WEBVTT NOTE Why Should We Care About Economic Theory? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.800 I want to thank, first of all, again, Mr. Jerry Davis for the idea of this and for putting 2 00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:09.760 it on. I'm going to talk today about why should we care about economics, why should 3 00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:15.640 we care about economic theory. I think the reason is because economics offers two kinds 4 00:00:15.640 --> 00:00:22.380 of knowledge that you are not likely to acquire anywhere else. One type of knowledge explains 5 00:00:22.380 --> 00:00:28.820 that there are absolutely impenetrable walls all around human ambitions, strict limits 6 00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:33.740 in the world that dash the dreams of utopians and curb the appetites of those who have lost 7 00:00:33.740 --> 00:00:36.500 touch with reality. 8 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:41.880 The second kind of knowledge might appear to contradict the first. 9 00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:47.220 Economics explains the conditions under which the human imagination can be unleashed to 10 00:00:47.220 --> 00:00:51.540 create miracles all around us every day. 11 00:00:51.540 --> 00:00:56.340 These two kinds of knowledge present a paradox of sorts. 12 00:00:56.340 --> 00:01:10.340 The talk in economics on the one hand tell us about the existence of impenetrable limits in the social order and on the other hand reveal the workings of a limitless frontier for human imagination. 13 00:01:10.340 --> 00:01:19.340 These seem to be opposite lessons. I'd like to use this talk to discuss these traits of economic science and explain how they are not in contradiction. 14 00:01:19.340 --> 00:01:26.340 Let us first recall the founding of economics as a science and examine the historical context. 15 00:01:27.460 --> 00:01:32.780 The place was Spain, and the time was the 14th and 15th centuries. Spain had become 16 00:01:32.780 --> 00:01:37.540 the most prosperous place on the planet. This was due to its position in the trade routes 17 00:01:37.540 --> 00:01:43.620 of the time, its relative political stability, its rich endowment of natural resources, including 18 00:01:43.620 --> 00:01:48.700 in its colonies, of course, and also its history as a meeting ground for several different 19 00:01:48.700 --> 00:01:55.700 Cultural Forces. In Spain, Christians mixed and traded peacefully with Muslims and Jews 20 00:01:55.700 --> 00:02:02.860 for some 700 years. And this mixture led to a sharing of knowledge from which every group 21 00:02:02.860 --> 00:02:08.140 could benefit. Generally, Muslims brought scholarship and technical knowledge, Jews 22 00:02:08.140 --> 00:02:12.940 brought cost accounting, merchant skills and love of learning, and Christians brought a 23 00:02:12.940 --> 00:02:18.300 deep moral commitment to private property and an ethic of hard work. 24 00:02:18.300 --> 00:02:31.300 This confluence of cultural sharing led to the combination that gave rise to modernity itself, and most especially the institutions that make up modern capitalism, which has made the world what it is today. 25 00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:46.300 We see here the beginnings of capital investment, stock markets, money markets, borrowing and lending, large-scale production facilities, complex labor contracts, investments, and the expansion of the division of labor. 26 00:02:46.300 --> 00:03:16.300 Spain was also a host to some of the great centers of learning in the entire world. Most especially, they were the great thinkers situated at the University of Salamanca, scholastics who were theologians first, but who looked for the application of their theological commitments in everyday affairs. In the workings of all scientific matters, they saw the hand of God. This was true in both the physical sciences and also what we now call the social sciences of which economic 27 00:03:16.300 --> 00:03:27.300 Let me give an example. Let's say there is a man with a small office and his service is to lend money and collect interest and lend again. 28 00:03:27.300 --> 00:03:38.300 As part of this, he is also involved in buying one kind of money and selling another kind of money in cases in which there is a buy-sell spread in the goods price of money in different regions. 29 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:51.300 He builds nothing physical. He sells no goods or other services. He imports nothing. He exports nothing. He is mainly dealing with ledger lines and money that is coming and going. 30 00:03:51.300 --> 00:04:05.300 And yet this man becomes extremely rich, richer than anyone else in town, including the laborers who sweat from sun up to sun down, and the industrialists who build large buildings. 31 00:04:05.300 --> 00:04:12.300 His riches lead him to become, to have a great deal of local influence, and he becomes the talk of the town. 32 00:04:12.300 --> 00:04:16.300 Now on one level, this is mystifying to people. 33 00:04:16.300 --> 00:04:22.300 How can this man become wealthier than everyone else even though he is only sitting at a desk? 34 00:04:22.300 --> 00:04:28.300 What is he doing precisely? Is it really a service? Is it really moral? 35 00:04:28.300 --> 00:04:34.300 These were the kinds of questions that led the first economists to their investigations. 36 00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:41.300 They wanted to know about how lending and borrowing really work, and whether these activities are a benefit to society. 37 00:04:41.300 --> 00:04:46.300 They wanted to know how prices for goods and services come to be in terms of money. 38 00:04:46.300 --> 00:04:51.300 They wanted to know how and why money had different valuations in different regions, 39 00:04:51.300 --> 00:04:56.300 and what role money changers had in trading these valuations against each other. 40 00:04:56.300 --> 00:05:03.300 And they became curious about the value of money itself, the conditions under which it would rise and fall. 41 00:05:03.300 --> 00:05:10.300 From these investigations came the first modern writings on the field of study called economics. 42 00:05:10.300 --> 00:05:16.300 They observed that prices for goods and services were influenced by their relative scarcity. 43 00:05:16.300 --> 00:05:21.300 If something was super-abundant, it had a low price or no price. 44 00:05:21.300 --> 00:05:28.300 And if something was in short supply or very hard to get, it obtained a much higher price. 45 00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:35.300 From here they discovered how prices came to be formed on the market and what conditions influenced them. 46 00:05:35.300 --> 00:05:39.300 They also discovered that the value of money acted in a similar way. 47 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:46.300 Where the quantity of money was very high, they found that one had to spend more of it to obtain goods and services. 48 00:05:46.300 --> 00:05:52.300 And when the quantity of money was very low, one needed less of it to engage in transactions. 49 00:05:52.300 --> 00:06:03.300 They also found that an influx of money would cause a shift in prices in an upwards direction whereas a reduction in the quantity of money available would cause a fall in prices. 50 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:13.300 Now these were seen as very interesting phenomena, not entirely new in the history of the world of course, for inflations and deflations have always been with us. 51 00:06:13.300 --> 00:06:23.300 But in Spain in the late Middle Ages, the appearance of the subject matter of economics became more pronounced and more obvious and impossible to avoid. 52 00:06:23.300 --> 00:06:31.300 Economics became a science because scholars were surrounded by gripping subject matter to examine and think about. 53 00:06:31.300 --> 00:06:37.300 These scholars became convinced of the existence of what we now call economic laws. 54 00:06:37.300 --> 00:06:42.300 These laws are not made by legislators or judges, kings or presidents. 55 00:06:42.300 --> 00:06:51.300 They exist as part of the social order, invisible to the naked eye, but just as real as gravity or any other force of nature. 56 00:06:51.300 --> 00:06:55.300 They began to enumerate these laws, like supply and demand. 57 00:06:55.300 --> 00:07:04.300 With the law of supply, we can see that if nothing else changes, more of a good will be offered at a higher price than at a lower price. 58 00:07:04.300 --> 00:07:10.220 Account Availability forces the law of demand. That is, people will demand a greater quantity 59 00:07:10.220 --> 00:07:17.340 of a good at a lower price than a higher price. Another law they observed concerned money. 60 00:07:17.340 --> 00:07:22.180 The greater the quantity available, the lower the value of money will be in terms of goods 61 00:07:22.180 --> 00:07:29.100 and services. They also began to observe the operation of cost accounting in business affairs. 62 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:35.600 A business must take in more in revenue than it spends its goods to make its goods or services 63 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:39.340 or else it cannot continue to do business. 64 00:07:39.340 --> 00:07:42.420 Nothing on earth will change this reality. 65 00:07:42.420 --> 00:07:47.560 It is a fixed part of the social order and a fixed part of the commercial world. 66 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:51.800 No one legislated this reality or even had to enforce it. 67 00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:56.660 It is part of the way business operates and this is good for society because it makes 68 00:07:56.660 --> 00:08:03.540 It's the best use of scarce resources, discouraging waste and encouraging thrift. 69 00:08:03.540 --> 00:08:07.020 The more they looked at the operation of the commercial world, the more they found that 70 00:08:07.020 --> 00:08:09.980 it works in an orderly way. 71 00:08:09.980 --> 00:08:12.060 Prices were not arbitrary. 72 00:08:12.060 --> 00:08:16.380 They were set according to the agreement of buyers and sellers, which in turn reflected 73 00:08:16.380 --> 00:08:19.240 features of the physical world. 74 00:08:19.240 --> 00:08:23.340 These features are constantly changing according to the production of enterprises, and so of 75 00:08:23.340 --> 00:08:27.220 And of course, prices must be free to fluctuate. 76 00:08:27.220 --> 00:08:31.860 The behavior of business people particularly fascinated these thinkers. 77 00:08:31.860 --> 00:08:36.660 They saw how traders had to accumulate large quantities of goods in order to make money 78 00:08:36.660 --> 00:08:39.260 selling them to consumers. 79 00:08:39.260 --> 00:08:44.420 They had to take a guess about a future that was unknown and unknowable. 80 00:08:44.420 --> 00:08:51.580 This capacity indicated a certain virtue of planning ahead and courage to face the unknown. 81 00:08:51.580 --> 00:08:57.420 For their profits were wholly justified. But in profiting, they were also serving others 82 00:08:57.420 --> 00:09:03.020 who were buying of their own volition, exchanging money for things that they desired to make 83 00:09:03.020 --> 00:09:08.040 their lives better. This was the beginning of the great insight that gave rise to what 84 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:15.040 would later be called liberalism. The insight was that people were fully capable of arranging 85 00:09:15.260 --> 00:09:21.140 and producing resources to their mutual betterment, and in so doing, they were helping themselves 86 00:09:21.140 --> 00:09:26.940 and Helping Everyone Else Too. This was even true of the money trader who gained great riches 87 00:09:26.940 --> 00:09:32.660 even as he sat at a desk. He was lending on terms that were mutually agreed upon by borrower 88 00:09:32.660 --> 00:09:39.660 and lender. All parties were better off than they were before. It was on this basis that 89 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:46.820 the scholastic theologians came to approve of merchants and bankers as socially and morally 90 00:09:46.820 --> 00:09:48.820 is really essential to society. 91 00:09:48.820 --> 00:09:50.820 Now this represented a dramatic change 92 00:09:50.820 --> 00:09:52.820 from the attitudes of the ancient world. 93 00:09:52.820 --> 00:09:54.820 The ancient philosophers 94 00:09:54.820 --> 00:09:56.820 tended to see the merchants 95 00:09:56.820 --> 00:09:58.820 as only slightly better than slaves, 96 00:09:58.820 --> 00:10:00.820 mere peddlers 97 00:10:00.820 --> 00:10:02.820 who moved things around from here to there 98 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:04.820 but otherwise lived 99 00:10:04.820 --> 00:10:06.820 a very lowly existence 100 00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:08.820 and rightly so 101 00:10:08.820 --> 00:10:10.820 as compared with the philosophers and kings 102 00:10:10.820 --> 00:10:12.820 who sat on the top of the social hierarchy. 103 00:10:12.820 --> 00:10:14.820 This change in attitude 104 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:25.820 The greatest change in attitude from condemning to celebrating the merchant class was the greatest change in social theory of the late middle ages and the beginning of the drafting of the science of economics. 105 00:10:25.820 --> 00:10:33.820 The science of economics established that there were such things as economic laws working in the world on a continual basis. 106 00:10:33.820 --> 00:10:41.820 These laws led the world of commerce to be an orderly and beautiful place that brought the whole of society goods and services. 107 00:10:41.820 --> 00:10:52.820 What's more, these theologians observed that society could grow ever richer by letting the world of commerce operate without moral condemnation or government intervention. 108 00:10:52.820 --> 00:11:03.820 So long as persons are trading honestly with each other and there is no fraud or coercion as part of the exchange, they deemed it perfectly suitable and socially wonderful. 109 00:11:03.820 --> 00:11:09.820 In fact, they saw these laws as an extension of the hand of God operating in the temporal world. 110 00:11:09.820 --> 00:11:13.400 Now, if you know something about Spanish history at this time, you know that the 111 00:11:13.400 --> 00:11:19.020 Newfound Prosperity also came at a cost. New wealth meant new wealth for 112 00:11:19.020 --> 00:11:23.740 government too. And with these new resources at its disposal, the government 113 00:11:23.740 --> 00:11:27.740 was tempted to intervene in economic life in a manner consistent with its 114 00:11:27.740 --> 00:11:33.980 imperial aims abroad. In fact, Spain was host to the first big government in the 115 00:11:33.980 --> 00:11:38.700 modern world. The theologians who discovered economics were not silent in 116 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:44.460 Speaking about the workings of government. Government everywhere is tempted to attempt 117 00:11:44.460 --> 00:11:50.340 to fix prices higher or lower than the market would dictate. They are tempted to grant monopoly 118 00:11:50.340 --> 00:11:56.380 privileges to some producers over others. They are tempted to establish limits on borrowing 119 00:11:56.380 --> 00:12:02.060 and lending. They wanted to collect taxes and as much as possible. When that didn't 120 00:12:02.060 --> 00:12:07.420 work to generate what they thought of as sufficient revenue, they were tempted to change the definitions 121 00:12:07.420 --> 00:12:14.420 The first economists in the modern world weighed in to condemn most of the efforts as unworkable interventions in the market. 122 00:12:14.420 --> 00:12:21.420 They pointed out that fixing prices would cause shortages or surpluses to appear in the marketplace. 123 00:12:21.420 --> 00:12:32.420 If the price of silk, for example, were held artificially low, it would be impossible for silk importers to cover their costs that they incurred in bringing silk to consumers, 124 00:12:32.420 --> 00:12:37.400 to cover their costs that they incurred in bringing silk to consumers, and they would 125 00:12:37.400 --> 00:12:43.900 cease doing so, thereby causing shortages along with pressure for rising prices. 126 00:12:43.900 --> 00:12:49.780 The ambitions of the prints to make silk cheaper would result in the very opposite. 127 00:12:49.780 --> 00:12:53.560 The same was true of the attempts to keep prices from falling. 128 00:12:53.560 --> 00:12:58.240 This would lead to products to be in surplus because consumers are not willing to pay such 129 00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:00.440 high prices for them. 130 00:13:00.440 --> 00:13:06.160 Most limits on the power of the prince also occurred when he tried to tax people because 131 00:13:06.160 --> 00:13:12.600 higher taxes end up discouraging production and leading to a smaller revenue base. And 132 00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:17.040 tampering with the money was also fraught with danger because doing so would cause all 133 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:22.880 prices to rise, therefore defeating the point of the depreciation. 134 00:13:22.880 --> 00:13:28.620 This tendency of economics to instruct government on its limits began in the late Middle Ages 135 00:13:28.620 --> 00:13:33.860 and continued until the twentieth century. It was a universal feature of the profession 136 00:13:33.860 --> 00:13:41.100 and the field of study. This is how economists gained the reputation of being the dream crushers, 137 00:13:41.100 --> 00:13:49.940 the people who annoyed princes, kings and presidents. They were profoundly aware that 138 00:13:49.940 --> 00:13:57.060 economic laws work as a strict limit on the ambition of the rulers. This is why also famously 139 00:13:57.060 --> 00:14:23.060 This is all well and good for government officials to dream of a world of perfect equality or universal wealth or universal high quality health care for everybody, but if they interfere with the market, they will end up creating all kinds of dislocations and will not and cannot achieve their aims. 140 00:14:23.060 --> 00:14:31.060 This is why government, said these economists, should limit themselves to their areas of competence and never go beyond that. 141 00:14:31.060 --> 00:14:36.060 As to what their areas of competence might be, of course that's another, that's a time for another talk. 142 00:14:36.060 --> 00:14:47.060 One can see then that the economists were never very popular with rulers, policy wonks, political planners or social meddlers of all stripes. 143 00:14:47.060 --> 00:14:51.060 Economists were the gang standing over in the corner constantly wagging their fingers 144 00:14:51.060 --> 00:14:58.060 and reminding everyone else that they had better curb their dreams and wake up and smell the strong coffee of economic theory. 145 00:14:58.060 --> 00:15:06.060 Even to this day, this tendency is still in operation. Observe the social patterns on any college campus when you attend, 146 00:15:06.060 --> 00:15:15.060 and you will find the inhabitants of the departments of English, Sociology and History don't like to hang out around the economists. 147 00:15:15.060 --> 00:15:24.060 And you rarely find economic insights invading the textbooks of other professions unless it is of the Keynesian or Marxist variety. 148 00:15:24.060 --> 00:15:34.060 Those with unhinged intellectual visions don't like to be reminded of reality and economists are nothing if not attached to the workings of the real world. 149 00:15:34.060 --> 00:15:44.060 Of course, I've only addressed one aspect of the contribution of economics, that which delineates strict and insurmountable limits to what can happen in the material world. 150 00:15:44.060 --> 00:15:49.540 World. That is only half the story. The other half is that economics is the one science 151 00:15:49.540 --> 00:15:54.500 that has come to terms with the conditions under which the human imagination can be unleashed 152 00:15:54.500 --> 00:16:00.180 to create miracles all around us every day. And here again we can tell the story in light 153 00:16:00.180 --> 00:16:05.340 of the experience in Spain, in the Middle Ages. If you look for example at the art of 154 00:16:05.340 --> 00:16:10.780 that period, particularly as we approach the Renaissance, we see something completely new. 155 00:16:10.780 --> 00:16:17.820 We observe color, life and freshness that indicates a kind of optimism about life. 156 00:16:17.820 --> 00:16:22.860 This is because wealth was growing, people were living longer, incomes were increasing 157 00:16:22.860 --> 00:16:29.260 for all classes, new foods, new fabrics were appearing by the year, the month, the day. 158 00:16:29.260 --> 00:16:34.620 For the first time we began to see the creation of what we today call the middle class. 159 00:16:34.620 --> 00:16:37.960 People did not have to live forever in poverty. 160 00:16:37.960 --> 00:16:42.360 Through enterprising hard work, there existed the possibility of enhancing one's standard 161 00:16:42.360 --> 00:16:47.440 of living, provided the private capital was available to support this and provided that 162 00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:53.360 both producers and consumers enjoyed economic opportunity in a world of freedom. 163 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:57.920 These trends that began in Spain and extended to other parts of the continent and finally 164 00:16:57.920 --> 00:17:03.340 England during the Industrial Revolution demonstrated just what can happen in a world that permits 165 00:17:03.340 --> 00:17:06.520 the unleashing of human creativity. 166 00:17:06.520 --> 00:17:11.400 Working within the structure of economic laws, entrepreneurs can take risks, inventors can 167 00:17:11.400 --> 00:17:17.080 come up with new ideas, merchants can bring new products and services to ever larger groups 168 00:17:17.080 --> 00:17:23.640 of people. When people are permitted to change jobs, move and negotiate their own contracts, 169 00:17:23.640 --> 00:17:29.040 the division of labor can extend to larger and larger numbers. This allows even more 170 00:17:29.040 --> 00:17:33.960 talents to come to the table and work towards creating wealth. 171 00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:38.600 To understand how this market-based productivity works in action, you only have to compare 172 00:17:38.600 --> 00:17:44.040 an imaginary reality with the reality you see all around you. 173 00:17:44.040 --> 00:17:49.420 Imagine that you, your family, and your friends were plopped down in this world exactly as 174 00:17:49.420 --> 00:17:51.320 it was made. 175 00:17:51.320 --> 00:17:54.840 You come with one set of clothes and nothing else. 176 00:17:54.840 --> 00:18:00.880 There are no houses, no grocery stores, no Wii consoles, no cell phones, no books, no 177 00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:05.440 No Wikipedia, no cars, no machines for doing anything. 178 00:18:05.440 --> 00:18:09.000 All you have is your knowledge and your language. 179 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:12.440 This is what might be called the state of nature. 180 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:16.120 The situation in which you find yourself is precisely what the world would be like in 181 00:18:16.120 --> 00:18:19.280 the absence of economic productivity. 182 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:23.320 Can you imagine how long it would take to build the world we now live in? 183 00:18:23.320 --> 00:18:29.480 It would not happen in your generation, or the next, or the next, or the next. 184 00:18:29.480 --> 00:18:33.760 It would take many hundreds of years, perhaps, just to arrive at a point that we would find 185 00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:38.400 more or less acceptable from the point of view of our own comfort. 186 00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:43.420 Knowing this, it is good to keep in mind the debt that we owe to economic freedom and to 187 00:18:43.420 --> 00:18:49.400 all the accumulated capital of previous generations, each building on the last. 188 00:18:49.400 --> 00:18:54.640 This economic freedom has unleashed the creative spirit of mankind for hundreds of years, bestowing 189 00:18:54.640 --> 00:18:58.740 great blessings on you and everyone in society. 190 00:18:58.740 --> 00:19:03.060 These blessings are quite often surprises and remarkable ones. 191 00:19:03.060 --> 00:19:08.180 Right now I can pick up a device I have in my pocket, click a few buttons, and talk face 192 00:19:08.180 --> 00:19:11.220 to face with a friend in Europe. 193 00:19:11.220 --> 00:19:13.600 No wires anywhere. 194 00:19:13.600 --> 00:19:16.780 By any standard, this is amazing. 195 00:19:16.780 --> 00:19:21.180 All the more amazing is I can do it without paying any fee for the particular service 196 00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:24.340 that I would be using, in this case, Skype. 197 00:19:24.340 --> 00:19:29.100 So we can see that the products of the market are not only miraculous, they also follow 198 00:19:29.100 --> 00:19:31.020 an unexpected path. 199 00:19:31.020 --> 00:19:37.020 So many amazing services are offered today at zero price, from Facebook to Google to 200 00:19:37.020 --> 00:19:38.020 Wikipedia. 201 00:19:38.020 --> 00:19:42.940 And I can tell you that no one ten years ago would have ever imagined that these services 202 00:19:42.940 --> 00:19:48.800 would exist, much less exist, without fee-based subscriptions. 203 00:19:48.800 --> 00:19:53.580 We must be cautious to never think of the blessings of the market, however, as bestowed 204 00:19:53.580 --> 00:19:59.580 on this generation as a natural right. Our natural right is to live in a state of nature. 205 00:20:00.460 --> 00:20:06.540 Everything else has been made by man in his capacity as a freely choosing and rational creature. 206 00:20:07.420 --> 00:20:12.380 And remember too that this means these blessings can disappear even more quickly than they came 207 00:20:12.380 --> 00:20:18.940 about if we take the wrong steps. Look at countries that nearly shut down the market economy such as 208 00:20:18.940 --> 00:20:24.500 Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, China after the Communist Revolution, Cuba after 209 00:20:24.500 --> 00:20:31.500 its revolution, or North Korea today. These countries stagnated economically. Their technological 210 00:20:31.560 --> 00:20:37.380 advances came to a grinding halt. History literally stopped for them, really had moved 211 00:20:37.380 --> 00:20:44.380 backwards. This is what happens when you permit the government to own and manage social resources. 212 00:20:44.800 --> 00:20:48.460 Even today we can see that the freest sectors in society are the ones that are making the 213 00:20:48.460 --> 00:20:57.460 Compare the progress in cell phones and computers to the pace of progress in public schools and the post office. 214 00:20:57.460 --> 00:21:04.460 There is no intrinsic reason why some sectors should be stuck in the mud and others moving ahead at a fast pace. 215 00:21:04.460 --> 00:21:10.460 It all comes down to how much control government exercises over the sector. 216 00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:15.460 When the government keeps its hands off, we enjoy the possibility of progress. 217 00:21:15.460 --> 00:21:20.460 When government is running things, we doom the chances for progress. 218 00:21:20.460 --> 00:21:25.460 This is the great lesson of economics, and it is a thrilling one to discover. 219 00:21:25.460 --> 00:21:33.460 Like Doug French, I highly recommend the Bob Murphy book on lessons for young economists, 220 00:21:33.460 --> 00:21:39.460 the great Henry Hazlitt book, Economics and the Lesson, as the way to start learning about economics. 221 00:21:39.460 --> 00:21:43.460 Although, of course, many of you in this room are already young economists. 222 00:21:43.460 --> 00:21:58.860 But be careful, as you read these books, you might catch the bug. You might end up spending 223 00:21:58.860 --> 00:22:04.420 your life thinking and writing about this topic. If that happens to you, and you continue 224 00:22:04.420 --> 00:22:10.120 to reflect on what freedom means to the human population and the inherent limits that economics 225 00:22:10.120 --> 00:22:16.360 Reveals concerning government power, you have an exciting journey ahead. You might make the 226 00:22:16.360 --> 00:22:21.920 decisive intellectual contribution that will help preserve freedom and prosperity for the 227 00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:24.920 next generation. Thank you, and I hope you do it.