Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Keynote lecture in Argentina

I will be giving a keynote lecture in Argentina at the invitation of the Bases Foundation and the School of Economics of the Catholic University in Rosario. The event is the Third International Conference on “The Austrian School of Economics in the 21st Century,” which will be held August 5-7, 2010.

The title of my lecture is: “Austrians, Objectivists, and the Unrequited Love of Philosophy for Economics.” Here is the abstract:

The Austrian school of economics and the Objectivist school of philosophy have both been essential to the liberal/libertarian movement. Mises and Hayek did much work in political economy and explored relevant philosophical issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and values. Rand did much work in philosophy, which she then applied in fictional portrayals of mixed political economies in decline. Yet while there is mutual respect between Austrianism and Objectivism, there are also points of tension. My purpose in this talk is to discuss the key commonalities and differences. Much specialized work in economics and philosophy must be done, so there is a natural and important division of labor. But that work must also be coordinated in making a full and compelling case for the free society.

Thanks for the invitation to Federico Fernandez, the Bases Foundation, and the School of Economics at Catholic University of Rosario.

The Bases Foundation takes its inspiration from Juan Bautista Alberdi, one of the great nineteenth-century Argentine Enlightenment liberal political theorists.

APEE talk on the mixed economy

At the APEE conference next month in Las Vegas, I will be presenting “The Evolution of the Mixed Economy - A Schematic Approach.”

My talk integrates themes from several major thinkers from whom I have learned a great deal: Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Gordon Tullock.

The talk’s outline is based on this flow chart posted earlier under the title “Pathologies of the mixed economy (or, How we got into this frackin’ mess).”

For the conference I’ve also organized two other sessions: Ethics and the Financial Crisis and Reason in Hayek and Rand.

Here is the full conference schedule.

An inspiring university points to the future

Atlas is not shrugging at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala.

I was there to give a talk on “Is Economics Value-Free?” [answer: No, and that's a good thing] at the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference. This sign made it feel like an intellectual homecoming [click the images for full size]:

The first academic building one comes to at the university has this sculpture and accompanying plaque:

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Thanks to co-hosts FMU and APEE for a memorable event. Thanks also to organizer Douglas Rasmussen and my co-sessionists Alexei Marcoux, Pierre Garello, and Aeon Skoble for a good discussion of a fundamental issue in philosophy of economics. (The 80-degree weather and heated, outdoor pool weren’t bad either.)

Update: Joshua Hall of Beloit College, by way of thanking FMU and its students for their co-hosting the conference, has this link for those who would like to make a donation to FMU’s student scholarship fund.

Pathologies of the mixed economy (or, How we got into this frackin’ mess)

Putting into one flowchart what I have learned from Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Gordon Tullock.

The flowchart is in spreadsheet format: the short version and the long version in Excel 2007 or in Excel 97-2003. Update: DJ Dates has a cool, scalable Google maps version of the flowchart at his website.

Feel welcome to modify and add to as you wish.

I’m in the midst of discussing this material in my Business and Economic Ethics course, in a unit on business ethics in a mixed economy.

For reference purposes:

Academic title: “The Sociology of Dysfunctional Nonstandard Political-Economic Systems.”

Public Intellectual title: “The Evolution of the Mixed Economy.”

Casual title: “How We Got Into This Frackin’ Mess.”