WEBVTT NOTE Parallel Lives: Liberty or Power? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Aspired by Peter Klein, I have to tell my story of the one time I met a Fed Chairman. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:11.000 But Ron Paul was nice enough once to, when I, as Doug said, had the pleasure and honor of working for him, 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:15.000 take me along to a private breakfast with Paul Volcker. 4 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:19.000 So we're waiting in the Chairman's private dining room. 5 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:24.000 A few just said they lived very well there at the Fed, just in case you were wondering. 6 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:29.000 Sitting there with a staffer and Volcker, of course, great tall, handsome guy, 7 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.440 and hung up his very expensive coat 8 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:33.800 before turning around and said in a breathless voice, 9 00:00:33.800 --> 00:00:35.120 what's the price of gold? 10 00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:37.040 What's the price of gold? 11 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:38.560 So this was right about the time 12 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:41.080 that it was heading up towards 800. 13 00:00:41.080 --> 00:00:43.280 And of course it warmed Ron's heart and mine too 14 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:46.200 to know they were that concerned. 15 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:47.480 But then we wondered of course, 16 00:00:47.480 --> 00:00:49.360 exactly to what extent they might be manipulating 17 00:00:49.360 --> 00:00:50.200 the price of gold. 18 00:00:50.200 --> 00:00:54.480 But that's, so today I wanna talk about 19 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:57.400 a tale of two economists who lived parallel lives. 20 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:03.460 but also pursued very contradictory goals. 21 00:01:03.460 --> 00:01:06.760 One was devoted to liberty, one devoted to the state. 22 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.520 The first remained a teacher for his entire life, 23 00:01:10.520 --> 00:01:13.000 never in any prestige institution 24 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:15.600 and never exercising any power. 25 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:17.800 Indeed, he used his teaching post 26 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:20.760 to teach against the exercise of power 27 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:23.100 and became the world's most powerful voice 28 00:01:23.100 --> 00:01:24.380 for libertarianism. 29 00:01:24.380 --> 00:01:31.700 This man who loved liberty died in 1995, but his books are selling as never before, all 30 00:01:31.700 --> 00:01:38.300 of them, and his star is rising by the day. His name is Murray N. Rothbard. 31 00:01:38.300 --> 00:01:42.820 The second one became the most powerful and influential economist in the world, practically 32 00:01:42.820 --> 00:01:48.960 running the world, it seemed, for a very long time. While he was in power, he was revered 33 00:01:48.960 --> 00:01:55.240 by Anyone Who Was Anyone. His every utterance could cause billions to be made or lost in 34 00:01:55.240 --> 00:02:00.000 the market, but he will live out the rest of his days under a cloud of derision and 35 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:06.040 discredit, defending himself against the perception that he created history's largest financial 36 00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:12.680 calamity. His name is Alan Greenspan. Now let's track these two lives and consider 37 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:19.520 What are the choices that these two men made? They were both born in New York City in 1926. 38 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:25.120 Rothbard was born on Tuesday, March 2nd. The following Saturday, March 6th, Alan Greenspan 39 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:31.080 was born. They had a not-unsimilar background and upbringing. Greenspan of German-Jewish 40 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:37.280 heritage, Rothbard of Russian-Jewish heritage. Both attended private schools, both pursued 41 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:43.800 their respective passions. It is after high school that their lives diverged. Whereas 42 00:02:43.800 --> 00:02:48.880 Rothbard followed a very mainstream path in academic economics, one that would seem to 43 00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:54.280 clear the way for him as a giant in the profession, Greenspan went to the Juilliard School to 44 00:02:54.280 --> 00:03:01.280 pursue his true love, the clarinet. As remarkable as it may seem today, Greenspan showed no 45 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:04.280 Greenspan showed no interest in economics. 46 00:03:04.280 --> 00:03:09.280 I mention this because it is an implausible beginning for the man who would later take the helm 47 00:03:09.280 --> 00:03:13.280 of the institution that would purport to manage the World Reserve currency 48 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:17.280 and a man after whom a professorship at New York University is named. 49 00:03:17.280 --> 00:03:22.280 Meanwhile, Rothbard chose to attend Columbia University. 50 00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:25.280 He was not at first an economics major. 51 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:27.280 His passion was mathematics. 52 00:03:27.280 --> 00:03:32.680 Mathematics, and this was even before the full mathematicization of the profession. 53 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:38.400 At Columbia, he studied under the famed statistician, Harold Hotelling, and it may have been Hotelling 54 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:44.400 who led Rothbard to economic studies. And certainly very early on, Rothbard the mathematician 55 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:50.200 could see what was wrong with the application of statistical methods to economic theory. 56 00:03:50.200 --> 00:03:55.280 He would later build on Mises to construct a systematic theory of economics, rooted in 57 00:03:55.280 --> 00:04:01.480 and logical deduction in the matter of 19th century theorists, all the while his libertarianism 58 00:04:01.480 --> 00:04:06.880 was in strong formation throughout his youth and from early in his youth. 59 00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:12.840 As implausible as it may seem today, Rothbard's biography would seem to be exactly what made 60 00:04:12.840 --> 00:04:18.680 for professional triumph in the mainstream of opinion and with the powers that be. What 61 00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:24.320 made that impossible were the choices he made, choices made on principle and for the love 62 00:04:24.320 --> 00:04:29.520 Love of Truth and Liberty. 63 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:34.400 Unlike Rothbard, Greenspan was not a good student, at least early on. 64 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:40.320 His grades were only average, and he departed to perform with the Harry Jerome Orchestra, 65 00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:43.720 playing saxophone or clarinet as needed. 66 00:04:43.720 --> 00:04:49.640 He traveled by bus to engagement after engagement and, not unsurprisingly, tired of that life 67 00:04:49.640 --> 00:04:51.360 and decided to become an economist. 68 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:57.560 and he changed his school and his major. School he went to was New York University, where 69 00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:03.840 Mises had begun teaching that very year. But Greenspan did not study with Mises, whom he 70 00:05:03.840 --> 00:05:08.880 might have regarded as a washed-up old man who could do nothing for his primary concern, 71 00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:15.880 which was his career. Instead he chose the NYU division called The Factory, 9,000 students 72 00:05:15.960 --> 00:05:21.280 competing in various fields of specialization in business. He graduated with honors in 1945 73 00:05:21.280 --> 00:05:29.200 and enrolled in the master's program graduating in 1948. At this point the lives of Rothbard and 74 00:05:29.200 --> 00:05:35.680 Greenspan briefly intersect in a sense at Columbia University. Two years earlier Rothbard had received 75 00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:42.660 his own master's in economics from Columbia after a BA summa cum laude and he enrolled in the PhD 76 00:05:42.660 --> 00:05:48.840 program. Professor Arthur Burns was the most prominent faculty member there. Burns would 77 00:05:48.840 --> 00:05:55.840 and later become Eisenhower's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and Nixon's chairman of the Federal Reserve. 78 00:05:55.840 --> 00:06:04.840 One might say he was the Greenspan of his day. Greenspan dropped out of the Columbia economics program to follow Burns to Washington, 79 00:06:04.840 --> 00:06:12.840 a model for a life of chasing powerful people and powerful positions. Greenspan watched Burns carefully, 80 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:19.840 Economics in an Age of Positivism can be used in the service of state-connected careers. 81 00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:26.160 Rothbard meanwhile stayed behind at Columbia, writing and studying. One of his seminal articles 82 00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:30.720 in this period was published in a book in honor of Mises that supposedly washed up old 83 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:37.520 man who just so happened to have a penchant for saying, speaking the truth to power. Just 84 00:06:37.520 --> 00:07:01.280 Just as Burns became Greenspan's model, Mises had been Rothbard's model. Two more opposing 85 00:07:01.280 --> 00:07:06.660 career paths can hardly be imagined. Mises had been tossed out of two countries for his 86 00:07:06.660 --> 00:07:36.660 Rothbard would follow a similar path. His article, written in honor of Mises, published in 1956, was a reconstruction of utility and welfare economics along non-mathematical lines. And here we have the graduate student doing what a principled scholar does. He was pursuing truth through research and writing. He maddened his students with his research and writing. 87 00:07:36.660 --> 00:07:42.540 would have chosen to echo the rising Keynesianism and Positivism of his day. Certainly he was 88 00:07:42.540 --> 00:07:48.660 intellectually capable of becoming the master of both fields. Instead he rejected them intellectually 89 00:07:48.660 --> 00:07:52.180 and took a different path along the lines laid out by Mises. 90 00:07:52.180 --> 00:07:58.660 And what was Greenspan doing? He was running around Washington, pandering to the big shots, 91 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:02.780 watching their every move, striving to be like them and attempting to follow in their 92 00:08:02.780 --> 00:08:15.460 Rothbard received his Ph.D. in 1956, but only after jumping over a thousand barriers 93 00:08:15.460 --> 00:08:21.020 that had been put in his place by none other than Greenspan's own mentor. There were times 94 00:08:21.020 --> 00:08:26.780 when Burns' recalcitrance drove Murray to despair. He felt he could never comply with 95 00:08:26.780 --> 00:08:32.780 Byrnes's dictates, it could not please Byrnes, and that Byrnes seemed to be sabotaging his work. 96 00:08:32.780 --> 00:08:39.780 Byrnes was not even his dissertation advisor, but such was his power in the department that he could intervene. 97 00:08:39.780 --> 00:08:45.780 Ironically, Byrnes had known Murray since he was a little boy. They lived in the same apartment building, 98 00:08:45.780 --> 00:08:50.780 and there could be no question that this was a personal attack on Rothbard. 99 00:08:50.780 --> 00:09:01.780 Only when Burns moved to Washington and became so wrapped up in politics that he no longer cared did Rothbard finally have his Ph.D. awarded in 1956. 100 00:09:01.780 --> 00:09:05.780 Now let me make a few comments about Rothbard's dissertation. 101 00:09:05.780 --> 00:09:11.780 It was an empirical account of America's first serious business cycle, the Panic of 1819. 102 00:09:11.780 --> 00:09:17.780 He scoured every source he could find, producing many pages of detailed economic data. 103 00:09:17.780 --> 00:09:24.780 He also knew the importance of ideology and personality in the history of economics, so he recounted all the debates. 104 00:09:24.780 --> 00:09:36.780 Then as now, people urge intervention. But unlike today, the government did not respond to the demands for inflation, price supports, bailouts and fiscal stimulus. 105 00:09:36.780 --> 00:09:41.780 As a result, the panic ended and the economy recovered very quickly. 106 00:09:41.780 --> 00:09:44.780 What was the fate of this dissertation? 107 00:09:44.780 --> 00:09:48.780 For more than 50 years it has been the standard reference on this episode. 108 00:09:48.780 --> 00:09:51.780 It was printed and reprinted many times. 109 00:09:51.780 --> 00:09:56.780 Today the Mises Institute has an edition and it continues to sell on a large scale. 110 00:09:56.780 --> 00:10:05.780 Let me hop ahead to Greenspan's dissertation, which wasn't filed with New York University until more than two decades later in 1977. 111 00:10:05.780 --> 00:10:10.780 It was quickly sealed and continues to be unavailable to anyone. 112 00:10:10.780 --> 00:10:18.780 No one had any idea what was in it until last year, when a single copy was leaked to a reporter at Barron's. 113 00:10:18.780 --> 00:10:22.780 What it contained was so irrelevant that it barely made the news. 114 00:10:22.780 --> 00:10:28.780 It was a collection of reports that had been written for various purposes over the previous 20 years. 115 00:10:28.780 --> 00:10:33.780 A Ph.D. granted for life experience, we might say. 116 00:10:33.780 --> 00:10:36.780 What did Greenspan do in the intervening years? 117 00:10:36.780 --> 00:10:43.780 He founded a consulting company, Townsend Greenspan, and worked for the National Industrial Conference Board. 118 00:10:43.780 --> 00:10:51.780 To understand Greenspan's firm and what it did, it's important to understand the role of the economic expert in an age of positivism. 119 00:10:51.780 --> 00:11:01.780 In the post-war period, the scientists with Gnostic-style knowledge and shadowy connections to power ascended to massive public fame. 120 00:11:01.780 --> 00:11:07.460 The substance itself didn't matter so much as the illusion of expertise, but his firm's 121 00:11:07.460 --> 00:11:17.020 sole was Greenspan to such clients as JP Morgan & Company and similar big banks and big investment 122 00:11:17.020 --> 00:11:23.100 banks. Greenspan carefully crafted his image as an omniscient pundit on all matters related 123 00:11:23.100 --> 00:11:29.540 to economics. He used his connections to Burns and rising connections to all related power 124 00:11:29.540 --> 00:11:39.540 and the power elites to build up a reputation as a monk-like data collector, pouring over charts and coming up with printable comments and predictions. 125 00:11:39.540 --> 00:11:45.540 It was mostly illusion. There were no charts and data collections and machines to make perfect predictions. 126 00:11:45.540 --> 00:11:53.540 What Greenspan did was commodify his own pandering ways and sell them to a culture hungry for illusion. 127 00:11:53.540 --> 00:12:01.540 All throughout the 60s and the decades following, he worked to craft his persona to fit perfectly with the prevailing ethos. 128 00:12:01.540 --> 00:12:10.540 That ethos was statism, the glorification of central management by experts. Greenspan sought to be on the top of that heap. 129 00:12:10.540 --> 00:12:14.540 Let me say a few words about Greenspan's connections to Ayn Rand. 130 00:12:14.540 --> 00:12:18.540 The press routinely misunderstands the meaning of this relationship. 131 00:12:18.540 --> 00:12:30.540 The only writer who I think has gotten it right, aside from people in the inner circle like George Reisman and Nathaniel Brandon, is Frederic Sheehan, author of the wonderful new book on Greenspan, Pandora to Power. 132 00:12:30.540 --> 00:12:38.540 Sheehan points out that Greenspan's relationship with Rand was always opportunistic and never really had any effect on his life. 133 00:12:38.540 --> 00:12:46.540 Sheehan was the famous author on The Rise. Greenspan was a master of hitching his wagon to any horse on the move. 134 00:12:46.540 --> 00:12:52.540 Rand herself called him the undertaker. She would frequently ask her associates, 135 00:12:52.540 --> 00:12:56.540 do you think Alan might be basically a social climber? 136 00:12:56.540 --> 00:13:03.540 But what the Rand episode further illustrates is an actually terribly unflattering thing about Greenspan. 137 00:13:03.540 --> 00:13:08.540 After all, it's one thing to be a person who cravenly seeks power while remaining in ignorance. 138 00:13:08.540 --> 00:13:15.540 But as Greenspan revealed in his 1965 article called Gold and Economic Freedom, written for Ayn Rand, 139 00:13:15.540 --> 00:13:25.540 He actually knew the truth. He knew that the Fed creates business cycles. He wrote this in his article, even getting the story of the Great Depression right. 140 00:13:25.540 --> 00:13:36.540 He knew that fiat money builds the state. He said that gold is the only monetary guarantor of freedom. 141 00:13:36.540 --> 00:13:43.540 It's bad enough when a person devotes himself and his life to the service of power when he does it in a state of intellectual ignorance. 142 00:13:43.540 --> 00:13:58.540 Thus was the relationship to Rand no different from his relationship to anyone else. He used her as a stepping stone to his goal. 143 00:13:58.540 --> 00:14:11.540 I may add another parallel. Rothbard was also a member of the Rand Circle, though expelled when he refused the demand to convert his wife, Joey, to atheism or divorce her. 144 00:14:11.540 --> 00:14:27.540 The Ranser. It was only a few years following his gold article that Greenspan angled his way into the Nixon campaign of 1968, taking the job of coordinator of domestic policy research. 145 00:14:27.540 --> 00:14:33.540 He began a shuttle back and forth between New York and Washington that would define the rest of his life. 146 00:14:33.540 --> 00:14:40.420 In 1970, his mentor Burns was sworn in as head of the Fed, and here is where Greenspan 147 00:14:40.420 --> 00:14:45.580 set his sights on the position as his lifetime goal. Every choice he made after that point 148 00:14:45.580 --> 00:14:50.740 was dedicated to this. All the while he maintained his high public profile, making as many as 149 00:14:50.740 --> 00:14:56.560 80 speeches a year, pulling in huge consulting fees, while otherwise pretending to live a 150 00:14:56.560 --> 00:15:02.600 monk-like existence studying charts and tables and doling out bits of advice and wisdom for 151 00:15:02.600 --> 00:15:07.400 for High Dollars Despite the personality cult he was building, 152 00:15:07.400 --> 00:15:13.280 his predictions were almost always wrong. Let me give only the most famous example. 153 00:15:13.280 --> 00:15:20.240 On January 7th, 1973, The New York Times featured his picture with a spread on brilliant market 154 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:26.840 forecasters. He was quoted as follows, It's very rare that you can be as unqualifiedly 155 00:15:26.840 --> 00:15:30.880 Bullish as you can now. 156 00:15:30.880 --> 00:15:39.880 Four days later the market peaked and headed down for the next year to 46%, down 46% and 157 00:15:39.880 --> 00:15:45.760 this was typical of him, somehow able to build a reputation as a prophet while being wrong. 158 00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:51.640 His method was always the same, using high-flown rhetoric and obscure language while dissembling 159 00:15:51.640 --> 00:15:53.080 and faking. 160 00:15:53.080 --> 00:15:57.080 was a perfect method for government work. 161 00:15:57.080 --> 00:16:01.080 And so that same year he became head of the Council of Economic Advisers. 162 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:05.080 In 1974 he urged President Ford to propose 163 00:16:05.080 --> 00:16:09.080 a new tax as a way to combat inflation. 164 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:13.080 He was involved in the Whip Inflation Now campaign with its win buttons. 165 00:16:13.080 --> 00:16:17.080 Though he knew full well that the real culprit was not a lack of morale, 166 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:21.080 but a Fed that would not stop the printing press. 167 00:16:21.080 --> 00:16:27.080 A few years later, he went on his way into the Reagan inner circle and became head of the Social Security Commission. 168 00:16:27.080 --> 00:16:33.080 He urged dramatically higher payroll taxes, which of course we got. 169 00:16:33.080 --> 00:16:39.080 All of this was mere prelude to 1987, when the goal of his career was at hand. 170 00:16:39.080 --> 00:16:45.080 He was nominated for the position he had been training for his entire life, head of the Fed. 171 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:50.080 What happened soon after that was the famous stock market crash of 1987. 172 00:16:50.080 --> 00:17:04.080 Here he did what he would do again and again during his 20 years tenure. He opened up the monetary spigots. He did it again and again. Monetary pumping was his one weapon. 173 00:17:04.080 --> 00:17:17.080 Think of the Mexican debt crisis, the Asian contagion, long-term capital management, Y2K, the dot-com collapse, and finally the 9-11 terrorist incidents in Washington and New York. 174 00:17:17.080 --> 00:17:24.080 Oh, and never forget that Greenspan on November 13th, 2001 was awarded the Enron Prize. 175 00:17:27.280 --> 00:17:32.960 Essentially he proved himself adept at serving the state whenever it needed help, and he 176 00:17:32.960 --> 00:17:38.600 did so as the world's biggest counterfeiter. You can see the map of this in the federal 177 00:17:38.600 --> 00:17:43.640 funds rate during his tenure. Looking at the chart from the 60s to the present, we see 178 00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:50.640 We see a huge arch with a peak in 1979 and the rate trending steadily downward to the present level of zero. 179 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:55.640 The only way this could be justified would be through large increases in savings and capital. 180 00:17:55.640 --> 00:18:01.640 Of course, we've not seen this. This picture of lower and lower rates is wholly artificial. 181 00:18:01.640 --> 00:18:06.640 Not only that, but of course it's bubble-inducing in the extreme. 182 00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:11.640 What we are experiencing now is a direct result of Greenspan's tenure, 183 00:18:11.640 --> 00:18:15.640 which led to the greatest economic catastrophe in modern times. 184 00:18:15.640 --> 00:18:21.640 And make no mistake, every bit of this can be blamed on Greenspan directly. 185 00:18:21.640 --> 00:18:25.640 He ruled the Federal Open Market Committee, meetings with an iron fist, 186 00:18:25.640 --> 00:18:31.640 never seeking anyone else's opinion nor tolerating any dissent to his political intuitions. 187 00:18:31.640 --> 00:18:37.640 He would beat back any contrary views with withering stares and implicit and explicit rebukes. 188 00:18:37.640 --> 00:18:42.640 was ruled by fear and intimidation through his political and banking connections. 189 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:50.640 He also, of course, continued to cultivate his public image as a way of crushing disagreement both within the Fed and out. 190 00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:59.640 The message he sent through his high status was, don't you dare disagree with this God on Earth, whom all people revere. 191 00:18:59.640 --> 00:19:05.640 For a time we had the entire Wall Street and Washington establishments singing one long, united chorus of the hymn, 192 00:19:05.640 --> 00:19:08.640 Thank God for Greenspan 193 00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:13.640 He encouraged this, sending his minions to tell the press that he deserved credit for all things 194 00:19:13.640 --> 00:19:20.640 An uptick in employment, a downtick in the trade deficit, an optimistic earnings report from Wall Street 195 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:24.640 No matter what the news, he would take the credit 196 00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:27.640 Those were crazy times 197 00:19:27.640 --> 00:19:31.640 An article appeared in the New Republic that told of a cult on Wall Street 198 00:19:31.640 --> 00:19:38.640 on Wall Street, involving candles, incense, and Buddha-like statues of Greenspan. 199 00:19:39.960 --> 00:19:45.120 The story, of course, was preposterous, like so much else in the New Republic, but it took 200 00:19:45.120 --> 00:19:50.680 some time before anyone realized that the whole story was a fake. 201 00:19:50.680 --> 00:19:55.240 I don't need to tell you how the story of Greenspan ends. His world came crashing down 202 00:19:55.240 --> 00:20:01.240 around him last year. He spends his time today trying to explain his way out of the blame. 203 00:20:01.240 --> 00:20:16.240 Much to his everlasting disgrace, he has intimated on many occasions that the meltdown of 2008 was not, of course, his failure, not the failure of the government or the Fed, but a result of inherent flaws in the market. 204 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:20.240 Ayn Rand speculated that the undertaker might be a social climber. 205 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:25.240 She did not and could not have known that he would eventually climb all the way to the top, 206 00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:32.240 fall down all the way to the bottom, and further betray the cause to which he pretended to her his devotion. 207 00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:40.240 But anyone who looked at his life could see the pattern. It was not a complex one. He served the state. 208 00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:48.240 As Rothbard himself wrote, Greenspan's real qualification is that he can be trusted never to rock the establishment's boat. 209 00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:54.240 and Man's Boat. Indeed, he served the establishment from the first day to the last. 210 00:20:54.240 --> 00:21:02.240 Now I'd like to return to Rothbard and his life. When he last left him, he had completed his dissertation. 211 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:07.240 He was about to embark on a journey that would consume him for his entire life. 212 00:21:07.240 --> 00:21:17.240 He published in the establishment journals as long as he could, but at some point his quest for truth and love of liberty meant that he would be cut off from them. 213 00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:22.240 Despite his background and his credentials, he did not get a prestigious academic appointment. 214 00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:29.240 He worked instead for a private foundation reviewing all the latest books on philosophy, law and economics. 215 00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:37.240 Indeed, his massive treatise on economics that appeared in 1963 had begun as a tutorial written on behalf of this foundation. 216 00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:42.240 When he did get a position, it was at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. 217 00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:49.240 He had a dumpy office, a bad salary, and taught mostly disinterested or uninterested students. 218 00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:55.240 But he had the freedom to write and tell the truth, and that's what he wanted more than anything else. 219 00:21:55.240 --> 00:21:59.240 And yet even here his options were limited. 220 00:21:59.240 --> 00:22:07.240 As a brilliant and articulate supporter of the free market, one might think that conservative journals of opinion would have been open to him. 221 00:22:07.240 --> 00:22:11.240 But after the Cold War intensified, he could not be quiet on an issue 222 00:22:11.240 --> 00:22:18.240 was an issue that was vastly important to him, namely the relationship between liberty and military expansionism. 223 00:22:18.240 --> 00:22:26.240 He saw the warfare state as nothing but a species of socialism, and so he adhered to the credo of the classical liberals, 224 00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:34.240 a free market plus a peaceful international outlook, and for this he was excommunicated by the conservatives. 225 00:22:34.240 --> 00:22:48.240 The result was he ended up building his own movement, one that began in his living room, but his two dozen books, his tens of thousands of articles, ended up in inspiring a global movement for liberty. 226 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:59.240 His economic writings bridged the gap between Mises and the current generation of Austrians. 227 00:22:59.240 --> 00:23:06.240 His wonderful personality demonstrated to one and all that it was possible to have fun while fighting Leviathan. 228 00:23:06.240 --> 00:23:12.240 As for Rothbard's own character, the contrast with Greenspan could not be more stark. 229 00:23:12.240 --> 00:23:18.240 If Greenspan was the dreary undertaker, Rothbard was the happy warrior. 230 00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:24.240 Rothbard thrilled to spend time with students and faculty and anyone interested in liberty. 231 00:23:24.240 --> 00:23:30.240 When you spoke to him, he was glad to talk about the field of interest that was the other person's specialization. 232 00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:44.240 Whether it was history, philosophy, ethics, economics, politics, architecture, art, religion, music, sports or even the soaps on TV, he always made others feel more important. 233 00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:51.240 He was always excited to give credit to others and to draw attention to the contributions of everyone to the great cause. 234 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:59.240 He never held a grudge for long. Even for those who betrayed him personally, there was always an opportunity for reconciliation. 235 00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:07.240 All of these traits derived from his amazing generosity of spirit, to which I attribute his love of truth above all else. 236 00:24:07.240 --> 00:24:17.240 His too short life was cut off in 1995, but it was also that year that the web browser became common in offices and in homes and on campuses. 237 00:24:17.240 --> 00:24:28.240 Those classes that Rothbard taught in his small New York classroom, and later at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are now being broadcast around the world through iTunes and Misesorg. 238 00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:39.240 His books are all in print and selling as never before. There are not only his books, but books on his books, and an entire literature growing up around his legacy. 239 00:24:39.240 --> 00:24:54.240 Some have said that Rothbard was his own worst enemy. People said the same of Mises. The idea here is that they could have helped their career by going along to get along. And that's true enough. 240 00:24:54.240 --> 00:25:02.240 But is getting along all we really want out of life? Or do we want to make a difference in a way that will outlast us? 241 00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:14.240 At some point in our lives, we all come to realize that all the money and all the power that one can accumulate will be useless after we die. Even large fortunes dissipate. 242 00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:25.240 The legacy we will leave on this earth comes down to the principles by which we lived, is the ideas we hold and the way we pursued them that are the source of our immortality. 243 00:25:25.240 --> 00:25:32.240 and Mortality. Greenspan will leave an economy in shambles and a lifetime of pandering. Rothbard 244 00:25:33.840 --> 00:25:38.680 left a grand vision of liberty, united with science and an example of what it means to 245 00:25:38.680 --> 00:25:45.680 truly think long term. In all ages and in all times, people must make a choice. Will 246 00:25:46.800 --> 00:25:52.160 we accept the world as it is, try to fit in, getting as much as we can from the system 247 00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:58.040 until we bow out, or will we stick to principle, pay whatever price that involves, and leave 248 00:25:58.040 --> 00:26:04.240 the world a better place? I submit to you that anyone who has truly loved liberty has 249 00:26:04.240 --> 00:26:10.840 chosen the second course. This is the course that the Mises Institute is dedicated to following. 250 00:26:10.840 --> 00:26:13.840 May we all make that choice. Thank you. 251 00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:24.160 Thank you very much.