 This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Dice. Ladies and gentlemen, this weekend our show features Dr. Carmen Dorabat. You might be familiar with her work at Mises.org. She is a terrific up-and-coming Missessian scholar. She grew up in Romania, so she knows what socialism is all about. Studied under Dr. Guido Halsman was mentored by our own Dr. Joe Salerno, so you know she's a thoroughgoing Missessian. And that's what we talk about how Mises influenced her work and also how Mises still matters to an up-and-coming generation of Austrian scholars. You're going to love this interview, so stay tuned. You gave us this introduction to a series of nine lectures that Mises delivered in 1951. As you point out, he was already about 70. Just amazing output from this guy. You know, one of the things you point out is that really, if you had to distill his work down into maybe three big buckets, which would be tough to do, but you basically say his scholarly career is method, calculation, and money. So just elaborate briefly for us. So if you look at the way Mises' career started, he started by working on monetary theory. From anger and from bombardment, it was on money and interest. But very soon, I think you can start to see that he realized what a central importance money has. It's not just a separate issue in economics, that it's at the heart of all economic analysis. And he realized that by looking at the importance of the calculation debate and realizing that there is no such thing as a barter economy. You need money. You need money prices in order to have a fully developed economy. And in order to, if you need money prices, then automatically, you know, central planning is impossible, you know. But and as he developed, you know, and just working, and he started on a very practical line in this sense, you know, just monetary theory, figuring out some things, criticizing some things, disagreeing, you know, filling in small gaps. I think as his career progressed, after he moved to the U.S., after human action, he starts to publish a lot more on epistemology and praxeology and so on. Because he started to realize, okay, but why are people not talking about money the way Austrian economists talk about money? You know, why is money put in a separate box in the rest of, you know, economic science, especially in mainstream economics? And it's a problem of method. It's the way we, you know, conceptualize economics, the way we make abstractions, the way we think about, you know, human beings as home economicists, or rather from a praxeological point of view and so on. So it's not three separate things. It's just three lines of inquiry that he kind of went through. You know, monetary theory on one hand, calculation, it's just basically applying all the insights from monetary theory and explaining how markets work. And then, you know, this sort of meta level of the epistemology. You know, what's interesting is Guido Halsman told me, he said, in a sense, he thinks that the theory of money and credit, given its tie when it was written and Mises' relative youthfulness, is actually a greater achievement than human action. I think I've heard Guido express that view. I think it's worth asking him exactly. He didn't get a chance to ask him exactly what he means. In a sense, it's a lot more focused. In a sense, I can see where Guido's coming from if I remember other similar discussions having with them. You know, the theory of money is at the heart of economic theory, in a sense. So maybe perhaps not to put words in his mouth, but maybe Guido's trying to hint at the fact that, you know, focusing on monetary theory just automatically illuminates other discussions, and Mises didn't necessarily have to do those discussions in human action, where he basically takes these insights and develops them further into other areas. So maybe Mises spreads himself a little thinly by tackling so many issues in human action. Maybe that's what Guido's trying to say. But I do disagree, though, just to finish. I do disagree. I do think, I mean, human action is a tremendous piece of work because it stretches across such a vast area. It's basically, you know, it's the theory of economic science. And while theory of money and credit is really great, I do think that an older Mises is actually better. And as you point out, I mean, he's so comfortable talking across disciplines, across various scholars. I mean, nobody writes overarching treatises today. Today, academics are hyper-specialized. Yeah, it comes back to what we were saying about the PhDs, right? I mean, in the U.S., they push you for hyper-specialization before you've even gotten your PhD, which is not what Mises got. I mean, Mises, looking at Guido's biography of Mises, you know, he studied Latin and rhetoric in ancient Greek when he was in secondary school. And then, you know, his PhD thesis and his habilitation thesis and so on were real proper books, real proper researches. If you look on Guido's website as a side note, when he describes the PhD program, he'll say, I want you to write 200 to 300 pages, not three papers on so-and-so, which is a very typical, you know, reaction to this kind of thing. And because of that, he's able to go, you know, across disciplines. And he does it in human action, too. And what's even worse is he assumes readers can follow him, you know, so he won't put footnotes or explanatory notes or anything of the sort. He'll leave quotes in Latin untranslated, assuming, of course, I mean, who doesn't know Latin? Or he'll phrase it. It is very well known that Fisher's Quantity Theory of Money is raw, you know, and it's like, of course. And normally in today's world, you would expect a list of five or six, you know, citations in text citations following that kind of statement. But Bezos is like, you know, it's well known. No one's gonna, you know, challenge me on that. Everyone knows. Imagine a brilliant PhD quant, a 28-year-old today, working at the Fed Ivy League pedigree, knows nothing about World War II, or nothing about classical languages. You know, they're not an educated person in the Missessian sense. No, and I think it goes further beyond that. I remember back when I was a fellow, some students who were doing a PhD were masters at the time were telling me that they had colleagues, you know, in their class who were extremely good at math. But having looked at it, I think it was like a holiday calendar with economists and it had the picture of Adam Smith and David Ricardo and Hugh and so on. And not only did they not know or recognize them by the pictures, but they didn't really know who they were. You know, like, well, it's David Hume. You know, who? And that's the thing. I mean, Latin and ancient, okay. I could compromise that. But, you know, people who barely know who Irving Fisher was, economists, you know, were like highly trained, as you say, young graduates, won't necessarily have heard of him. And I think generally, I mean, I was trying to put together a program in economics here and I had to fight to put a couple of classes on the history of economic thought. Because they told me it's not, you know, I told you about the bureaucracy here. You know, it's not according to the standards. It's not included here in the standards. Maybe you should have, you know, more basic math because it's in the standards. It's very sad. No, no, no, it's considered, it's the biggest theory of history, but in economics, right? It's newer the better. Why do we need to know? Well, in your intro to these nine lectures that I mentioned earlier, you have a sentence I think which really sums up Mises on money, illuminated the fact that the determination of the purchasing power of money is accomplished as part of the same market process that creates the structure of money prices and brings about the division of labor, thus making it clear that monetary analysis must be an integral element of economic analysis, end quote. So what's so great about this sentence and about these talks is that first of all, we understand how staggering it is that Mises applied the concept of marginal utility to money. But we also, doesn't this also lead us to a conclusion that there's no Misesi in micro or macro per se? No, no, and I think Mises, I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think he explicitly denies that he denies that there's a significant distinction between short run and long run. You know, long run is just a composite of short runs. There's no such thing as the economy in the short run, the economy in the long run, the economy in the macro elements, and the economy in the macro elements for sure. I mean, as I also say in the introduction, you know, that's what Rothbard remembers primarily from learning from Mises. You know, that the economy is a coherent whole, it's a one big structure. You can't study a part of it without other parts. And you can't talk about prices unless you talk about money prices. This was Mises' whole point. You know, once you have indirect exchange, once you have a commonly accepted medium of exchange such as money, the barter prices that economists talk about, they don't exist anymore, they're just gone. They're not under, you know, like real prices are not under nominal prices, they're not like hidden under, they just, they're gone because those, in order for a price to exist, transaction needs to happen. And there are no barter transactions anymore. They're just money transactions. So the only thing that actually exists are money prices. And it's fascinating that economists, you know, will talk about the economy pretending there's such a thing as a barter, I mean, it's easier from, it's easier and a lot more mathematically elegant to do it. That's why they do it. You know, it's a lot messier if you try to put money in. But Mises was adamant in saying, you know, otherwise money just doesn't exist. I mean, you can't just add it later and, you know, pretend it doesn't change much. Let's talk in closing here about the term Austrian economists. I like to think of it as a loose term of convenience to describe a predominant body of thought that came from some, literally from some Austrians and then later on from some next generation Austrians. Solerno basically says an Austrian is someone who sticks with the praxeological paradigm. In other words, somebody who says, well, we draw inferences from premises or actions. And then it's this methodology that really distinguishes an Austrian from, let's say, some other very free marketer. So is Austrian a label you embrace? Do you think it's become cumbersome? Do you think it's causes needless division? Or is it something we ought to be planning our flag proudly with? It's nothing. It hasn't really bothered me at all. And I do, I am aware of the debate and I do find it funny sometimes that people, you know, like to make sure that whatever they're calling themselves or whatever label they put on themselves is quite accurate label. I think Mises always well, but Mises evidently never referred to it necessarily as Austrian economics other than in the historical sense in which you talk about, you know, I mean the school of of Menger and Wieser and Bomberk. But in general, every time Mises writes he just says economics or economists. And that's pretty much how I've always referred to myself. I mean, I don't think I've ever used for myself the term Austrian economists. I've just called myself an economist because if you do know that whatever Mises or the Austrian economists or the Austrian school teaches you is actual truth in economics, you know, if what Mises writes in human action, if the praxeological approach is the true approach, is the right approach, then there's no point in calling yourself something that's maybe some maybe the mainstream economists should call themselves something different. I don't mean, I don't know, I've never had I've never had an actual opinion on this. It's just I never felt the need to distinguish myself because I've always thought, well, the whole point is to, you know, to reveal the truth of economic science. The way Dr. Salerno talks about, you know, economics as a vocation was a profession. If you understand it as a vocation, it's all about figuring out the truth. And it's figuring out the truth in the science of economics and then you're an economist and that's it. And that's what Mises was, that's what Rothbard was. Okay, and if you enjoyed hearing from Dr. Carmen Dorgath, we're going to present a longer print version of this interview in our January February version of the Austria. And that said, ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher and SoundCloud or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.