 I think the last year that they did it in california And at that I that it um, it didn't exactly blow my mind But it was my mind's still here, but it was amazing and uh, I also it was It was my only time I got to hear marie rothbard lecture and uh that Taught me a very important lesson about taking advantage of opportunities Which I don't have time to talk about right now, but you can ask me later I'm gonna be lecturing and giving two lectures one on the division of labor and social order Which uh, I hope to communicate The importance and perhaps even the beauty of the division of labor and how it helps foster society and uh and reduces social conflict and then also i'll be uh lecturing on austrian capital theory Talking about some of the the distinctives about austrian capital theory that are underappreciated or just simply ignored by a number Of contemporary economists, uh, and which uh, we hope to put the capital back in capitalism Oh, uh, I'm uh, david gordon. I'm a senior fellow at the mesis institute. I've been around here for a long time since been My first mrs. U was 1987 You'll discover one thing about my lectures very fast. I'm a very boring speaker The other people lectures will get you very enthusiastic about Austrian economics as well they should but uh, I'll put you to sleep guarantee it now I'm I'm going to be giving four lectures uh, the first of these is on I should say my specialty is uh, philosophy. I which my uh My great friend, uh, Jim sedowsky used to say the word philosophy comes from the greek word philosophy Which means philosophy Now the first lecture I'll be giving is on uh praxeology This is a distinctive, uh way of doing austrian economics and will Uh, ask why should we study praxeology other than the obvious one so we answer so you can set up a praxeology store In my next lecture, I'll be discussing uh in in mainstream academic philosophy the Philosophy was gotten the most attention libertarian philosophy was gotten most attention is robert nozick who had a He had an argument For the state in his book anarchy state utopia. It's a very difficult book to understand and I'll try to explain his argument for the state and in my third lecture is on Mises and Rothbard on ethics and will go into some of the similarities and differences between Mises and Rothbard on ethics and We'll see the different views they had in my last lecture is theory and history I'll give depending on how much time I have will discuss some criticisms of the Marxist view of history and then Discuss the distinctive method that Mises favored in the study of history Hello, my name is Łukasz Dominiek of English speakers is Lucas Dominiek, I guess I'm a professor at Nicholas Copernicus University in Thorn in Poland And my field of expertise is political philosophy This week I'll be teaching a lecture on Hans Hemenhopper's argumentation theory of ethics Uh, yeah, sort of difficult topic. I guess my goal will be to make it clear As clear as possible And I'm also a graduate of Mises University. So I'm grateful for that Hello, I'm Jonathan Newman. There are two dr. Newman's here. I am number one alphabetically The other dr. Newman is Patrick Newman. I think he'll be here later I teach economics at Brian college and we have quite a few Brian colleges I drove the Austrian school bus down to Mises University. So we have we have some Brian students here and I'm very happy that they came I'm giving two talks this week one talk is is called Austrian alternatives to mainstream economic statistics And the other one is called Austrian economics versus Keynesian and monetarist macroeconomics So in short my lectures are on why we're right and everybody else is wrong Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mises you. I'm jeff herbener I am a colleague of dr. Rittenauer at grove city college very blessed to say that And also i'll take some credit for the education of lucas englehart. We're very proud Of lucas who graduated from grove city college in economics Now if dr. Rittenauer has one foot in the grave, then I am a little Concerned as to what I've got in the grave But I'm not I'm not actually as old as dr. Salerno. I never I was I say that I say that because I want to just let you know that I I'm very envious of his living living room discussions with mary rothbard I did have discussions with mary rothbard, but not in his living room in new york city I wasn't that old although. I too have been teaching at mises university for over 30 years My topics Tomorrow i'll give a talk on subjective value and market prices And here we'll develop the uniquely austrian Line of thought from the marginalist revolution How is it that the austrians develop the concept of subjective value and will treat the very difficult topic theoretically of the relationship between subjective value in our heads And market prices that exist out in the world And what that means for the social order that dr. Rittenauer would talk about and then on tuesday My talk is on the theory of interest And this is a great application of the austrian Theoretical apparatus Because here we can see a clear distinction between What we can do in terms of explaining the world From an austrian perspective on this a very concrete topic of interest with the mainstream that have a completely different and uninteresting and unfruitful View to follow up with dr. Newman Unfruitful view of of that subject. So look forward to the week Hi, i'm well i'm peter kline i'm a professor in the business school at baler university in texas And this is my 31st consecutive mises university I attended in 1988 when i was a phd student so much younger than these other people Um and the speakers were mary rothbard assisted by some scrappy young up and coming academics like david gordon Hans herman hoppa and roger garrison And uh one of the great things that you guys can do now is go on youtube or wherever you can get lots of videos Of mary rothbard giving talks So if you've ever seen one of his talks, you know that he not only delivered great content But he was a real character extremely funny guy And uh, I never got to hang out in mary rothbard's living room or actually read austrian economics in a janitor's closet, but But I did get to hang out with mary rothbard at those conferences and Not only the lectures are great, but the late night bull sessions and Trips out trying to find an all night diner in the middle of the night Were a lot of fun as well One thing that I noticed when I was a student attending those conferences One time I sat right behind mary rothbard And I can't remember who was speaking, you know salerno or herberner, you know some some unimportant person and uh I noticed that mary rothbard, you know sort of the the the Top austrian scholar of his time was take was really paying attention and taking very detailed notes He had one of those old-fashioned yellow pads and he was writing furiously the whole time and listening and You know if mary rothbard can take detailed notes when people like us are speaking You guys can take good and detailed notes when we're speaking so so pay attention that you know be be like mary I'm giving a lecture on entrepreneurship, which is my main interest area tomorrow And while it's kind of unusual to have an entrepreneurship lecture at an economics conference You'll see that to the austrians entrepreneurship is much more fundamental to the study of markets and prices And I have a talk on monopoly and competition And then talks later in the week on austrian economics and big business And then a talk called the economics of data privacy, which deals with some of the contemporary issues about The big tech companies and what they're doing with your data quote-unquote and whether the government should regulate Privacy or enforce platform neutrality and that sort of thing. So hope you'll enjoy it Hi, i'm sandy klan. There are also two clients here. I'm client number two apparently I I have been uh, I was a mesas Institute mesas fellow when I was in graduate school here in my very first mesas university was in 1992 shortly after I met my husband sitting next to him. So I've currently now also On the faculty and the economics department at baler university And i'm so excited to be speaking to you all tomorrow on money Really one of the austrian school's greatest contributions To economics and just transforming and you can't really understand Austrian business cycle theory without understanding austrian's approach to money So we'll talk about we'll talk about that tomorrow and get that started. So thank you Hello, i'm dr. Mark thorton i'm a senior fellow I'm a senior fellow here at the mesas institute I'm the book review editor of the quarterly journal of austrian economics And I teach economics at alburn university I came here in 1982 To go to graduate school in economics and study under roger garrison And then the mesas institute just happened to show up the next year. I ended up getting a mesas fellowship um I attended the first mesas university and i've been teaching at the mesas university now for 30 years um So very lucky course of events for me for sure Uh the courses i'm going to be teaching on tuesday. I'm going to be talking about the minimum wage It's the classic example of economic analysis That follows from all of the theory and method courses that you'll have on monday and tuesday And then i also will be talking about a lecture on the opioid crisis where i'll be looking at Telling you how this crisis came about But also beginning with the economics of prohibition in general Which was the subject of my very first book And then finally i'm going to be talking about the skyscraper curse And business cycles and uh, that's the subject of my most recent book. So hope to see you out there Now it's my great honor and pleasure to introduce the president of the mesas institute jeff deist Appreciate that and appreciate very much all of you being here Really, i'd like to congratulate All of you young people especially undergraduate students for making your way here for finding this program For finding austrian economics and and for having some interest In a subject that perhaps not all of your peers would share the same enthusiasm And i think your presence here in a sense is really a reputation of sorts however small of the sort of anti-intellectual Tenor of our age that we find ourselves in and If there's one thing that the mesas institute i think has stood for over the years among other things Uh is the idea that intelligent laypeople can actually do deep intellectual work That intelligent laypeople including intelligent young laypeople can actually read books And books that are don't have pictures in them and that are hundreds and hundreds of pages and that Intellectual pursuits are not just the province of these Alchemists or these mysterious academics, but they're they're pursuits that belong to all of us if we choose to And so i think that's something that's very very important And so that's why i i say congratulations to you because i think being here Is so important And of course if you think about All of the confluence of events that had to occur for all of us to be here tonight In 2019 in this room in auburn alabama. It's really pretty remarkable. I mean you can There's probably a lot of lines a lot of dots we could connect to say what started all this we could even go back to to 1839 When carl minger's parents Anton and caroline Got together on some evening And produced him in an area that's now poland So maybe we're the polish school of economics, but but no we're the austrian school And if you if you go forward from that fateful day You know you could go to vienna and of course mesis and and all the the viennese economists who developed Just an incredible systematic school of thought there We we can look at mesis having to flee first to switzerland and then later to new york city We can look at things like Fortuitous things like lidwig on mesis meeting some of his benefactors in america people like lennard reid People like henry has with the journalist Uh organizations like the vulgar fund that made his work possible We can look at happenstances like lou rockwell Going to work for neil mccaffrey at arlington house And as a result of that Meeting lidwig on mesis and becoming the editor of some of his books Lou rockwell meeting murray rothbard And of course market von mesis Ludwig on mesis widow and developing relationship with her I mean all of these events had to occur For us to be here this evening in arbor and alabama and and so My point in in saying all this we got a lot of history of the institute earlier from some of our academics But my point in saying all this is that as much as the ideas matter and the civilization Civilizational ideas are why we're here and why we're together never forget that the people and the relationships matter every bit as much And and that includes the people and the relationships that you might make this week or that you might make in college that you might make Via an intellectual spark Because ideas are about people ultimately and they benefit They they work to the bed and fit or the detriment of people ultimately And I think sometimes we tend to lose sight of that Because we want to intellectualize our pursuit So of course what's changed for all of you versus let's say Ludwig von mesis 100 years ago is that your job is not to go find this information That's so difficult to find that people didn't have a grasp on your your problem is too much information Your job is to sift through an almost unbelievable amount of white noise And maybe that starts with social media But we also get into you know all kinds of streaming content all kinds of blogs All kinds of sites And then of course your actual school work And then hopefully at least on the side your intellectual pursuits reading Austrian literature or libertarian scholarship or whatever it might be or maybe you liked fiction. I I don't know So this is a lot of information. And so your job is to sift through it Recently had a house guest Someone named taylor conan who's involved with the institute and he said, you know He was convinced that that probably 75 of books today just shouldn't be written In other words, if you if the book you're reading or writing is not going to matter much in 10 years or 50 years or 100 years You know, what's what's the point and he said when you read mesis when you read human action It's almost like you're sitting at the feet of this great intellectual figure and of course You know all of the figures we'll be discussing this week are important thinkers They are authoritative thinkers, but they're never just positive Science is not some clothes. Economic science is not a closed system. There are advances This is not religiosity This is science and we shouldn't forget that so When you think about these people, you know, you can ask yourself and apply it to your own reading or your own spare time Or your own life and say, you know, is what i'm consuming Worth while or would this time be better spent reading something like mesis or Rothbard or something where where people probably are going to be talking about in 100 years And so one of the very best habits you can do I I don't like self-help as a genre I think it's it's it's pretty just Disreputable and and your social media feeds are probably clogged with it But if there is one habit That I can recommend to you Unconditionally that that's to become inveterate and prolific readers There there is nothing you can do that will separate you from your peers more readily Than being good solid consistent steady readers of real stuff This this is an absolute game changer for people in your generation who I'm afraid and my generation as well Are losing their attention spans and their ability to to again do do deep intellectual work I'm sure Many or most of you know the name Warren Buffett. He's depending on what week in the stock market it is He's somewhere around the third or fourth richest person in the world And his father Howard Buffett was actually a congressman from Omaha, Nebraska for a few terms and a friend a correspondent of Murray Rothbard and someone who was very interested in hard money and so Not long after man economy and state came out in the early 1960s in 1962. He wrote Murray Rothbard a letter praising him saying he was slowly reading man economy and state based on a Review of the book he had read in the wall street journal and he and he added this note at the bottom He said somewhere. I read that you'd written a book on the panic of 1819. And of course, this was an extrapolation of Murray Rothbard's Uh, a dissertation at Columbia and he said if this is correct, I would like to know where I can buy a copy of it I have a son That's Warren today who is particularly avid reader of books about panics and similar phenomena So I really liked that letter. I think it's interesting and uh, I remember having seen something I think on CNBC about Warren Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger His partner at Berkshire Hathaway, which is their investment firm and their almost unbelievable reading habits And these are two very wealthy guys today Uh, so I found this article and and it turns out that what you think Warren Buffett does all day is not what he does at all You think he'd be reading a lot of charts and numbers and analysis of companies and sectors And that's sort of that's not what he does all day. He says he literally spends 80 percent of his day Reading and thinking And he says we never read what other analysts say about a company. We're thinking about buying We simply look at the data and the numbers and we think we think about it. And so Both he and his partner Munger Will will average Between 500 and a thousand pages of reading a day And so what they're faced with is an uncertain world an uncertain universe and they're tasked with The stewardship and growth of a lot of people's money. That's a very serious responsibility. I'm sure it's a lot of pressure And so they simply Read as much as they can and eliminate as many variables as they can in the process and make the most informed Investment decisions they can as a result And I thought wow, what a what a lesson for all of us. I mean you could apply that to just about anything in your life And You know not too long ago, I think during AERC I was in my living room with some of the attendees one night. We were just sitting around talking and I mentioned to the group is very international group I mentioned the group, you know, uh, here we are in 2019 I wonder what Mises would think of all of us sitting around in a living room in in Auburn, Alabama talking about his ideas and then So earlier today, I was sort of thinking about that more broadly and so we could we could use let's say 1919 And and 2019 so we have a century in between and in 1919, of course He had recently come back from the first world war the great war they called at the time He had already written the theory of money and credit at a relatively prescient age Uh, he he was just finishing nation state and economy and he was about to enter What was an exceedingly prolific period in his own writing the interwar years in the 1920s where he produced socialism bureaucracy Liberalism, I think in 28. I mean just just an unbelievable decade for him And so, you know, if we take Mises of 1919 still a relatively young man What would he think? if he could Look into a crystal ball into America in 2019 and I thought what would he think? You know of a group of people in a living room talking about him What would he think about an organization named after him created informed at a College a university in the American south What would he think about Students like you coming together once a year To study his ideas and and the ideas of other people in his tradition In a An offering called Mises University. What what would he think of that? What would he think of a website mises.org? Which among other things is dedicated to promoting His work since one of the most trafficked Economics websites in the world What would he think about the idea? 40 odd years after his death and a hundred years Since nasa's tain economy. What would he think that 40 years after he died his name and his work would be better known Than they were when he died What would he think of that And perhaps most importantly, what would he think of a world? where Digital equipment makes it possible To spread all of his writing in fact virtually all intellectual writing the sum of human knowledge To spread that to just about anybody anywhere on earth with an internet connection almost instantaneously and almost free What would mises think about that well You know we can't know it's it's always very dangerous I think to extrapolate and think what a dead thinker would think about something today, but And of course if you read his memoirs, if you read uh Gito Hulsman's biography, he wasn't always the cheeriest or most abdullient guy But I think he would say we're living in a golden age I think he would be absolutely astonished and jealous Of the time and place in which we live so we ought to be cognizant of that and we ought to have Gratitude for that because we're all standing on the shoulders of a lot of giants who came before us And we ought to enjoy it and we ought to make the most of it because we have opportunities To spread what all of us would consider real real economics or correct economics around the world In entrepreneurial ways in inexpensive cheap ways that we that he could never have dreamed of And we can see the the fruits of this Not just in academia some of the people you know here today Some of the great thinkers people are out there, but there's hundreds of tenured academics now Around the world who are who are not receiving the same shabby treatment From academia that mises and rothbard Received there are people like jim grant Using the work of the austrian school. There are people like patrick burn in the entrepreneurial space There are people like mark spitznagel the billionaire Contrarian investor who's basically shorted the crash of 0708 Uh, there are people like martin stafonko martin stafonko who is in prog who is the 2001 mises institute summer fellow and became a billionaire uh through telecom deals In the former in the former checker falaki in the checker public And there are people like francisco parames in spain Who apply austrian insights to his investing and he's known as the spanish warren buffet So i think all things consider uh, maybe Things have turned out a little more optimistically than than mises could have imagined so for that I think we can all be very very grateful and of course no one in this room Will ever face uh, either the kind of professional or personal Challenges that people like mises faced in his own career in his own life. We all have a much easier path By any measure and so we ought to go forward boldly And I would encourage everyone in this room all of you If you if you take nothing else out of this week, it's to it is to uh To be bold it's to challenge again this anti intellectual tenor of our day It's to push back on this narrative. We sometimes hear about mere economics And it's to not be afraid of or shy away from the cultural and civilizational aspects Of of what we're all about here because these are serious things And in any society a tiny vanguard of people can make huge changes And so with that Before we get on stairs to enjoy some refreshments. I would just say uh, thank you for being here. We appreciate it We appreciate it very much And we hope that you all get as much out of this as some of our very fortunate Faculty have in their own lives. So thank you so much. We'll see you downstairs