WEBVTT NOTE Introduction to "Man, Economy, and State" 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.800 Murray Rothbard began work on his magnum opus on January 1st, 1952. 2 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:11.960 On May 5th, 1959, Rothbard wrote to his mentor, Ludwig von Mises, informing him, 3 00:00:11.960 --> 00:00:14.840 Hey, finito, it's finished. 4 00:00:14.840 --> 00:00:20.280 The more than seven years that Rothbard took to complete Man Economy and State coincided with the greater part 5 00:00:20.280 --> 00:00:26.040 of arguably the most sterile and retrogressive decade in the history of scientific economics, 6 00:00:26.040 --> 00:00:33.040 dating back to the birth of the science in the systematic treatise of Richard Cantillon, published in 1755. 7 00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:39.040 In view of the almost unfathomable depth to which economics had sunk by the 1950s, 8 00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:46.040 the publication of Rothbard's treatise in 1962 was one of the most monumental achievements in the history of economics 9 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:50.040 and an event that rescued the science from self-destruction. 10 00:00:50.040 --> 00:00:54.040 Modern economics emerged with the publication of Carl Menger's seminal work, 11 00:00:54.040 --> 00:00:57.040 Principles of Economics, in 1871. 12 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:01.040 In this work, Menger set forth the correct approach to theoretical research in economics 13 00:01:01.040 --> 00:01:04.040 and elaborated some of its immediate implications. 14 00:01:04.040 --> 00:01:07.040 Menger sought to identify the true cause of laws 15 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:10.040 underlying the determination of prices that he observed 16 00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:14.040 actually being paid in markets every day. 17 00:01:14.040 --> 00:01:18.040 His stated goal was to formulate a realistic price theory 18 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:21.360 comprising universal laws of cause and effect 19 00:01:21.360 --> 00:01:23.680 that would provide an integrated explanation 20 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:28.000 of the formation of market phenomena in all times and places. 21 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:32.040 Menger argued that all prices could ultimately be traced back 22 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:34.600 to the choices and actions of consumers 23 00:01:34.600 --> 00:01:36.800 striving to satisfy their wants 24 00:01:36.800 --> 00:01:38.800 by securing and allocating scarce means 25 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:41.200 to achieve their most highly valued ends. 26 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:43.920 While prices, rents, wage and interest rates 27 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:47.200 were the outcome of the value judgments of individual consumers 28 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:50.280 who chose between concrete units of different goods 29 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:54.240 according to their subjective values or marginal utilities. 30 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:57.440 With this insight was born modern economics. 31 00:01:57.440 --> 00:02:01.120 Menger's causal realistic approach to economic theorizing 32 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:04.800 quickly began to attract outstanding followers both in Austria 33 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:09.000 and later throughout the continent and the Anglophone countries. 34 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.560 What came to be called the Austrian School 35 00:02:11.560 --> 00:02:15.160 grew rapidly in prestige in numbers and by World War I, 36 00:02:15.160 --> 00:02:18.360 Theoretical research based on its causal-realist approach 37 00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:21.680 was considered the cutting edge of economic science. 38 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:24.880 For various reasons, the school suffered an amazingly rapid decline, 39 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:27.040 especially in Great Britain and the United States, 40 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:30.360 but also in Austria after the war. 41 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:33.520 Beginning in the 1920s, it was eclipsed by the Marshallian 42 00:02:33.520 --> 00:02:35.800 and Volrasian theoretical approaches, 43 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:39.080 and later almost buried by the Keynesian Revolution. 44 00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:42.720 By the mid-1930s, there ceased to be a self-conscious, 45 00:02:42.720 --> 00:02:45.120 institutionally embedded group of economists 46 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:49.920 actively engage in teaching and research in the Mangerian tradition. 47 00:02:49.920 --> 00:02:55.520 By the 1950s, a new and stifling orthodoxy, known as the neoclassical synthesis, 48 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:59.720 had descended on economics, especially in the United States. 49 00:02:59.720 --> 00:03:03.220 This so-called synthesis was actually a forago, 50 00:03:03.220 --> 00:03:05.220 it's one of Murray Rothbard's favorite words, 51 00:03:05.220 --> 00:03:11.320 of the three disparate approaches that had overwhelmed the Mangerian causal realist approach in the 1930s. 52 00:03:11.320 --> 00:03:14.420 It jumbled together the Marshallian partial equilibrium approach 53 00:03:14.420 --> 00:03:20.220 and the Volrasian mathematical approach to price determination with Keynesian macroeconomics. 54 00:03:20.220 --> 00:03:25.620 The latter denied the efficacy of the price system in coordinating the various sectors of the economy 55 00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:28.920 in the face of, quote, the failure of aggregate demand, 56 00:03:28.920 --> 00:03:33.820 which allegedly prevailed during the depression conditions of the 1930s. 57 00:03:33.820 --> 00:03:37.320 The new orthodoxy also featured hyper-specialization 58 00:03:37.320 --> 00:03:44.320 and a resulting fragmentation of economic theory into a conjuries of compartmentalized sub-disciplines 59 00:03:44.320 --> 00:03:50.320 Even the theoretical core of economics was now split into microeconomics and macroeconomics. 60 00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:55.320 Specialized journals proliferated and resulted in a radical change in research culture, 61 00:03:55.320 --> 00:03:59.320 with a premium on the writing and reading of the latest journal articles. 62 00:03:59.320 --> 00:04:03.320 The only books published were technical monographs or dumbed-down textbooks. 63 00:04:03.320 --> 00:04:09.320 The era of the great systematic treatise on economic theory was at close. 64 00:04:09.320 --> 00:04:15.120 Almost the sole holdout against this intellectual sea change was Ludwig von Mises. 65 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:22.020 With the publication of National Economie in 1940, the German language forerunner of human action, 66 00:04:22.020 --> 00:04:28.120 Mises single-handedly recovered and greatly advanced the system of causal realist economic theory. 67 00:04:28.120 --> 00:04:35.220 In particular, he integrated Mengerian value and price theory with his own restatement of monetary theory. 68 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:39.380 When Rothbard initiated work on what would turn out to be a full-blown treatise, 69 00:04:39.380 --> 00:04:44.180 he conceived of the project of the book, in particular, he integrated, 70 00:04:44.180 --> 00:04:48.020 in addition, he provided a rigorous foundation for the entire theoretical structure 71 00:04:48.020 --> 00:04:52.020 in a broader science of human action that he himself had expounded in earlier works 72 00:04:52.020 --> 00:04:55.780 and now further elaborated and dubbed praxeology. 73 00:04:55.780 --> 00:05:03.140 Unfortunately, Mises's great treatise was almost completely ignored by post-war economics profession. 74 00:05:03.140 --> 00:05:08.740 However, while it failed to inspire a renewal of the Hungarian scientific movement, 75 00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:12.340 Human Action did lay the foundations for its later revival. 76 00:05:12.340 --> 00:05:18.440 This revival was to be ignited by the publication of Man Economy and State in 1962. 77 00:05:18.440 --> 00:05:22.140 When Rothbard initiated work on what would turn out to be a full-blown treatise, 78 00:05:22.140 --> 00:05:28.540 he conceived of the book of the project as a book suitable both for lay readers and for college instruction 79 00:05:28.540 --> 00:05:33.500 that would bring, quote, to the surface and clarify the step-by-step nature of the edifice 80 00:05:33.500 --> 00:05:39.820 which Mises had constructed but more or less had taken for granted that his readers would understand, unquote. 81 00:05:39.820 --> 00:05:43.900 This was necessary because human action was addressed to a scholarly audience 82 00:05:43.900 --> 00:05:47.820 and Mises had accordingly assumed a great deal of familiarity among his readers 83 00:05:47.820 --> 00:05:53.980 with many of the concepts and theorems of what Mises called modern subjectivist economics. 84 00:05:53.980 --> 00:06:00.380 Thus, Rothbard intended, quote, to do for Mises what McCulloch did for Ricardo, unquote. 85 00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:05.980 That is, to make his work comprehensible to an intelligent lay readership. 86 00:06:05.980 --> 00:06:11.380 But Rothbard quickly realized that his original plan was flawed and had to be abandoned for three reasons. 87 00:06:11.380 --> 00:06:18.080 First, the textbook format, even one that proceeded in a logical step-by-step method that Rothbard had proposed, 88 00:06:18.080 --> 00:06:23.380 was too compartmentalized and disjointed in its treatment of various economic topics. 89 00:06:23.380 --> 00:06:26.740 It was therefore inadequate to convey what Rothbard called 90 00:06:26.740 --> 00:06:30.660 a sense of the grand sweep of the coherent system integrating and pervading 91 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:34.060 all aspects of sound economic doctrine." 92 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:36.860 Second, Rothbard discovered that there was, 93 00:06:36.860 --> 00:06:41.140 what he referred to, a lot of gaps in Mises' economic organon 94 00:06:41.140 --> 00:06:46.340 that he had to fill in himself, especially with respect to production theory. 95 00:06:46.340 --> 00:06:50.660 In addition, Rothbard's step-by-step deductions led him to the conclusion 96 00:06:50.660 --> 00:06:55.620 and that Mises' theory of monopoly, which was held by most economists in the Mangerian tradition, 97 00:06:55.620 --> 00:06:59.780 was irreparably flawed and had to be completely revised. 98 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:02.300 Thus, the book was turning out, quote, 99 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:07.420 to involve a good deal of original contribution, unquote, on Rothbard's part. 100 00:07:07.420 --> 00:07:12.540 Finally, Rothbard was beginning to recognize that Human Action was a product of a very broad tradition 101 00:07:12.540 --> 00:07:18.820 that included many more economists than just Mises and his famous predecessors in the original Austrian school. 102 00:07:18.820 --> 00:07:26.020 Indeed, as the writing of the book proceeded, Rothbard was concurrently researching literature and reading widely. 103 00:07:26.020 --> 00:07:28.120 This compelled him to conclude, quote, 104 00:07:28.120 --> 00:07:33.020 many essential points must be deduced originally or with the help of other works, unquote, 105 00:07:33.020 --> 00:07:38.020 and therefore the book cannot simply be a paraphrase of human action. 106 00:07:38.020 --> 00:07:42.520 Thus, Rothbard's proposed book was transformed in the very process of its writing 107 00:07:42.520 --> 00:07:48.220 from a textbook uncritically expounding the principles of received doctrine 108 00:07:48.220 --> 00:07:51.720 to a treatise elaborating a complete system of economic theory 109 00:07:51.720 --> 00:07:56.520 featuring many original and even radically new deductions and theorems. 110 00:07:56.520 --> 00:08:00.120 Mises himself immediately recognized profound originality 111 00:08:00.120 --> 00:08:02.820 and significance of Rothbard's contribution. 112 00:08:02.820 --> 00:08:06.520 In his review of Man Economy and State, Mises wrote that Rothbard, quote, 113 00:08:06.520 --> 00:08:10.520 joins the ranks of eminent economists by publishing a voluminous work, 114 00:08:10.520 --> 00:08:13.620 a systematic treatise on economics. 115 00:08:13.620 --> 00:08:16.120 In every chapter of his treatise, Mises continued, 116 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:18.800 Rothbard adopts the best teaching of his predecessors 117 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:22.560 and adds to them highly important observations." 118 00:08:22.560 --> 00:08:25.880 Mises went on to qualify Rothbard's work 119 00:08:25.880 --> 00:08:29.440 as an ethical contribution to the general science 120 00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:33.480 of human action, praxeology, and its practically most important 121 00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:38.080 and up to now best elaborated part, economics. 122 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:41.480 Henceforth, all essential studies in these branches of knowledge 123 00:08:41.480 --> 00:08:45.120 will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms 124 00:08:45.120 --> 00:08:50.620 expounded by Dr. Rothbard." 125 00:08:50.620 --> 00:08:54.120 Given Mises's exacting scholarly standards, 126 00:08:54.120 --> 00:08:59.420 and his well-known parsimony in paying compliments for scientific contributions, 127 00:08:59.420 --> 00:09:05.120 this is unstinting praise indeed for a book published by a 36-year-old economist. 128 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:07.920 But the more important point is that Mises viewed Rothbard's work 129 00:09:07.920 --> 00:09:11.820 as a noteworthy advance in modern economic science. 130 00:09:11.820 --> 00:09:19.300 This brings us to the heretofore neglected question of the relationship of Rothbard's treatise to the Austrian School of Economics 131 00:09:19.300 --> 00:09:22.580 and how he himself viewed this connection. 132 00:09:22.580 --> 00:09:25.780 It is disruptive to begin with Mises' attitude toward the Austrian School 133 00:09:25.780 --> 00:09:32.940 because it is not as straightforward as is generally supposed by contemporary economists who refer to themselves as Austrians. 134 00:09:32.940 --> 00:09:37.940 As early as 1932, Mises had argued that all essential ideas of the Austrian School of Economics 135 00:09:37.940 --> 00:09:42.700 had been absorbed into the mainstream of what he called modern subjectivist economics. 136 00:09:42.700 --> 00:09:44.260 According to Mises, quote, 137 00:09:44.260 --> 00:09:48.700 the Austrian and the Anglo-American schools and the School of Lausanne 138 00:09:48.700 --> 00:09:52.660 differ only in their mode of expressing the same fundamental idea 139 00:09:52.660 --> 00:09:55.380 and are divided more by their terminology 140 00:09:55.380 --> 00:10:00.540 and by peculiarities of presentation than by the substance of their teachings, unquote. 141 00:10:00.540 --> 00:10:05.780 Now, admittedly, this opinion was delivered at an economics conference in Germany, 142 00:10:05.780 --> 00:10:09.980 which was heavily attended by remnants of the German historical school 143 00:10:09.980 --> 00:10:13.580 who were antagonistic to economic theory of all kinds. 144 00:10:13.580 --> 00:10:17.280 It certainly can be reasonably argued that given this venue, 145 00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:22.580 Mises' remarks were intended as a generic defense of theoretical research in economics. 146 00:10:22.580 --> 00:10:25.380 In fact, a year earlier, Mises had written, quote, 147 00:10:25.380 --> 00:10:30.880 Within the field of modern economics, the Austrian School has shown its superiority to the School of Lausanne 148 00:10:30.880 --> 00:10:35.280 and the schools related to the latter, which favor mathematical formulations. 149 00:10:35.280 --> 00:10:38.780 by clarifying the causal relationship between value and cost, 150 00:10:38.780 --> 00:10:41.580 while at the same time avoiding the concept of function, 151 00:10:41.580 --> 00:10:44.680 which in our science is misleading." 152 00:10:44.680 --> 00:10:47.580 In spite of the foregoing caveat, 153 00:10:47.580 --> 00:10:51.980 Mises continued to maintain that the label Austrian School was an anachronism, 154 00:10:51.980 --> 00:10:55.280 arguing in the last publication of his career in 1969 155 00:10:55.280 --> 00:10:59.380 that the Austrian School constituted a closed chapter in the history of economic thought 156 00:10:59.380 --> 00:11:03.580 from around the time of Menger's death in 1921. 157 00:11:03.580 --> 00:11:05.780 By that time, Mises contended, 158 00:11:05.780 --> 00:11:10.380 all essential ideas of the Austrian School were by and large accepted 159 00:11:10.380 --> 00:11:13.020 as an integral part of economic theory 160 00:11:13.020 --> 00:11:17.060 and were no longer distinguished between an Austrian School and other economics. 161 00:11:17.060 --> 00:11:21.500 The Appalachian Austrian School became the name given to an important chapter 162 00:11:21.500 --> 00:11:23.940 of the history of economic thought. 163 00:11:23.940 --> 00:11:29.500 It was no longer the name of the specific sect with doctrines different 164 00:11:29.500 --> 00:11:33.140 from those held by other economists. 165 00:11:33.140 --> 00:11:36.820 As noted, Mises used the term modern subjectivist economics 166 00:11:36.820 --> 00:11:40.420 to describe the new synthesis of theoretical approaches 167 00:11:40.420 --> 00:11:44.420 that he believed had begun to emerge in the 1920s. 168 00:11:44.420 --> 00:11:46.260 There were two problems with his label, however, 169 00:11:46.260 --> 00:11:48.580 which may have led to Mises's ambivalent attitude 170 00:11:48.580 --> 00:11:54.500 toward the inclusion of the Marshallian and mathematical schools under its head. 171 00:11:54.500 --> 00:11:59.220 First, by World War I, most theoretical economists at least paid lip service 172 00:11:59.220 --> 00:12:01.700 to some version of subjective value theory, 173 00:12:01.700 --> 00:12:07.220 so that subjectivism was no longer a distinguishing characteristic of a unique approach to theoretical research. 174 00:12:07.220 --> 00:12:13.860 Second, as we have seen in our own time, the term subjectivism is a notoriously elastic term 175 00:12:13.860 --> 00:12:18.180 that can be stretched to denote even the nihilistic approach to economic theory 176 00:12:18.180 --> 00:12:22.020 propounded by postmodern and hermeneutical economists. 177 00:12:22.020 --> 00:12:26.260 Rothbard evidently followed Mises in construing the term Austrian School 178 00:12:26.260 --> 00:12:30.740 as the designation for an important movement in the history of economic thought. 179 00:12:30.740 --> 00:12:36.020 In the main text of Man Economy and State, Rothbard uses the term Austrian or Austrian School 180 00:12:36.020 --> 00:12:42.100 at least 10 times enclosed in quotation marks, as he naturally would if he were referring to a movement 181 00:12:42.100 --> 00:12:46.900 that had only historical significance to the contemporary reader. 182 00:12:46.900 --> 00:12:52.820 The few times he uses these terms without quotation marks, they clearly refer to historical doctrines 183 00:12:52.820 --> 00:12:59.140 or controversies, such as the Austrian-Wikesteadian theory of price, or the Austrian versus Alfred, 184 00:12:59.140 --> 00:13:03.840 The Austrian School versus Alfred Marshall on the relationship between prices and costs. 185 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:09.640 The single time that Rothbard mentions the Austrian economist in his preface to the first edition, 186 00:13:09.640 --> 00:13:16.540 he places the word Austrian in quotation marks and uses it in a sentence featuring verbs in the past tense. 187 00:13:16.540 --> 00:13:23.840 Now, this textual exegesis is not meant to imply that Rothbard did not consider the work as continuing the great tradition, 188 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:26.680 or did not consider his work as continuing the great tradition 189 00:13:26.680 --> 00:13:29.440 originated by the early Austrian economists. 190 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:31.600 Indeed, Rothbard wrote of, quote, 191 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:36.040 the myth among economists that the Austrian school is effectively dead 192 00:13:36.040 --> 00:13:39.480 and has no more to contribute and that everything of lasting worth 193 00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:42.800 that it had to offer was effectively stated and integrated 194 00:13:42.800 --> 00:13:45.720 in Alfred Marshall's principles, unquote. 195 00:13:45.720 --> 00:13:48.480 Rather, the point is that Rothbard's goal was to recover 196 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:51.600 and advance a much broader doctrinal tradition 197 00:13:51.600 --> 00:13:56.680 for which Menger's and Boehm-Bawerk's works were indisputably the taproot. 198 00:13:56.680 --> 00:13:59.280 Thus in his preface, Rothbard stated, 199 00:13:59.280 --> 00:14:06.000 this book then is an attempt to fill part of the enormous gap of 40 years' time. 200 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:11.320 The gap Rothbard is referring to separates the publication of Man, Economy and State 201 00:14:11.320 --> 00:14:15.880 and that of the last three systematic economic treatises to appear in English 202 00:14:15.880 --> 00:14:22.280 by Philip Wickstede, Frank Taussig, and Frank Fetter, respectively. 203 00:14:22.280 --> 00:14:25.400 The first and third authors of these earlier treatises 204 00:14:25.400 --> 00:14:29.600 were in what Rothbard called, quote, the praxeological tradition, unquote. 205 00:14:29.600 --> 00:14:32.520 Their procedure, as was his, was, quote, 206 00:14:32.520 --> 00:14:35.400 slowly and logically to build on the basic axioms, 207 00:14:35.400 --> 00:14:39.000 an integrated and coherent edifice of economic truth, unquote. 208 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.560 In contrast to Mises's modern, subjectivist economics, 209 00:14:42.560 --> 00:14:45.200 Rothbard's reference to the praxeological tradition 210 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:49.000 drew a bright line between those who employed Menger's procedure 211 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:53.040 in logically deducing economic laws from the basic facts of reality 212 00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:54.720 and those who did not. 213 00:14:54.720 --> 00:14:59.560 Praxeology was Mises' explicit and self-conscious elaboration of this procedure 214 00:14:59.560 --> 00:15:03.200 for discovering the causal laws governing market phenomena. 215 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:04.920 The Austrian School and their followers, 216 00:15:04.920 --> 00:15:07.760 and even some of the better classical economists, 217 00:15:07.760 --> 00:15:11.400 had used this research method without being fully aware of it. 218 00:15:11.400 --> 00:15:16.100 The praxeological method begins with the self-evident reality of human action 219 00:15:16.100 --> 00:15:20.440 and its immediate implications and therefore is about real things. 220 00:15:20.440 --> 00:15:25.800 It is for this reason that it has no use for fictions and figments like the representative firm, 221 00:15:25.800 --> 00:15:29.740 the perfectly competitive market or the social welfare function, 222 00:15:29.740 --> 00:15:34.900 nor does it concern itself with the existence, uniqueness and stability of general equilibrium. 223 00:15:34.900 --> 00:15:40.340 The selective use that the praxeological method makes of imaginary constructs has a single aim 224 00:15:40.340 --> 00:15:46.140 and that is the development of a unified system of causal realist economic theory. 225 00:15:46.140 --> 00:15:51.840 It was precisely because Rothbard had immersed himself in such an endeavor for seven years 226 00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:55.140 that he identified the use of the praxeological method 227 00:15:55.140 --> 00:15:58.040 rather than a loose subjectivist orientation 228 00:15:58.040 --> 00:16:02.640 as a hallmark and acid test of scientific economics. 229 00:16:02.640 --> 00:16:06.240 Rothbard thus describes economic theory in causal realist terms, 230 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:11.000 very similar to those used by Menger who had pioneered praxeological research. 231 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:12.400 Rothbard refers to, quote, 232 00:16:12.400 --> 00:16:16.520 the structure of reality as embodied in economic law, unquote. 233 00:16:16.520 --> 00:16:17.880 He also maintains, quote, 234 00:16:17.880 --> 00:16:21.000 economics provides us with the true laws, with two laws, 235 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:25.160 of the type, if A, then B, then C, 236 00:16:25.160 --> 00:16:29.400 and, quote, economics does furnish existential laws, unquote. 237 00:16:29.400 --> 00:16:33.800 Man economy and state then provides what remains to date, 238 00:16:33.800 --> 00:16:37.300 The most advanced structure of causal-realist economic theory 239 00:16:37.300 --> 00:16:43.800 as the product of the most sophisticated and consistent use of the praxeological method in the history of economic science. 240 00:16:43.800 --> 00:16:51.200 Over 40 years after Mises' review, all studies in economics must still take, quote, 241 00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:56.000 take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded by Rothbard. 242 00:16:56.000 --> 00:17:02.900 Over the course of this week, all of us, both students and faculty, will be learning the theories of Murray Rothbard. 243 00:17:02.900 --> 00:17:07.380 We will do so through the respectful mutual questioning and discourse 244 00:17:07.380 --> 00:17:11.380 that will involve all our voices and hopefully expand all our minds 245 00:17:11.380 --> 00:17:15.140 in the purely scholarly, pre-psychedelic sense, of course. 246 00:17:15.140 --> 00:17:18.980 So, welcome to the Rothbard Graduate Seminar. 247 00:17:18.980 --> 00:17:23.300 I hope you enjoy and learn from what we have prepared for you. 248 00:17:23.300 --> 00:17:26.020 Let me now introduce the faculty. 249 00:17:26.020 --> 00:17:29.060 Walter Block from Loyola University. 250 00:17:29.060 --> 00:17:31.140 I'm the prettiest of the family. 251 00:17:31.140 --> 00:17:42.740 and the more prolific, David Gordon, who writes for the Mises Review 252 00:17:42.740 --> 00:17:46.740 and is a senior faculty member at the Mises University Institute, 253 00:17:46.740 --> 00:17:58.340 Jeff Erbiner from Grove City College, Peter Klein from the University of Missouri, 254 00:17:58.340 --> 00:18:03.240 Bob Murphy, Senior Fellow in Business and Economic Studies with the Pacific Research Institute, 255 00:18:03.240 --> 00:18:07.940 and an economist with the Institute for Energy Research, Bob. 256 00:18:07.940 --> 00:18:14.040 Myself, Mark Thornton, who is a Senior Fellow here at the Institute, 257 00:18:14.040 --> 00:18:18.540 and Thomas Woods, also a Senior Fellow in History at the Mises Institute. 258 00:18:18.540 --> 00:18:24.440 I'd also like to acknowledge the President and our host, Lew Rockwell, 259 00:18:24.440 --> 00:18:27.440 and our gracious benefactor, Alice Lilly.