The French Liberal School had been dominant through four generations because they were privately funded, but when the government intervened in the French universities the Liberal School lost its hold. Richard Cantillon, Etienne Bonnot de Condil

10. The Gold Standard in Theory and Myth

Jun 11th, 2005

The mythology of gold really grew up with Keynes and the quantity theory. Here are six of those myths: the gold standard is unable to accommodate the needs of an growing economy; the quantity of money is arbitrarily determined; the gold standar

9. Money and Gold in the 1920s and 1930s: Defending the Rothbardian Position

Jun 10th, 2005

Friedman’s book, Monetary History of the United States, tried to show the depression was caused by a deflation of the money supply by the Fed. Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression was published the next year in 1963. Rothbard argued that the F

8. The Debate on the Socialist Calculation Debate

Jun 10th, 2005

The debate still continues. It is all about Mises’ initial article and then book on Socialism in 1922. He demonstrated the necessity of the price system and showed how subjective values were transformed into objective prices which could be used

7. The Political Economy of the Chicago School: Libertarian or Jacobin?

Jun 10th, 2005

The founder of the Chicago School, Frank Knight, was an avowed egalitarian. Rousseau was his influence. Jacobins believed in mass democracy and politics as the only way to implement their ideas. They hated aristocrats and religious leaders. Kni

6. Keynes and the 'New Economics' of Fascism

Jun 9th, 2005

Monetary inflation is the key way to bring about economic fascism. Fascism was a spending, borrowing government, militarism, imperialism, and a planned economy. Keynes’ followers came to power in the 60s with the Kennedy administration. Nixon w

5. Modern Monetary Theory: The Austrian Contribution

Jun 8th, 2005

Monetary theory is where Austrians diverge the most from mainstream. Mises built a new taxonomy of money. He said money included any checking account deposits. The marginal utility of gold on the last day of barter was determined by the uses of

4. The Theory of Monopoly Price: From Menger to Rothbard

Jun 8th, 2005

Prior to Mises there had been nothing written on the theory of monopoly price. Mises felt there could be some limited times of monopoly on the free market, e.g. diamond mines, but Rothbard felt that there could not be monopolies. Both theories

2. The Origin and Decline of the Austrian School: Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, and Wieser

Jun 7th, 2005

Where the classical economists had gone wrong was to speak of goods as if they were abstract classes. The Austrians noted that their value theory did not talk about concrete units and could not explain how individuals valued goods.That’s why th

3. The Revival of the Austrian School: Mises and Rothbard

Jun 7th, 2005

There were reasons for the decline of the Austrian School before its revival and rebirth by Mises and Rothbard. There was an Israel Kirzner view in the 1970s that the Keynesian avalanche had buried Austrian economics in 1936. Then there is a bi

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