WEBVTT NOTE The First and Next 25 Years 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 There are only two times when the press is interested in the opinions of economists, 2 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:10.320 when the economy crashes or when there's a presidential election. 3 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:18.760 And sadly, most of their opinions amount to pretending omniscience or to shilling for government power. 4 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:25.200 It seems remarkable that in the 18th and 19th century, to be an economist meant, above all, 5 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:29.160 to be a pain in the neck to the powers that be. 6 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:35.360 An economist was a person who warned that government could not improve society and that 7 00:00:35.360 --> 00:00:40.640 any attempt to do so only created more problems. 8 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:46.080 That is the sort of economist Mises was, that is the sort of economist that the Mises Institute 9 00:00:46.080 --> 00:00:52.840 set out to cultivate 25 years ago with the success we see today. 10 00:00:52.840 --> 00:00:56.040 The Mises Institute has become much more than that. 11 00:00:56.040 --> 00:01:02.040 The Institute has accomplished not only what it set out to do, that is to support Mises' ideas, 12 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:09.040 it has sparked a revolution in learning and is leading the way to a future of liberty. 13 00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:16.040 All those who have played a part deserve our gratitude, our benefactors, and we have many of them here in this room, 14 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:24.040 our scholars also, many of them here with us, our students, our readers all over the world. 15 00:01:24.040 --> 00:01:30.720 Ironically, as I learned only through the research of Guido Holzman, it was Mises himself 16 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:35.800 who had dreamed of what would happen in the last 25 years. 17 00:01:35.800 --> 00:01:41.120 Nearing the end of his life, he urged the establishment of a center for the study and 18 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:45.760 promotion of liberty with economics at its core. 19 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:48.920 He must have spoken to Margaret von Mises about this. 20 00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:55.640 Certainly she was enthusiastic when I approached her with the idea here in New York City. 21 00:01:55.640 --> 00:02:00.880 Her husband's memo was the fruit of decades of frustration with the growing role of the 22 00:02:00.880 --> 00:02:07.080 state in education and the complicity of the universities in the corruption of education 23 00:02:07.080 --> 00:02:09.920 towards statist ends. 24 00:02:09.920 --> 00:02:15.740 A new institution to teach and advance the ideas of liberty was his answer, to make an 25 00:02:15.740 --> 00:02:23.540 and run around official propaganda. Note that this institution was not to be a think tank 26 00:02:23.540 --> 00:02:29.140 in the traditional sense of that term. Think tanks are a product of the age of the political 27 00:02:29.140 --> 00:02:35.820 party, a holding tank for politicians out of office and a repository for schemes to 28 00:02:35.820 --> 00:02:42.680 secure power for partisans. In this model, which originated in Germany and was perfected 29 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:49.800 in Britain. The think tank was a private ally of the state, prepared to cheer on the leaders 30 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:56.840 or be the loyal opposition, whatever was called for at the moment. This is not what Mises 31 00:02:56.840 --> 00:03:04.040 had in mind. He wanted an intellectually activist institution that would be devoted to teaching, 32 00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:10.720 researching, publishing, preserving and advancing ideas, and above all, to doing what he believed 33 00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:19.040 should have to be done convincing the masses of people of the merits of a fully free society. 34 00:03:19.040 --> 00:03:26.040 Why do we need institutions to advance and support particular ideas? If an idea is good, 35 00:03:26.040 --> 00:03:33.040 why should it need an apparatus behind it? With the advent and the advance of the modern 36 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:39.160 state, freedom to think has come under ever more fire. When the state took over education 37 00:03:39.160 --> 00:03:46.240 itself. We had the most serious problem. After World War I, for example, Mises 38 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:50.400 warned that government schools and multilingual territories pose an 39 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:55.780 intractable cultural problem. Few issues drive people to extremes like the 40 00:03:55.780 --> 00:04:00.980 attempt to impose on them a foreign language. This creates conflicts that the 41 00:04:00.980 --> 00:04:06.680 state cannot solve. If it teaches in one language, it irritates the people who 42 00:04:06.680 --> 00:04:14.680 The dominant language will become the symbol of a dominant political power, which further antagonizes the minorities. 43 00:04:14.680 --> 00:04:23.680 There is only one solution to this problem, said Mises. Education must be private, if only to preserve peace among groups. 44 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:30.680 But of course, Mises' point can be extended to all issues that concern the human intellect. 45 00:04:30.680 --> 00:04:36.480 and Intellect. The party in power is in a position to control the debate, to punish 46 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:43.680 those who refuse to toe the party line, to indoctrinate the young, to whip up fever on 47 00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:50.240 behalf of the regime's prospects and projects, and to hire and fire intellectuals. In the 48 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:57.120 case of communism and Nazism, it meant liquidating political enemies. In the case of democracy, 49 00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:06.000 It means denying economic livelihoods to academics and demonizing people who think differently. 50 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.000 In the United States, our first real crisis occurred because the dominant power wanted 51 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:15.580 to crack down on free speech with the Alien and Sedition Acts. 52 00:05:15.580 --> 00:05:20.680 The result was the first nullification controversy that nearly led to a breakup of the country, 53 00:05:20.680 --> 00:05:25.120 and it would have had Jefferson not been elected in 1800. 54 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:29.960 But the lesson wasn't learned. People were jailed during the Civil War and World War 55 00:05:29.960 --> 00:05:35.740 I for expressing points of view the government didn't like, and this tradition has continued 56 00:05:35.740 --> 00:05:42.740 to the present day. The ideas of liberty need room to breathe. They are almost always expressed 57 00:05:43.320 --> 00:05:50.040 in opposition to the regime. The future is always uncertain, and liberty is always fragile 58 00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:53.880 when the state is on the loose. 59 00:05:53.880 --> 00:05:59.080 Recall that Mises was never given a paid professorship at the University of Vienna, and the reasons 60 00:05:59.080 --> 00:06:03.080 are detailed in Guido Holzman's New Biography. 61 00:06:03.080 --> 00:06:10.400 His liberal politics barred him, but he nevertheless carved out a niche for himself as a volunteer 62 00:06:10.400 --> 00:06:11.500 professor. 63 00:06:11.500 --> 00:06:16.720 His private seminar in Vienna, which he taught while holding down a high-pressure job at 64 00:06:16.720 --> 00:06:20.600 The Chamber of Commerce wielded vast influence. 65 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:24.960 But when he realized that the growing Nazi power 66 00:06:24.960 --> 00:06:27.640 meant that Vienna was becoming dangerous for him, 67 00:06:27.640 --> 00:06:29.560 he was able to flee to Geneva, 68 00:06:29.560 --> 00:06:32.960 where an institution in a neutral country cared for him, 69 00:06:32.960 --> 00:06:35.640 gave him space and freedom to work, 70 00:06:35.640 --> 00:06:37.480 protected him from the state. 71 00:06:38.400 --> 00:06:41.520 The result was the German language edition of Human Action, 72 00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:44.960 a book that is a classic of the modern age. 73 00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:49.640 Then the war meant he had to leave again, coming this time to America, where sympathetic 74 00:06:49.640 --> 00:06:54.440 business owners and philanthropists supported him. 75 00:06:54.440 --> 00:06:59.020 So there is a real sense in which Mises' own experience underscores the need for politically 76 00:06:59.020 --> 00:07:05.280 independent institutions that guard and preserve the right to think creatively, particularly 77 00:07:05.280 --> 00:07:11.480 when thought leads in the directions of which the regime disapproves. 78 00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:17.680 In today's highly politicized society, independence from the state is ever more important. 79 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:22.880 And that is precisely what the Mises Institute provides on many levels. 80 00:07:22.880 --> 00:07:28.000 For our faculty, and for our students, and everyone, and that includes our faculty and 81 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.880 students in many, many different countries, as Guido points out, and really for everyone 82 00:07:32.880 --> 00:07:36.080 interested in Austrian economics and libertarianism. 83 00:07:36.080 --> 00:07:43.840 When the Mises Institute was founded in 1982, Mises had been dead for nine years. His widow 84 00:07:43.840 --> 00:07:49.040 Margaret was working hard to keep his books in print. Murray Rothbard had referred to 85 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:55.960 her as a one-woman Mises industry, and she was indeed that. I'd been able to assist 86 00:07:55.960 --> 00:08:02.320 in this work, as John Denson pointed out at Arlington House Publishers under Neil McCaffrey, 87 00:08:02.320 --> 00:08:08.520 The Theory, where he brought back three of Mises' books into print, Bureaucracy, Theory 88 00:08:08.520 --> 00:08:18.320 in History and Omnipotent Government, and I only met Mises once over dinner, but I recall 89 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:26.400 every moment as if watching a film frame by frame, and when I approached Margaret, there 90 00:08:26.400 --> 00:08:31.240 was renewed interest in Austrian economics, but there was still a serious deficiency that 91 00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:37.240 had been noted by Murray Rothbard, Mises' own contributions were being overlooked, even swept away. 92 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:51.240 Yes, he was treated as a worthy champion of free enterprise, but his scientific work and his sweeping sociological outlook were being neglected or actively demonized. 93 00:08:51.240 --> 00:09:00.240 So the first job of the Mises Institute was to provide a home for Mises' ideas, for great books, and also for his best and most productive students, 94 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:12.240 The most notable among them was, of course, Murray Rothbard, who agreed to join the fledgling effort as academic vice president. 95 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:20.240 The founding of the Mises Institute lifted his spirits, and he gave the work of the institute wings to fly. 96 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:26.240 Murray's own scholarly career had followed a path eerily similar to Mises's. 97 00:09:26.240 --> 00:09:33.400 He had all the credentials, he'd written pioneering works, he'd made huge strides in pushing forward 98 00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:38.840 both economics and political thought, and for this he was repaid by academia with an 99 00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:45.880 extremely low-paid job at a backwater school. Though Murray never complained. He had good 100 00:09:45.880 --> 00:09:50.920 students in New York, but none that he could work with on a formal basis into graduate 101 00:09:50.920 --> 00:09:57.520 School. These were difficult times for Murray politically. He was a brilliant libertarian, 102 00:09:57.520 --> 00:10:03.640 which meant he was neither a Reaganite nor a Carterite. He had doubts about the inflationist 103 00:10:03.640 --> 00:10:10.040 aspects and pro-deficit aspects of supply-side economics. He was not, of course, a backer 104 00:10:10.040 --> 00:10:17.880 of war. In fact, he descended from the war party that otherwise liked at least some of 105 00:10:17.880 --> 00:10:30.880 But he favored both tax cuts and spending cuts, which certainly made him an outlier, someone respected by young students but shunned by mainstream venues. 106 00:10:30.880 --> 00:10:39.880 He had still done well in developing a salon out of his living room, and he achieved renown by publishing with non-establishment book houses. 107 00:10:39.880 --> 00:10:45.880 But what he needed was some institutional backing that was not working for a particular political party. 108 00:10:45.880 --> 00:11:06.880 The Institute gave Rothbard this very thing. First there was our new edition of Mises' neglected work, Theory and History, to which Murray contributed the introduction. Then there was the new journal, which became the basis of the Misesian revival in academia for him to edit. 109 00:11:06.880 --> 00:11:23.880 As the Institute began to develop a base of financial support, and there is nothing I could say here, especially to the supporters in this room, that could possibly exaggerate the central role of this generosity, there were ever more advances. 110 00:11:23.880 --> 00:11:29.880 Finally, they came to the classroom setting, and what later became known as the Mises University. 111 00:11:29.880 --> 00:11:36.660 While I recall the days when Murray headed our faculty, there he was rushing from class 112 00:11:36.660 --> 00:11:42.440 to class, teaching with his legendary exuberance, talking to all the students between classes 113 00:11:42.440 --> 00:11:47.400 and then staying up late at night surrounded by the hard core. He would teach in effect 114 00:11:47.400 --> 00:11:53.160 until two, three and even four o'clock in the morning. The students would arrive again 115 00:11:53.160 --> 00:11:58.440 the next day for classes at eight o'clock. The staff was there too, although by week's 116 00:11:58.440 --> 00:12:00.440 and we were looking like death warmed over. 117 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:04.440 Except of course Murray who was still going strong. 118 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:08.440 Because I think back to those days I recall several major things. 119 00:12:08.440 --> 00:12:15.440 I recall looking at the review of Austrian Economics, our journal, just after the first issue came out of the press. 120 00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:18.440 I recall the faces of all the young students. 121 00:12:18.440 --> 00:12:25.440 And I recall getting the news that a free market champion and an endowed chair of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 122 00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:55.440 and that Murray would hold it. He would have a well-paying job at a good school. He would have students and he could cultivate and write, excuse me, that he could cultivate. He would be secure and free to teach and write and it was a remarkable thing. He would be spared the fate that befell Mises. We were surrounded by evidence now. The work of the Institute was making a difference. Over the last 25 years all these programs 123 00:12:55.440 --> 00:13:09.440 programs have blossomed beyond our wildest dreams. We have had the great pleasure of working, as John pointed out, with remarkable scholars like Efe Hayek, Henry Haslett, Hans Sennholz, and so many more. 124 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:23.440 We have worked closely with the greatest statesmen of our epoch, Ron Paul, whose generosity 125 00:13:23.440 --> 00:13:31.600 She was essential to our early success, with great donors like the late Parthenia de Merald, 126 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:40.200 Opie Alford, Lawrence Ferdig, Henry Hazlitt himself, and Peg Rowley. 127 00:13:40.200 --> 00:13:45.280 We've seen so many new scholars appear and dazzle us with their writings, lectures and 128 00:13:45.280 --> 00:13:46.960 contributions. 129 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:53.320 The Mises University has educated nearly every Austrian working today, the world over. 130 00:13:53.320 --> 00:13:59.480 Our publications programs expanded to films and audiobooks. Our library, rooted in the 131 00:13:59.480 --> 00:14:04.720 collections of Murray Rothbard and Robert Lefebvre's Freedom School, have extended 132 00:14:04.720 --> 00:14:10.080 in a thousand directions with the goal of preserving what other libraries carelessly 133 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:16.720 or maliciously discard. We don't just keep these for our own scholars and students. We've 134 00:14:16.720 --> 00:14:22.560 put almost 400 books online, as Jeff Tucker pointed out, vast amounts of amazing material 135 00:14:22.560 --> 00:14:28.760 which hasn't seen the light of day for decades, is now just a click away, and if you happen 136 00:14:28.760 --> 00:14:33.560 to be on a college campus and see kids walking around with t-shirts with the images of Mises 137 00:14:33.560 --> 00:14:40.800 or Menger, Rothbard or Bastiat on them, you can know that the source is the Mises Institute. 138 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:46.040 We still have a small staff, we all work very hard doing what we love, making available 139 00:14:46.040 --> 00:14:51.400 the scholarship of liberty in the Missessian tradition and encouraging the studying and 140 00:14:51.400 --> 00:14:54.200 and advancement in that tradition. 141 00:14:54.200 --> 00:14:59.160 We want to bring back into print the whole of the Austrian and libertarian library. 142 00:14:59.160 --> 00:15:06.400 Just this year that includes the books of Hazlitt, Trotterhof, Fedder, Garrett, Hutt, 143 00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:09.840 Mackliffe, Nock, Flynn and others. 144 00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:19.560 In fact, the Institute has become the main spring of old liberal theory the world over. 145 00:15:19.560 --> 00:15:23.880 And yet that reality has raised a question in some areas that we might be tempted to 146 00:15:23.880 --> 00:15:26.600 dismiss, but one I think we should engage. 147 00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:31.980 The question is this, by doing what we do, are we not somehow skewing the marketplace 148 00:15:31.980 --> 00:15:38.520 of ideas, tilting the great intellectual debate in our favor, and is it right to enter into 149 00:15:38.520 --> 00:15:46.120 the rarefied world of academics with an agenda that is scientific, moral and political? 150 00:15:46.120 --> 00:15:53.120 In short, if liberty is such a good idea, and if the Misesian tradition is so hot, why does it need our help? 151 00:15:53.120 --> 00:16:03.120 For centuries, the intellectuals of the old liberal bent, as Mises was, had believed that education alone would work to the benefit of liberty. 152 00:16:03.120 --> 00:16:13.120 Jefferson is a classic case in point. As people became more prosperous under liberty, he thought, they could devote ever more personal resources towards schooling. 153 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:19.120 Children would not need to work but rather could be taught literacy in all important subjects. 154 00:16:19.120 --> 00:16:26.120 The most promising students among them would continue their education to eventually become leaders of society at all levels. 155 00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:34.120 In civic life there was one end sought, the protection, preservation and promotion of human liberty. 156 00:16:34.120 --> 00:16:40.120 The city of man as embodied in liberty was to be advanced through the single tool of education. 157 00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:48.120 They saw education and liberty as a unified project, one that would not really be separable in theory or fact. 158 00:16:48.120 --> 00:16:59.120 They believed that the blessings of liberty would be so apparent that in all forms of learning would assist in the grand goal of enhancing the cultural understanding of liberty. 159 00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:05.120 Nor did they imagine the possibility of failure, much less of de-civilization. 160 00:17:05.120 --> 00:17:11.120 That entire generation was convinced that progress was inevitable through the spread of freedom. 161 00:17:11.120 --> 00:17:16.120 Now that freedom had been discovered, there would be no going back. 162 00:17:16.120 --> 00:17:22.120 In retrospect, that generation that absorbed enlightenment ideals was naive in the extreme. 163 00:17:22.120 --> 00:17:27.120 If we look around the world today, we see that education has advanced in every sector. 164 00:17:27.120 --> 00:17:32.120 We cannot conceive of a child not attempting to gain admission to college. 165 00:17:32.120 --> 00:17:45.120 We tell the youth that the secret to success is to stay in school. As for elementary school and high school, we regard them as so important, they are public goods to be provided by the state. 166 00:17:45.120 --> 00:17:56.120 And just to make sure that everyone gets an education, the law forbids kids from working, a fact which labor unions like and support, if only to keep cheap labor off the market. 167 00:17:56.120 --> 00:18:03.120 Access to great books, great minds, the best ideas of all human history are everywhere. 168 00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:08.120 But has this education assisted in the bolstering of liberty? 169 00:18:08.120 --> 00:18:13.120 All data indicate that the more objectively educated people become today, 170 00:18:13.120 --> 00:18:20.120 the more likely they are to trust the state as the means of social salvation. 171 00:18:20.120 --> 00:18:22.120 You can map this demographically. 172 00:18:22.120 --> 00:18:28.760 The higher the level of education, the more the inclination towards socialist thinking. 173 00:18:28.760 --> 00:18:34.040 Why is this? Hayek might tell us that it has something to do with the hubris of intellectuals 174 00:18:34.040 --> 00:18:39.320 who believe that they can concoct a better social order in their minds than the one that 175 00:18:39.320 --> 00:18:45.760 freedom can create. Mises might draw attention to the resentment on the part of the intellectuals 176 00:18:45.760 --> 00:18:52.080 that they are not as valued by society as entrepreneurs or sports or music stars. 177 00:18:52.080 --> 00:18:56.420 Rothbard might point out that intellectuals are drawn to the state as a way of legitimizing 178 00:18:56.420 --> 00:19:00.960 their ideas and securing their financial well-being. 179 00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:06.120 Whatever the case, it is a fact that would have astounded people in the 18th century 180 00:19:06.120 --> 00:19:11.960 that the more education a person receives, the more they are drawn to social ideals that 181 00:19:11.960 --> 00:19:16.760 can only be realized under complete despotism if then. 182 00:19:16.760 --> 00:19:21.480 A person like Jefferson would have found this inconceivable. 183 00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:26.160 Meanwhile, the students who were taught in public school 184 00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:28.760 are being socialized in a critical attitude 185 00:19:28.760 --> 00:19:31.120 towards the state and are often made 186 00:19:31.120 --> 00:19:33.360 victims of political fashion. 187 00:19:33.360 --> 00:19:36.280 Rather than read Jefferson or the great books, 188 00:19:36.280 --> 00:19:39.780 they are being instructed in recycling and phony history 189 00:19:39.780 --> 00:19:43.180 designed to bolster political agendas. 190 00:19:43.180 --> 00:19:46.180 The Enlightenment intellectual's attitude to his education 191 00:19:46.180 --> 00:19:49.620 was oddly defective for three reasons. 192 00:19:49.620 --> 00:19:52.100 The first is that the structure of the institution 193 00:19:52.100 --> 00:19:55.740 during the educating matters a great deal. 194 00:19:55.740 --> 00:19:59.220 If the institution is owned and managed by the state, 195 00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:01.540 we can expect that the ideas it promotes 196 00:20:01.540 --> 00:20:05.340 will be favorable to the regime. 197 00:20:05.340 --> 00:20:08.580 This should not be a controversial claim. 198 00:20:08.580 --> 00:20:14.460 If, for example, Wal-Mart were running our schools, who would be surprised that criticism 199 00:20:14.460 --> 00:20:20.140 of Wal-Mart would be kept to a minimum and that pro-Wal-Mart attitudes would be cultivated 200 00:20:20.140 --> 00:20:26.260 among the students? We would expect that. It would not shock us. We would just consider 201 00:20:26.260 --> 00:20:33.220 the source. But how rarely do we consider the source when it comes to state-funded education? 202 00:20:33.220 --> 00:20:37.580 There is an assumption that people make that education, when sponsored by the state, will 203 00:20:37.580 --> 00:20:42.020 will be objective and keep the students' best interests at heart. 204 00:20:42.020 --> 00:20:47.700 This assumption makes no sense whatsoever, but it is nonetheless widely held. 205 00:20:47.700 --> 00:20:51.860 We encounter often in dealing with the issue of elementary and secondary schools. 206 00:20:51.860 --> 00:20:56.860 If someone attends a Baptist or a Catholic school, people can ask them how can they stand 207 00:20:56.860 --> 00:20:59.900 all that religious indoctrination. 208 00:20:59.900 --> 00:21:04.380 But have you ever heard of a public school student being questioned how they can stand 209 00:21:04.380 --> 00:21:07.740 and all that statist indoctrination. 210 00:21:07.740 --> 00:21:12.740 The ownership and control of institutions does in fact matter for the quality of education 211 00:21:12.740 --> 00:21:17.140 a student receives and what the student will be taught. 212 00:21:17.140 --> 00:21:21.660 The second point overlooked by the Enlightenment generation is that ideology is more powerful 213 00:21:21.660 --> 00:21:26.740 over human minds than the mere abstraction of ideas in general. 214 00:21:26.740 --> 00:21:32.340 Especially today, it is nearly impossible to escape the pervasiveness of ideology. 215 00:21:32.340 --> 00:21:37.500 In the guise of biology or earth science, students are routinely fed environmentalist 216 00:21:37.500 --> 00:21:42.380 propaganda that blames capitalism for all the world's ills. 217 00:21:42.380 --> 00:21:47.740 In the guise of social science, socialist plans for political reconstruction are fobbed 218 00:21:47.740 --> 00:21:50.860 off on the unsuspecting. 219 00:21:50.860 --> 00:21:55.620 There is such a thing as pure knowledge, but it is increasingly hard to find. 220 00:21:55.620 --> 00:22:01.160 What this means is that more knowledge does not necessarily lead to social progress. 221 00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:07.960 depends on the structure of the institution during the teaching and its ideological perspective. 222 00:22:07.960 --> 00:22:12.480 The third point overlooked in the Enlightenment view of knowledge is that those with the strongest 223 00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:17.720 motive to influence the future will tend to dominate the debate and thus control the purposes 224 00:22:17.720 --> 00:22:23.900 to which education is directed. And in any society, the state seeks to be the leading 225 00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:30.280 influence in the culture and it often succeeds. At some point in the life of every libertarian 226 00:22:30.280 --> 00:22:35.360 We come to realize that vast amounts of what the media report are taking directly from 227 00:22:35.360 --> 00:22:41.740 government press releases. This is just one of the ways in which the government manages 228 00:22:41.740 --> 00:22:48.440 to market itself and its priorities throughout society. And this point about marketing ideas 229 00:22:48.440 --> 00:22:53.740 is a critical one. And let me explain this by way of analogy to the marketplace for goods 230 00:22:53.740 --> 00:22:59.380 and services. We've all had friends who claim to have come up with the idea for some product 231 00:22:59.380 --> 00:23:05.380 that is currently making a big splash in the marketplace, but this is an uninteresting claim 232 00:23:05.380 --> 00:23:10.460 because it overlooks a critical fact. The hard work of enterprise is not so much in 233 00:23:10.460 --> 00:23:16.420 having an idea but in acting on it. Here is the step that makes the difference that leads 234 00:23:16.420 --> 00:23:22.540 to profitability. An idea must have economic viability, that is to say it must become an 235 00:23:22.540 --> 00:23:29.240 efficient part of the structure of the social allocation of goods and services. The iPhone 236 00:23:29.240 --> 00:23:35.280 might have been technologically viable five years ago, but only this summer did it become 237 00:23:35.280 --> 00:23:37.460 economically viable. 238 00:23:37.460 --> 00:23:42.720 And technical superiority does not necessarily equate to economic superiority. 239 00:23:42.720 --> 00:23:47.520 Once the problem of economics is overcome, there is the all-important issue of marketing, 240 00:23:47.520 --> 00:23:52.920 which means nothing other than getting the word out to others concerning the availability 241 00:23:52.920 --> 00:23:55.120 of the world. 242 00:23:55.120 --> 00:24:01.040 Without economic and marketing considerations, the best ideas in the world will lie dormant. 243 00:24:01.040 --> 00:24:05.720 Your next door neighbor might be sitting on the greatest formula for a car wash that has 244 00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:11.120 yet to be found. But what does that mean in the real world? Essentially it means nothing 245 00:24:11.120 --> 00:24:16.080 until your neighbor discovers a way to turn that formula into the real thing and further 246 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:24.040 finds a way for others in society to acquire it. It is precisely the same with ideas. If 247 00:24:24.040 --> 00:24:29.160 If Mises had merely imagined the ideas in human action, but never wrote them down, the 248 00:24:29.160 --> 00:24:32.280 world would be a very different place. 249 00:24:32.280 --> 00:24:38.320 If he had written them down, but never sought a publisher, nothing would have come of them. 250 00:24:38.320 --> 00:24:44.200 And even after finding a publisher and seeing the physical book appear in 1940 in German, 251 00:24:44.200 --> 00:24:46.160 he had an additional problem. 252 00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:51.640 His ideas were not yet accessible in English, and so to accomplish this goal, he worked 253 00:24:51.640 --> 00:25:05.400 Why did he do all this? Mises understood that ideas are what drive history forward, but 254 00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:11.400 ideas alone are not enough. They must be presented in an effective format that can be marketed, 255 00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:17.920 so to speak, and then they must be presented in a way that draws people to them. Mises, 256 00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:22.880 Mises, in contrast to the Enlightenment thinkers, knew that these last two stages of intellectual 257 00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:25.880 work could not be overlooked. 258 00:25:25.880 --> 00:25:30.720 He saw that the world of ideas is subject to the laws of economics in the same way that 259 00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:33.560 the market for goods and services is. 260 00:25:33.560 --> 00:25:38.760 There was a strong element of entrepreneurship necessary for ideas to succeed. 261 00:25:38.760 --> 00:25:43.320 Mises was so emphatic on this point that he went so far as to place the blame for social 262 00:25:43.320 --> 00:26:00.340 In theory and history, Mises wrote that all ideas, whether good or bad, originate in the 263 00:26:00.340 --> 00:26:07.100 minds of individuals, but these ideas can only take hold if they are accepted by society. 264 00:26:07.100 --> 00:26:10.560 There is no guarantee that these ideas will be accepted. 265 00:26:10.560 --> 00:26:15.180 People will embrace bad ideas even unto their own self-destruction. 266 00:26:15.180 --> 00:26:21.240 But if they choose what is destructive, Mises wrote, quote, the fault is not theirs alone. 267 00:26:21.240 --> 00:26:26.320 It is no less the fault of the pioneers of the good causes in not having succeeded in 268 00:26:26.320 --> 00:26:31.520 bringing forward their thoughts in a more convincing form, unquote. 269 00:26:31.520 --> 00:26:36.720 He sums up the point with the following claim, quote, the favorable evolution of human affairs 270 00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:43.120 depends ultimately on the ability of the human race to beget not only authors but also heralds 271 00:26:43.120 --> 00:26:49.280 and disseminators of beneficial ideas. Thus did Mises know that it was not enough to hold 272 00:26:49.280 --> 00:26:54.400 the right ideas, although this is an essential step. It is just as important to do everything 273 00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:59.480 possible to see that these views are propagated and made compelling in a way that will transform 274 00:26:59.480 --> 00:27:05.640 society and politics. And this is why he became an advocate of a new institution that would 275 00:27:05.640 --> 00:27:08.260 would be dedicated to liberty. 276 00:27:08.260 --> 00:27:12.720 This institution, he hoped, would not only be a source of new ideas, it would work to 277 00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:18.840 bring them about and realize them within the affairs of the human population. 278 00:27:18.840 --> 00:27:22.860 Is this somehow skewing the marketplace for ideas? 279 00:27:22.860 --> 00:27:28.200 The claim is absurd, since the marketplace for ideas is built entirely upon ideas that 280 00:27:28.200 --> 00:27:33.960 have been discovered, heralded and disseminated, and thereby become part of the structure of 281 00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:35.960 of the world in which we live. 282 00:27:35.960 --> 00:27:38.620 In the same way that an entrepreneur cannot be content 283 00:27:38.620 --> 00:27:42.860 to merely imagine a new shopping mall or a new search engine, 284 00:27:42.860 --> 00:27:45.920 but must also see these dreams realized economically 285 00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:49.040 and then market it, in that same way we must not 286 00:27:49.040 --> 00:27:52.720 and cannot be content to merely hold sound views. 287 00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:55.500 We must work to see them realized. 288 00:27:56.560 --> 00:28:00.680 And yet we are an impatient people, are we not? 289 00:28:00.680 --> 00:28:02.840 We want to see the effects of our work 290 00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:19.120 We might consider that were it not for the opposition voices of the Misesians, the state 291 00:28:19.120 --> 00:28:24.920 would have had a freer hand and our despotism would be worse than it is. 292 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:30.160 We might also consider that there is a time lag between the propagation of an idea and 293 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:31.160 its realization. 294 00:28:31.160 --> 00:28:38.200 Finally, consider that the crumbling of a failed ideology is not always observable. 295 00:28:38.200 --> 00:28:42.840 We only know what has happened once the effects are plain to the world. 296 00:28:42.840 --> 00:28:49.000 For example, in retrospect, we know now that the socialist idea in Russia had been in continual 297 00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:53.280 downfall for some 50 years before the state finally crumbled. 298 00:28:53.280 --> 00:29:00.600 And yet, only a few years before that crumbling, Western academics were assuring us that Soviet 299 00:29:00.600 --> 00:29:07.600 Communism was a permanent feature of the world and that its wonderful economic system would someday overtake ours. 300 00:29:07.600 --> 00:29:14.600 We are so fortunate to live in times when we do in fact see the evidence of burgeoning all around us. 301 00:29:14.600 --> 00:29:22.600 From new technologies, to new economic developments, to the practical decline of the state in managing world affairs. 302 00:29:22.600 --> 00:29:31.600 We have seen undeniable evidence of the failure of all-out planning and the amazing beauty created by the market economy. 303 00:29:31.600 --> 00:29:38.600 We have seen the complete collapse of the socialist idea. Mises had no such luxury. 304 00:29:38.600 --> 00:29:47.600 He saw war, depression, central planning, Nazism, communism, inflationism, 305 00:29:47.600 --> 00:30:02.240 Murray Rothbard once wrote an entire paper discussing this very point. 306 00:30:02.240 --> 00:30:08.080 He said that Mises' social philosophy reinforced his battle for what is true. 307 00:30:08.080 --> 00:30:12.120 He knew that civilization and human existence were at stake. 308 00:30:12.120 --> 00:30:15.760 High theory is important, but it is not enough. 309 00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:21.280 The advocate of the free market must carry the struggle to all levels of society. 310 00:30:21.280 --> 00:30:25.520 For Mises, no form of education was beneath his dignity. 311 00:30:25.520 --> 00:30:28.760 There was no separating theory from practice. 312 00:30:28.760 --> 00:30:33.200 This is why we must be wholly dedicated to liberty, peace, and free markets. 313 00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:39.760 When it has come out squarely in favor of human life and flourishing, Rothbard concludes 314 00:30:39.760 --> 00:30:51.760 Science may be value-free, but men can never be, and Ludwig von Mises never shirked the responsibilities of being human. 315 00:30:51.760 --> 00:30:55.760 Murray, of course, might as well have been writing about himself. 316 00:30:55.760 --> 00:31:02.760 The Spirit is with us today in this room, in all we do, and all we will do for the next 25 years. 317 00:31:02.760 --> 00:31:06.760 For neither have you shirked your responsibilities. 318 00:31:06.760 --> 00:31:17.760 Thanks to your generosity and help, in this year alone, we have seen an unbelievable increase in all our activities from publishing to distribution to education. 319 00:31:17.760 --> 00:31:24.760 We have a new masterful biography of Mises that reconstructs the history and meaning of his time. 320 00:31:24.760 --> 00:31:32.760 We have ever more students and professors. Our ideas are reaching more and more people every day, and yet our work is nowhere near being done. 321 00:31:32.760 --> 00:31:40.360 A day must never pass when we cannot point to progress. We have inspiring models, and 322 00:31:40.360 --> 00:31:47.960 not only in the work, but also in the lives of Mises and Rothbard. History, as always, 323 00:31:47.960 --> 00:31:54.800 hangs in the balance. In our last days, may we all say that we did everything possible 324 00:31:54.800 --> 00:32:04.120 May we all say that we do all we can to serve the cause of humanity, to never give into 325 00:32:04.120 --> 00:32:09.960 evil, to not merely oppose it in our hearts and minds, but also to proceed ever more boldly 326 00:32:09.960 --> 00:32:15.720 against it, and to displace the evil of statism with the blessings of liberty, which is the 327 00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:18.120 basis of civilization itself. 328 00:32:18.120 --> 00:32:24.120 From the bottom of my heart, I thank all of you for your support of this cause, and now 329 00:32:24.120 --> 00:32:31.120 And now onward to another and more astonishing 25 years. Thank you.