Ludwig von Mises

How Not to Donate Money in Honor of Your Intellectual Hero

2 Comments / Business Ethics /

[Last week I posted five quotations from Ludwig von Mises indicating his opposition to anarchism. Several commentators mentioned the Mises Institute’s drift toward anarchism. That reminded me of some personal history.] I arrived at Rockford University as a newly-minted Ph.D. in the early 1990s. In addition to the normal excitement of becoming an Assistant Professor […]

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Is Austrian economics anti-empirical? (Horwitz, Caplan, Selgin, and Boettke)

Leave a Comment / Economics, Epistemology /

[I’m re-posting this good discussion from 2012 at Cato Unbound.] An instructive trio of essays by economists at Cato Unbound about Austrian economics’ reputation — especially Mises’s praxeological version — for being strongly a priori rationalist: Is Austrian economics anti-empiricist? Steve Horwitz says no. Bryan Caplan says yes. George Selgin also says yes. To Selgin’s

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“What Justifies Liberal Capitalism: Are Hayek’s, Rand’s, and Friedman’s Answers Compatible?” My 2013 Atlas Summit lecture

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The one-hour video of my lecture is at the Atlas Society site and at YouTube. The lecture starts at 3:40, after the introduction, and is about 45 minutes long, followed by a question-and-answer session. The sub-topics are: * 13 initial arguments for liberal capitalism. * Some quotations from Mises, Schumpeter, Jouvenel, Smith, Hayek, Mill, Rand,

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Are Austrian economists anti-empirical?

1 Comment / Economics, Epistemology, Philosophy /

An instructive trio of essays by economists at Cato Unbound about Austrian economics’ reputation — especially Mises’s praxeological version — for being strongly a priori rationalist: Is Austrian economics anti-empiricist? Steve Horwitz says no. Bryan Caplan says yes. George Selgin also says yes. To Selgin’s series of quotations from Mises, I’d add this one from

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