Shameless Self-Promotion

Archive for Shameless Self-Promotion

2014 Night of Clarity — Featuring David Stockman

This is the annual event that Carlos Lara and I put on, in downtown Nashville. Here is the official event page. Other confirmed speakers: Tom Woods, IBC founder Nelson Nash, and FEE’s Larry Reed.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Inventory Adjustments in GDP Accounting

Whether it’s government debt-burdened grandchildren, marginally productive capital, or inventory adjustments in GDP accounting, I don’t rest until I have resolved the issue to my own satisfaction–even if the rest of the world has moved on by that point. Anyway, drawing on a neat idea from “Transformer” in the comments here, I discuss this issue […]

Potpourri

==> Dan Sanchez talks about inflation and milkshakes. ==> In this older interview with Russ Roberts, Pete Boettke lays out a neat analogy for Austrian vs. neoclassical capital theory: Legos vs. Play-Doh. ==> An interesting analysis of government vs. market failure in leading textbooks. Krugman is the Team Leader. ==> Reconciling Hayek and Keynes. ==> […]

Larry Summers Unwittingly Blows Up Piketty’s Whole Book

…but he still thinks Piketty should get a Nobel Prize. The gory details are at Mises Canada. An excerpt: Piketty wants to scare his readers into believing that the percentage of income each period going to the capitalists will increase over time, meaning that “the workers” will earn a lower portion of total output in, […]

The Kids Can’t Get Enough Murphy

Dennis Foster emails me (and gave permission to quote): Message: Hi Bob, I’ve had the pleasure of taking many of your on-line classes with the Mises Institute over the years (I can’t believe it’s actually been years!). In my Public Choice Theory class, we finish the semester with your Chaos Theory book, to illustrate the […]

Can Bitcoin Become Money?

A familiar question that Frank Shostak recently raised, so at Liberty Chat I gave my usual answer: The reason Mises needed to supplement his theoretical explanation of the purchasing power of money with his historical “regression theorem” was simply to protect the explanation from charges of infinite regress. In other words, since Mises was explaining […]

The Final Nail in the Coffin: MPK Is Not Sufficient For Interest, Either

For those who really want to understand what all the fuss is about capital & interest, you need to get a cup of coffee, perhaps even a piece of paper and pencil, and spend 20 minutes reading my latest Mises Canada post. You know I don’t often ask these things of you, but this is […]

A Fleshed Out Example Showing Problems With Piketty

[UPDATE: Note that I clarified the thought experiment to make sure it’s obvious that all physical production is due to labor in an economic sense.] At Mises Canada I elaborate on an example showing Piketty’s approach is flawed even on its own terms. First I’ll refresh your memory about Piketty’s framework: Technology naturally plays a […]