WEBVTT

NOTE An Interview with Jeffrey Herbener

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.080
Okay, I'm here with Jeffrey Herbiner now for our podcast. He's a professor of economics

2
00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:12.080
at Grove City College and very glad to have you. You're concentrating this week on microeconomics

3
00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:22.000
and what other issues. Right, a little bit on Keynes and some work on time and uncertainty

4
00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:31.920
in the Human Action, and then I got one lecture on the American Austrians, so a little bit

5
00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:32.920
of history.

6
00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:37.040
Yeah, so you're dealing with all the difficult technical topics that require extraordinary

7
00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.240
procedures, right?

8
00:00:39.240 --> 00:00:42.120
They all do, they all do.

9
00:00:42.120 --> 00:00:46.800
But these aren't the topics that normally drive people to Austrian economics, unless

10
00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:47.800
...

11
00:00:47.800 --> 00:00:48.800
This is true.

12
00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:49.800
Really, you agree with that?

13
00:00:49.800 --> 00:00:50.800
Yeah, I think that's right.

14
00:00:50.800 --> 00:00:52.400
Yeah, people don't become Austrian in the first place.

15
00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:57.560
Because they want to know about time preference, a minutia of uncertainty.

16
00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:03.000
You know, the whole question of time preference, we are not going to have an interview on time

17
00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:10.040
preference, but as much as everybody might like that, you know, I find, anyway, the subject

18
00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:14.560
is so difficult and you have to throw yourself into the literature completely and just really

19
00:01:14.560 --> 00:01:17.840
think about it constantly and then you can sort of get it and engage in the controversies

20
00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:19.080
and you become obsessed with it.

21
00:01:19.080 --> 00:01:24.080
If you're away from it for too long, is it just me or do you forget everything?

22
00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:30.080
It isn't a memorable subject. It is a highly technical subject. A lot has been written about it.

23
00:01:30.080 --> 00:01:37.080
A lot of it is confused and difficult to untangle the fallacies and to see the kernel of truth.

24
00:01:37.080 --> 00:01:40.080
Written about it, meaning interest rates or time preference?

25
00:01:40.080 --> 00:01:46.080
Well, even both, I would say. Even the conceptions of time preference of some writers are not really quite right.

26
00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:49.600
Or within the Austrian tradition?

27
00:01:49.600 --> 00:01:53.680
Even in the broader literature, but yeah, I would say even within the Austrian tradition.

28
00:01:53.680 --> 00:02:02.680
I think the central idea that Mises had of time preference being bound up in temporal

29
00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:09.040
finitude of our animal nature, you know, he said that time preference, even animals have

30
00:02:09.040 --> 00:02:10.040
time preference.

31
00:02:10.040 --> 00:02:11.040
Yeah.

32
00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:18.040
There's something like categorical time preference that exists as a fundamental concept of acting.

33
00:02:18.040 --> 00:02:19.040
How do you show that?

34
00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:25.040
And not many people agree with this or incorporate this insight into their work.

35
00:02:25.040 --> 00:02:31.040
What's the quick reputation of the claim that that's not true?

36
00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:44.040
Well, Mises says that if this weren't true, a person would have, or could have, an infinite time horizon, and temporal beings cannot have infinite time horizons.

37
00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:45.040
Right.

38
00:02:45.040 --> 00:02:47.040
And that's his claim.

39
00:02:47.040 --> 00:02:56.040
So you, now, the Rothbardian perspective doesn't differ substantially, or in any respect, from the Misesian view.

40
00:02:56.040 --> 00:03:11.040
Not that I know of. Rothbard doesn't stress this categorical nature of time preference, but from the beginning of the definition of the operative notion of time preference to interest is all the same.

41
00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:16.040
Well, now Rothbard relied a lot on the writings of Frank Feder.

42
00:03:16.040 --> 00:03:17.040
Right.

43
00:03:17.040 --> 00:03:18.040
Mises did as well?

44
00:03:18.040 --> 00:03:28.040
in Human Action. Feder was the great purifier of the doctrine from Boehm-Bawerk.

45
00:03:28.040 --> 00:03:32.040
And Boehm-Bawerk needed some assistance in this regard.

46
00:03:32.040 --> 00:03:36.040
This is Mises' view. It's a controversial question.

47
00:03:36.040 --> 00:03:39.040
Among who was this person?

48
00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:41.040
We won't name names.

49
00:03:41.040 --> 00:03:46.040
Money issues are just still deeply controversial, you know, find yourself stepping into dangerous

50
00:03:46.040 --> 00:03:47.040
territory.

51
00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:55.720
Yeah, and as you said before, not exactly earth-shattering, but obvious appeal to everyone.

52
00:03:55.720 --> 00:03:57.960
So do we need a fetter shirt, do you think, at some point?

53
00:03:57.960 --> 00:04:04.040
We do need it, well, yeah, we would have something like a fellow traveler's, you know, list.

54
00:04:04.040 --> 00:04:06.640
Well, we've got a knock shirt, I mean, it's unclear.

55
00:04:06.640 --> 00:04:07.640
Well, there you go.

56
00:04:07.640 --> 00:04:08.640
So, I don't know.

57
00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:09.640
No, a fetter shirt would be great.

58
00:04:09.640 --> 00:04:10.640
Yeah, a fetter shirt would be great, yeah.

59
00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:14.120
There's a marketability issue, but who would have thought that they...

60
00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:15.120
That's true.

61
00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:16.120
It was with all of it.

62
00:04:16.120 --> 00:04:17.120
Yeah, yeah.

63
00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:20.960
Well, actually, one of the most popular selling t-shirts, I'm not t-shirt obsessed, just to

64
00:04:20.960 --> 00:04:21.960
tell you that.

65
00:04:21.960 --> 00:04:24.600
I don't think only about t-shirts, but one of the most popular...

66
00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:25.600
Shaving cream.

67
00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:26.600
Other issues.

68
00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:27.600
Things like that, yeah.

69
00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:30.360
But the Boehm-Bawerk shirt really does sell very well.

70
00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:32.400
It really does.

71
00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:33.400
It's the slogan.

72
00:04:33.400 --> 00:04:34.960
Yeah, Structure of Production.

73
00:04:34.960 --> 00:04:35.960
That really attracts people, I think.

74
00:04:35.960 --> 00:04:36.960
Structure of Production.

75
00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:37.960
Yeah.

76
00:04:37.960 --> 00:04:38.960
That's a real draw.

77
00:04:38.960 --> 00:04:39.960
That's great.

78
00:04:39.960 --> 00:04:48.480
Okay, let me ask you about Keynes. Controversy recently on the blog, I don't know if it's

79
00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:57.400
even worth noting, but some people were claiming that Hazlitt's commentary on the general theory

80
00:04:57.400 --> 00:05:04.160
is not really to be taken seriously. What's your sense?

81
00:05:04.160 --> 00:05:07.360
Well I would say off the top of my head that almost everything that Hazlitt wrote is to

82
00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:13.300
to be taken seriously, it has to be grappled with. It is a rather pedestrian exercise to

83
00:05:13.300 --> 00:05:22.300
go through his book because it delves, it's line by line refutation, so it's very tedious.

84
00:05:22.300 --> 00:05:23.300
For the reader.

85
00:05:23.300 --> 00:05:29.200
Yes, so it isn't a grand critique, something like what I think is the best article written

86
00:05:29.200 --> 00:05:34.200
on Keynes that Joseph Salerno did a number of years ago.

87
00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:47.200
and that was kind of Keynes' development of his thought in this sort of progressive utopian millennialism from Marshall.

88
00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:54.200
He makes a lot out of the fact that Keynes hoped that you could have a world without interest.

89
00:05:54.200 --> 00:06:03.200
Yes, exactly. The idea that he fixated on was the elimination of the scarcity of capital.

90
00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:07.200
And so to do this, of course, interest had to be eliminated.

91
00:06:07.200 --> 00:06:12.200
Keynes didn't necessarily believe that, say, central banking could drive it to zero.

92
00:06:12.200 --> 00:06:19.200
And so we'd have to have socialization of the financial markets to eliminate all sources of interest.

93
00:06:19.200 --> 00:06:26.800
And to elaborate on your point about what Mises said concerning time preferences would imply

94
00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:28.800
immortality, wouldn't it?

95
00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:30.800
Yeah, among other strange things.

96
00:06:30.800 --> 00:06:32.800
That's right.

97
00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:38.440
Did Hazlitt pick up on this point about interest?

98
00:06:38.440 --> 00:06:43.920
That interest, I don't, it's not fresh in my mind, this book, I've read it years ago,

99
00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:44.920
I don't recall now.

100
00:06:44.920 --> 00:06:45.920
It's not in print.

101
00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:46.920
Oh, it isn't?

102
00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:47.920
No, it's not in print.

103
00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:53.920
But you know it's interesting that he sort of took up the job of taking on such details.

104
00:06:53.920 --> 00:07:00.920
In 1959 and then in 1960 of course he came out with the edited book, The Critics of Keynesian Economics.

105
00:07:00.920 --> 00:07:07.920
Right. But it's so interesting that all these critics, these Austrian critics of Keynes sort of emerged much later.

106
00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:16.920
Doesn't it seem as if Keynes came along in a window, he had a sort of, I mean he sort of slipped into the history of ideas in a strange way

107
00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:37.120
I think that's true. There was an odd constellation of elements that brought about Keynes's prominence,

108
00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:44.640
not the least of which had nothing to do with his economics. It had to do with his cosmic

109
00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:53.200
vision of things and his sort of utopianism and the circles that he ran in as sort of

110
00:07:53.200 --> 00:07:56.000
the leadest British groups and so on.

111
00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.400
They were strange times in the 1930s.

112
00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:04.080
There's a lot of sort of apocalyptic political thinkers running around.

113
00:08:04.080 --> 00:08:07.840
As far as, I mean, I'm always impressed when I read any of the newspapers of the time or

114
00:08:07.840 --> 00:08:10.320
the magazine or the political editorials and the journals.

115
00:08:10.320 --> 00:08:14.080
I mean, the idea of liberal democracy was completely dismissed by all sides.

116
00:08:14.080 --> 00:08:38.080
It's a strange time. It was indeed. It gave rise to a lot of peculiar ideologies, and Keynes was one of them. Now, somebody might say, look, you Austrians are just forever obsessing about Keynes, nobody cares about Keynes anymore. What do you think about that?

117
00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:52.080
This is not true. He spawned a thousand devils. Keynesian ideas are everywhere. In every generation, these battles have to be re-fought.

118
00:08:52.080 --> 00:09:01.080
That ground has to be retaken. After all, we're still writing articles against the minimum wage. These fallacies just don't go away.

119
00:09:01.080 --> 00:09:09.080
The New People and they constantly have to learn these things and they've already been indoctrinated into these fallacies.

120
00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:17.080
It is peculiar about Keynesianism. What do you think gives rise to the suggestion?

121
00:09:17.080 --> 00:09:23.080
I've heard it many times that Austrians just should shut up about Keynes. It's really over worth.

122
00:09:23.080 --> 00:09:29.080
Is it because people have a limited perception about the influence of Keynes?

123
00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:37.080
I mean, it's true that the dumbed-down version of Keynesianism doesn't persist in the journals.

124
00:09:37.080 --> 00:09:41.080
That's a good point. Yeah, I'd say that's right. That's right.

125
00:09:41.080 --> 00:09:50.080
It's just the bits and pieces that survive and are grasped by the mainstream.

126
00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:53.080
But the vision isn't. The vision's long gone.

127
00:09:53.080 --> 00:09:56.080
What's an example of that, would you say? What's a bit and piece?

128
00:09:56.080 --> 00:09:58.080
Macroaggregation

129
00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:36.080
The Federal Reserve, fiat money, fractional reserve banking, Human Action, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit

130
00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:00.080
Right, and nor is fiscal policy usually invoked.

131
00:11:00.080 --> 00:11:02.080
No, like a stabilizer of the economy.

132
00:11:02.080 --> 00:11:03.080
Yeah, it's not.

133
00:11:03.080 --> 00:11:04.080
No, no, no, it's not.

134
00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:05.080
No, it's all fed.

135
00:11:05.080 --> 00:11:06.080
It's all the fed.

136
00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:07.080
It's all fed.

137
00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:08.080
It's all fed.

138
00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:12.160
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that the spending policy, I mean, it's just, the Congress should

139
00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:16.480
just spend as much as possible, you know, as long as the debtors don't cause an immediate

140
00:11:16.480 --> 00:11:19.080
calamity, then everybody's happy, and that's the whole...

141
00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:23.080
There are the good things that have to be done, so more money to spend.

142
00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:24.080
Another war that has to be fought.

143
00:11:24.080 --> 00:11:27.760
No such thing as fiscal policy anymore.

144
00:11:27.760 --> 00:11:33.240
Was this the most naive view that Keynes held that somehow fiscal policy could be used for

145
00:11:33.240 --> 00:11:34.240
macroeconomic planning?

146
00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:39.200
Well, he wasn't really too intrigued with that view.

147
00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:41.680
It came from his followers.

148
00:11:41.680 --> 00:11:46.400
He was really dedicated to this notion of eliminating interest, as you talked about

149
00:11:46.400 --> 00:11:50.560
before, through the socialization of the financial markets.

150
00:11:50.560 --> 00:11:59.200
That was really his main policy position. Fiscal policy was a minor thing. He liked the idea,

151
00:11:59.200 --> 00:12:04.880
for example, of, say, having a progressive income tax because he thought the MPC, the

152
00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:10.660
propensity to consume of the poor people was larger than rich. So this would give us greater

153
00:12:10.660 --> 00:12:16.360
aggregate demand. But again, this wasn't like a solution to the fundamental problems of

154
00:12:16.360 --> 00:12:25.560
So this passage in The General Theory, where Keynes calls for the socialization of investment,

155
00:12:25.560 --> 00:12:39.080
is sometimes written off as just a slip, but you're arguing that it's the conclusion.

156
00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:45.080
Exactly. I think Joe Salerno made this abundantly clear in his article.

157
00:12:45.080 --> 00:12:52.080
It's the policy solution that Keynes would like to invoke,

158
00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:58.080
but practical politics permit only, let's say, expansionary monetary policy

159
00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:05.080
or some other makeshift, in his view, to push interest rates down.

160
00:13:05.080 --> 00:13:13.080
I think if he could have held the levers of power and pulled them, I think he would have pulled that lever, and not the others.

161
00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:16.080
Now you teach undergraduates. Smart kids?

162
00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:26.080
Very good kids. Our students at Grove City are very good. Very smart. We get a nice handful that are very interested in ideas.

163
00:13:26.080 --> 00:13:33.080
We've had a couple lately going to grad school, so we're real happy with the students that we get.

164
00:13:33.080 --> 00:13:41.080
When you teach, do you teach with an eye to preparing people for graduate school?

165
00:13:41.080 --> 00:13:51.080
It depends on what you mean by preparing. Our view is to ground them as solidly as we can in correct economics.

166
00:13:51.080 --> 00:13:58.080
So we don't prepare them in sort of a practical sense to do the math and so on.

167
00:13:58.080 --> 00:14:08.080
We require the standard kinds of math and statistics, but our push really is to ground them in real economics because when we get to grad school they don't do economics.

168
00:14:08.080 --> 00:14:17.080
They just do model building. That's right. We have to teach them. And then we hope that the PhD work is just an interlude.

169
00:14:17.080 --> 00:14:27.080
And they come out on the other side, they remember their economics, and they get back to it. They go back to what drew them, attracted them to economics to begin with.

170
00:14:27.080 --> 00:14:30.080
And you've built something of a program there, right?

171
00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:38.080
Right, I think so, and we're right now this summer putting together the final proposal for our master's program.

172
00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:39.080
Wow.

173
00:14:39.080 --> 00:14:44.080
So in two, maybe three years we should have the master's program.

174
00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:47.080
And will that be the first graduate program at Grove City?

175
00:14:47.080 --> 00:14:55.080
It will be. In the past they've had masters of accounting programs, but these were just makeshifts that they needed to meet

176
00:14:55.080 --> 00:15:23.080
The support of the administration is very strong. Bill Anderson is a provost. He's a big backer of the Austrian School.

177
00:15:23.080 --> 00:15:31.080
and the board, many board members who were students of Hans Senholtz, and they support this.

178
00:15:31.080 --> 00:15:33.080
Hans Senholtz taught for so many years there.

179
00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:34.080
36 years.

180
00:15:34.080 --> 00:15:35.080
Yeah, extraordinary.

181
00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:37.080
So many ways he built the program.

182
00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:45.080
And was he responsible for the fact that the Mises papers are there?

183
00:15:45.080 --> 00:15:46.080
Right, right.

184
00:15:46.080 --> 00:15:52.760
We acquired them from Marget in 1978, so it was five years after Mises died.

185
00:15:52.760 --> 00:15:55.880
Have you had an archivist?

186
00:15:55.880 --> 00:15:57.480
You have.

187
00:15:57.480 --> 00:16:07.160
An archivist came in in 1992 and organized the collection, put it in acid-free boxes

188
00:16:07.160 --> 00:16:08.160
and so on.

189
00:16:08.160 --> 00:16:09.160
That's hard work.

190
00:16:09.160 --> 00:16:11.840
It's so essential.

191
00:16:11.840 --> 00:16:13.720
Absolutely essential.

192
00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:15.960
We actually want to have it done again.

193
00:16:15.960 --> 00:16:28.840
Archival work is so hard to make an institutional priority. There are always other ways to use

194
00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:35.440
the resources that seem to meet more immediate needs and serve a larger community of people.

195
00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:39.760
There's every reason not to do this archival work, and yet...

196
00:16:39.760 --> 00:16:45.760
But it's a treasure, and it has to be protected. And people recognize that in the administration.

197
00:16:45.760 --> 00:16:59.640
It's tough. So you're looking at an electronic index, at least, and maybe even the real thing.

198
00:16:59.640 --> 00:17:03.280
That would be the goal at the end of the process.

199
00:17:03.280 --> 00:17:04.800
Are you involved in this process?

200
00:17:04.800 --> 00:17:05.800
Sure.

201
00:17:05.800 --> 00:17:08.320
So you spent some time in the papers.

202
00:17:08.320 --> 00:17:09.320
Oh my.

203
00:17:09.320 --> 00:17:10.320
Do you really?

204
00:17:10.320 --> 00:17:11.320
Oh yes.

205
00:17:11.320 --> 00:17:12.320
What do you get out of that?

206
00:17:12.320 --> 00:17:13.320
Oh, it's wonderful. It's amazing.

207
00:17:13.320 --> 00:17:14.320
Really?

208
00:17:14.320 --> 00:17:15.320
It's astounding.

209
00:17:15.320 --> 00:17:40.320
Do you have a different impression of him having gone through his correspondence than a person might have of having read his books?

210
00:17:45.320 --> 00:17:47.840
I'm not sure it's different, it's deeper.

211
00:17:47.840 --> 00:17:51.960
You sort of appreciate his other facets of Mises that

212
00:17:51.960 --> 00:17:53.860
you may not see if you're

213
00:17:53.860 --> 00:17:59.320
if you're just reading his scholarly work, like his love letters to Margit.

214
00:17:59.320 --> 00:18:01.840
Oh! Wow!

215
00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:04.720
I suddenly, I wonder, you know,

216
00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:05.980
if Mises

217
00:18:05.980 --> 00:18:07.840
had imagined that someday...

218
00:18:07.840 --> 00:18:10.800
Yeah, someone would sit down and read these things, yeah.

219
00:18:10.800 --> 00:18:13.520
It's kind of creepy in a way, but...

220
00:18:43.520 --> 00:18:50.520
in the 1970s. Things weren't going so well for the Austrian School, but they always said

221
00:18:50.520 --> 00:18:56.520
that things can change, that trends can change, so maybe they knew.

222
00:18:56.520 --> 00:18:57.520
They have.

223
00:18:57.520 --> 00:19:02.160
Yeah, they have. Now, what's this I hear about some course that you're teaching with Guido

224
00:19:02.160 --> 00:19:03.160
Holzmer, what's that about?

225
00:19:03.160 --> 00:19:11.400
Oh, right, yes. So, Guido put together this international economics course, and we had

226
00:19:11.400 --> 00:19:17.400
I invited him to come to Gros City and teach our students, we called the course Globalization,

227
00:19:17.400 --> 00:19:22.400
we already have an Econ, an international Econ course in our curriculum,

228
00:19:22.400 --> 00:19:29.400
and so he came for two weeks and taught, and then Sean Rittenour and I taught the rest of the course,

229
00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:40.400
and the students of course are just thrilled to have Guido, he's great, he's wonderful, and then he invited me this fall to go to Angers,

230
00:19:40.400 --> 00:19:45.760
and Return the Favor so I'll be there for for about two weeks and teach it you

231
00:19:45.760 --> 00:19:49.080
know this is a small segment of the course yeah but now I don't understand

232
00:19:49.080 --> 00:19:52.160
how this works does this mean that his students are enrolled in your class your

233
00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:56.960
students no no it's all a gross city was all my students and in Auger it's all

234
00:19:56.960 --> 00:20:01.400
his now maybe in the future we could do that in the future be better if I took my

235
00:20:01.400 --> 00:20:06.880
students and we cross enroll in the course yeah you know and then we'd have

236
00:20:06.880 --> 00:20:13.880
to stay longer, and so on. Or maybe just everybody get on Skype and, you know, have some big internet meeting.

237
00:20:13.880 --> 00:20:30.880
And Guido wants to actually write about, turn out some articles about this, because I think he's correct that international economics is not a field where the Austrians have swept the whole horizon.

238
00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:38.880
We sort of write about particular issues, but there isn't a full-blown Austrian theory of international trade.

239
00:20:38.880 --> 00:20:50.880
You know, it's funny, I somehow have some memory now of asking somebody, what do the Austrians have to contribute to the international trade discussion beyond what the neoclassical school has contributed?

240
00:20:50.880 --> 00:20:53.880
And the answer is, well, essentially nothing. It's the same thing.

241
00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:54.880
No.

242
00:20:54.880 --> 00:20:55.880
No?

243
00:20:55.880 --> 00:21:04.120
And just to see his syllabus and you would know, it is not the same thing.

244
00:21:04.120 --> 00:21:09.040
What thinkers would you say from the Austrian tradition have most broadly explored the trade

245
00:21:09.040 --> 00:21:14.120
issue and applied a unique kind of Austrian point of view?

246
00:21:14.120 --> 00:21:16.000
I mean, that's a good question.

247
00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:17.000
Hobbler?

248
00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:18.000
Yeah, yeah.

249
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:19.000
Hobbler?

250
00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:20.560
Joseph Salerno has done work in this area.

251
00:21:20.560 --> 00:21:24.120
But the masters, right, really didn't.

252
00:21:24.120 --> 00:21:34.120
Let's have a big argument about who is and isn't an Austrian.

253
00:21:34.120 --> 00:21:39.120
You end up looking like George Reisman.

254
00:21:39.120 --> 00:21:49.120
There's a wonderful, he wrote two great books on the subject, but maybe you would consider them more political.

255
00:21:49.120 --> 00:21:56.080
Well, I don't, you know, as good as he was, I don't think he was Austrian in the Misesian

256
00:21:56.080 --> 00:22:03.600
sense. He was certainly sympathetic and a fellow traveler. But he's not exactly a praxeologist.

257
00:22:03.600 --> 00:22:13.080
Right. So. So my definition is narrow. Yeah. I remember Rothbard used to come to this conference

258
00:22:13.080 --> 00:22:17.640
and he always gave a talk at the end, you know, and of course Rothbard was not one to

259
00:22:17.640 --> 00:22:19.640
to Avoid Controversy

260
00:22:47.640 --> 00:22:53.640
Some people refer to globalism, for example, if you oppose a war, they call you an isolationist,

261
00:22:53.640 --> 00:22:59.640
you say, no, I'm a favor of international trade, for everybody, completely against sanctions, for example.

262
00:22:59.640 --> 00:23:05.640
I mean, how is it, so I guess that's among the confusions you hope to straighten out,

263
00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:10.640
the relationship between international military power and economic exchange.

264
00:23:10.640 --> 00:23:16.640
Oh, and even broader cultural questions might come into play, right?

265
00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:23.140
The cultural context of the development of the market and the diversity, we might say,

266
00:23:23.140 --> 00:23:30.640
of expressions of the market through the international economy.

267
00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:34.640
So this is something, too, that isn't well thought out.

268
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:39.640
Most people, when they think of globalization, they think of economic imperialism.

269
00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:46.640
It's true. You Americanize the Bangladesh or whatever. Right. Or the French, I would say, to be a better example.

270
00:23:46.640 --> 00:23:51.640
So if we're going to trade with the country, it's got to be like a carbon copy of the U.S. and so it's got to have a constitution.

271
00:23:51.640 --> 00:23:55.640
Whereas it seems just... The SEC and what not.

272
00:23:55.640 --> 00:23:57.640
Oh my, and the Marines. Yeah.

273
00:23:57.640 --> 00:24:02.640
Whereas it's just the deepening of the division of labor.

274
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:10.640
One would think that these local distinctive features of economic activity would actually

275
00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:17.680
be brought out more deeply by globalization and not taken away.

276
00:24:17.680 --> 00:24:20.920
So people tend to focus just on the superficial things, like, oh, we have a Walmart, or we

277
00:24:20.920 --> 00:24:21.920
have a McDonald's.

278
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:22.920
Okay.

279
00:24:22.920 --> 00:24:27.120
So, yeah, your point is that globalization is often confused with homogenization, or

280
00:24:27.120 --> 00:24:28.120
...

281
00:24:28.120 --> 00:24:29.120
Yeah, yeah.

282
00:24:29.120 --> 00:24:30.120
That's right.

283
00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:31.120
Yeah.

284
00:24:31.120 --> 00:24:32.120
That's right.

285
00:24:32.120 --> 00:24:53.120
This idea that somehow trade is making everybody put a Chuck E. Cheese on every corner. You're

286
00:24:53.120 --> 00:24:58.120
also giving a seminar, a small group seminar this week, right?

287
00:24:58.120 --> 00:25:10.120
Right, I actually got moved into the corporatist state, and so it's going to be Tom Woods and I on it, right? That's what you're referring to, yeah.

288
00:25:10.120 --> 00:25:18.120
And this brings up another confusion that I suppose is somewhat related to the globalization point, that people confuse capitalism.

289
00:25:18.120 --> 00:25:19.120
Yes.

290
00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:21.120
Is that the kind of thing you're going to be abolishing?

291
00:25:21.120 --> 00:25:26.320
Well, that'll be one thing, right, sure, but I think we'll just throw out a laundry list of

292
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:33.920
topics that would come under this heading and explore them with the students. So we have fascism

293
00:25:33.920 --> 00:25:42.560
and, you know, programs of regulation and antitrust and mercantilism and so on and so forth. So it'll

294
00:25:42.560 --> 00:25:46.880
have international as well as domestic dimensions. Well, speaking of, you know, this actually is

295
00:25:46.880 --> 00:26:04.880
Mises has some comments in, I forget now which book, but where he seems to indicate some greater degree of tolerance than you might expect towards the idea of forcing open markets abroad. Do you know what I'm talking about?

296
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:06.880
No, I'm not familiar with that.

297
00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:29.880
I saw the post, maybe it came up in the post that Ebeling had on the Mises list, where he was talking about Mises' change of view as kind of uncharacteristically variable, or maybe perhaps that isn't what he was saying, maybe he was saying that it depended on circumstances.

298
00:26:29.880 --> 00:26:38.880
It was kind of historically contingent as to what the proper way to interrelate with other cultures happened to be.

299
00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:46.880
Well, I mean, Guido often emphasizes the fact that to understand Mises, it's a mistake to read Mises through Rothbardian lens.

300
00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:52.880
I mean, he wasn't a, for lack of a better term, a doctrinaire libertarian.

301
00:26:52.880 --> 00:26:53.880
That's right.

302
00:26:53.880 --> 00:26:57.880
I mean, he was a utilitarian, ultimately. Right?

303
00:26:57.880 --> 00:27:02.880
Well, not to start another controversy, but I'll accept that.

304
00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:05.880
He's a very strange utilitarian.

305
00:27:05.880 --> 00:27:09.880
But he tended to look at every...

306
00:27:09.880 --> 00:27:12.880
Well, it's difficult because...

307
00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:15.880
Of course, after reading Rothbard,

308
00:27:15.880 --> 00:27:20.880
we all tend to look back at predecessors

309
00:27:20.880 --> 00:27:24.880
and say, well, how come he was inconsistent on this point or that point?

310
00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:27.880
This is true.

311
00:27:27.880 --> 00:27:34.880
It's also true of reading Menger, actually, in light of Boehm-Bawerk, Boehm-Bawerk in light of Mises.

312
00:27:34.880 --> 00:27:35.880
Perennial problem.

313
00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:36.880
That's true.

314
00:27:36.880 --> 00:27:41.880
Who are some more American-Austrians that you're going to discuss besides Frank Fetter?

315
00:27:41.880 --> 00:27:42.880
It'll be Hazlitt.

316
00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:47.880
We'll go through Hazlitt's works and Benjamin Anderson.

317
00:27:47.880 --> 00:27:52.880
The point of that lecture is to show the students that these ideas were alive,

318
00:27:52.880 --> 00:27:58.440
embodied in real scholars and public intellectuals, practitioners and so on,

319
00:27:58.440 --> 00:28:05.360
but they weren't institutionalized. They had no institutional support and because

320
00:28:05.360 --> 00:28:10.280
of that we didn't see the blossoming of the Austrian School in that pre-war period.

321
00:28:10.280 --> 00:28:15.680
What were the books, the Austrian books, that were responsible for the

322
00:28:15.680 --> 00:28:22.520
creation of the American Austrian School in the interwar period?

323
00:28:22.520 --> 00:28:41.520
The first edition was 1904 and then the later edition of 1915, the more well-known edition that's still available, Davenport's work.

324
00:28:41.520 --> 00:28:44.160
Davenport.

325
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:47.720
Unfortunately, I can't squeeze Davenport into that lecture.

326
00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:51.200
I kind of wanted to give the students the fuller view of,

327
00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:55.000
not just the scholars, but the public intellectuals and so on.

328
00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:58.640
So you think we should wait on the Davenport shirt for a while?

329
00:28:58.640 --> 00:29:01.920
Well, it should come out with Fedder.

330
00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:05.760
That's shirt number 20 or 21, something like that.

331
00:29:05.760 --> 00:29:10.320
Fedder first, because they didn't get along either.

332
00:29:10.320 --> 00:29:17.320
What's your next project, aside from teaching, which I assume absorbs you completely?

333
00:29:17.320 --> 00:29:26.320
It keeps me pretty busy. Yeah, I think the next project is a publication of Mises's correspondence.

334
00:29:26.320 --> 00:29:35.320
So I think through the archive we're going to pull out his important correspondence, try to publish at least one volume from that.

335
00:29:35.320 --> 00:29:40.320
What a wonderful thought. And this would be post-war, I mean, after 1940.

336
00:29:40.320 --> 00:29:44.320
There would be a mixture, but, right.

337
00:29:44.320 --> 00:29:47.320
You won't do any translating, just as English?

338
00:29:47.320 --> 00:29:49.320
No, we'll have to have a translator.

339
00:29:49.320 --> 00:29:50.320
Okay.

340
00:29:50.320 --> 00:29:57.320
Yeah. So Guido actually has been in and read the German correspondence.

341
00:29:57.320 --> 00:30:02.320
And so he's able to identify what, you know, would need to be translated.

342
00:30:02.320 --> 00:30:07.320
Well, it would not be something, and you think it's revealing enough to deserve...

343
00:30:07.320 --> 00:30:10.320
Oh, yes. It's very interesting material.

344
00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:17.320
Do you have an example of somebody you corresponded with, like an economist, right?

345
00:30:17.320 --> 00:30:23.320
Oh, yeah, more than that. It's pretty broad. The correspondence is fairly broad.

346
00:30:23.320 --> 00:30:24.320
Yeah.

347
00:30:24.320 --> 00:30:32.320
But some things of just historical interest, like his correspondence with Hayek.

348
00:30:32.320 --> 00:30:43.320
So Hayek would write about being bombed out in London, and then Mises would write back to him to keep a stiff upper lip and all that.

349
00:30:43.320 --> 00:30:58.320
So it's that kind of personal interest that exists in the archive, as well as, as I mentioned before, just insightful remarks on world events and various correspondence.

350
00:30:58.320 --> 00:31:05.320
So that's major other areas that you're researching right now?

351
00:31:05.320 --> 00:31:20.320
Well, let's see. I've done some work. I have a few papers out for publication, one on statistical analysis and what its role is in economics.

352
00:31:20.320 --> 00:31:22.320
Going back to your early background, right?

353
00:31:22.320 --> 00:31:37.320
Yeah, well, the background we all go through. I get a PhD. So there's a piece on that. And I'm finishing up revisions on an article on Japan.

354
00:31:37.320 --> 00:31:42.320
Okay. That has been one of your interests. I think you wrote for Mises work on that topic.

355
00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:52.320
at the conference we had in Toronto in 99, so that's when I did the first analysis of Japan.

356
00:31:52.320 --> 00:32:01.320
And so I think now I've got an article length treatment of it. It's pretty good, I hope.

357
00:32:01.320 --> 00:32:03.320
How much time do you spend in the office?

358
00:32:03.320 --> 00:32:05.320
In my office at work?

359
00:32:05.320 --> 00:32:07.320
Yeah. That's all day, isn't it?

360
00:32:07.320 --> 00:32:08.320
Oh yeah, it's all day.

361
00:32:08.320 --> 00:32:11.320
All day, every day. These aren't professor hours, right?

362
00:32:11.320 --> 00:32:18.320
of Money and Credit, The Theory of Money and Credit, The Theory of Money and Credit, The

363
00:32:41.320 --> 00:32:45.160
at Mises University after so many years, how many years have you been teaching here?

364
00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:48.560
At Mises, let's see, 1988 was my first year.

365
00:32:48.560 --> 00:32:49.560
Isn't that great?

366
00:32:49.560 --> 00:32:50.560
Yeah.

367
00:32:50.560 --> 00:32:51.560
So, a staple.

368
00:32:51.560 --> 00:32:55.480
Well, thank you for sharing your gifts with all the students here and for sharing your

369
00:32:55.480 --> 00:32:57.840
time with us on this podcast.

370
00:32:57.840 --> 00:33:00.600
Well, thank you, Jeffrey, and thanks to the Institute.