The Rhetoric of Economics

0:00I have to start by thanking the Mises Institute and the organizers of this conference, in particular, Professor Joseph Salerno, for allowing a non-traditional scholar. And I call myself a scholar now that this is the Scholar's Conference. And I'm also from a non-traditional institution. and the University of Phoenix is not known as a hotbed of intellectual endeavors. I am non-traditional because I don't have a PhD in economics, I'm largely self-taught and after wandering in the desert for many years, I found my home in the Austrian School of Economics, so I am very happy to be here because I feel like I'm coming home.

0:52In that quest for knowledge, I came across Didri McCloskey. And this is from Peter Betke. He says that McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues is one of the most ambitious and important works published in classical liberal political economy for at least half a century. He goes It goes on to say that only Mises's Human Action and Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty aspire to have the same breadth and scope as works written by economists of a classical liberal persuasion. So this is a thinker of the Austrian School of Economics that says that McCloskey is right up there with Mises and Hayek.

1:43So I got to read this. I absolutely must read in my quest for knowledge. And the first thing that I discovered when I researched McCloskey was that before she was Didri, she was Donald. To me, macho, Latino, I mean, talk about preconceived ideas. I was predisposed to absolutely disagree with whatever she said. What a surprise. Just to give you an idea of, I'm sure you're all familiar with her, but one of the things that struck me is how much of a renaissance man she is. I mean, renaissance man. Her job title at the University of Illinois is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English and Communications and she's also an adjunct in philosophy and classics.

2:48I mean renaissance all the way. For five years she was the Timberg Distinguished Professor of Economics, Philosophy, History, English and Arts and Culture at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. So she's not only recognized here in the US but she's also Boejois Dignity is actually the second volume. Bethke was talking about the first volume of what is going to be a six or seven or eight volume opus magnus. A draft of the third volume is available online for your review and she's taking comments from anybody that wants to read her stuff.

3:36And so you'll notice on my quotes that I reference the online version. If I bought all the books that I found interesting, I couldn't buy these nice suits. So, in her Bourgeois books series, she wants to understand, she wants to have the explanation of why the industrial revolution happened. Why? I think why is a very important key term here. Take the why and put it in your pocket, you're going to need it at the end of my presentation. Why is very important. She goes on to discuss the different explanations of why the industrial revolution happened.

4:33Some people say it was about technology. Some people say it was about private property. Some people say it was about the accumulation of capital. She claims that it's nothing like that. and you have the quotes there, it's about the dignity that was given to the bourgeoisie and it was about the liberty to innovate that was given to the bourgeoisie. And she notes that it was the first, the Spanish scholastics, the same people we in the Austrian School of Economics claim to be the founders of economics, the ones that gave this new dignity and this liberty to the bourgeois. So she claims that the change that allowed the Industrial Revolution to happen was actually a change in rhetoric.

5:19It was the way we looked and this dignity we afforded to the bourgeois. And that's the basic motivation of the thoughts that I want to share with you today. McCloskey argues that it is actually the change in rhetoric that produces the explosion in GDP. So my thinking is, okay, so if this happens on the plus side, in order for it to be actual real and provable, it also has to happen on the minus side. So is the change in rhetoric against the bourgeoisie what has produced a diminishment of economic well-being? And things changed in 1848.

6:09The elite turned against innovation, turned against the bourgeoisie, first in nationalism, then in socialism, then in national socialism, and finally in environmentalism. You have to give it to her. I mean, talk about knowing how to write a really good phrase. You have to love this. The environmentalists are actually Marxist-Nazis.

6:39So, my thinking, my thoughts, or my modest contribution to the debate is containing this next quote of her. If the rhetoric of innovation is what caused the modern world, then if we lose it, what happens? And if we lose it, do we lose the modern world? And I claim that we are actually losing the rhetorical debate, the rhetorical battle, we are losing it. And I use as an example, just one small book, The Cube and the Cathedral, written by George Weigel at the time when the Europeans were discussing the new European, the EU constitution and decided to leave out of the preface God. The Christian roots of Europe are not acknowledged when they acknowledge the roots of their civilization.

7:33And that of course gets Wiggle very flustered and he writes this wonderful book. If you skip the part about the Constitution, it's actually a very interesting take on the cultural decline and the cultural diminishment. He called it the crisis of civilizational morale that is happening in Europe. And he brings a point home by saying, well, should we Americans look ourselves in the European mirror? It's what's happening, this crisis, this crisis of civilizational morale that's happening in Europe. Is it possible that we In his book, Weigel embraces the Christophobia argument, largely arguing that when we abandon our belief in Christ, when we become a secular society, then we are actually embarking on losing our values.

8:38And if you read McCloskey closely, she doesn't go there exactly all the way. He doesn't claim that it's losing God, but when you look at the values that she claims that the bourgeoisie had, well, all those are Christian values. So there's something here that's interesting to think about. And of course, all of this happened in Europe In 1848, one of the small things, but it's a change in rhetoric, we used to call our world Christendom, Christendom, the crusades, and all of that was Christendom, now all of a sudden that changes, we are now the western world, we are the western civilization.

9:30So we are becoming, that's just a small example of how much we become and without thinking we become a secular society and we lose our moral compass and we lose our moral values which if you believe McCloskey is what made us great because it's what made the Industrial Revolution possible. So, after looking at all of this and looking at the irony that God, the God of Christians is a liberating God. It's a God that gives us free will. It's a God, I know, I should make assumptions, but I haven't found much Christian, and Christian Literature in the Austrian School of Economics. Hayek, the closest I've seen in the traditionals, Hayek talks about, you know, it's unfortunate that I don't believe in God. It's unfortunate because it's important to believe in God. And Mises, George Guido Dr. Holtzman, in his wonderful book, Mises, The Last Night of Liberalism, reminds us that in 1922, in the first edition of socialism, Mises said, a living Christianity cannot exist

11:03side by side and within capitalism. Now, I think it's important to recognize that maybe some of that is changing. By 1950, Holtzman reminds us that Mises had softened his view on Christianity and he acknowledges that because, and these are not the exact words of Mises or of Holtzman, this is my understanding of what Holtzman says, Mises said, because God does not contradict himself in endowing man with this faculty of thinking, both reason and revelation are manifestations of the Lord's Power.

11:49I must note, with a lot of interest, the work of Tom Woods Jr., who was the moderator in the previous session. He's done wonderful work in explaining free markets to Catholics in his book, The Church on the Markets. Jeffrey Tucker has been actively blogging in a blog called Inside Catholic, and he blogs with a deep understanding of the Catholic faith and with profound faith, with deep-felt faith. And of course, we must note Gary North, who has written tremendous work on explaining The economics from an Austrian economics point of view of the gospel.

12:40So the most important element of Christian faith, and I'm sorry, I don't want to speak about Christians because I'm a Catholic, so I understand Catholic faith. There's a lot of commonality, but let me speak only as a Catholic. God died on the cross, Jesus died on the cross for my sins, to save me. But I am not saved because he sacrificed himself for me. I am saved when I, by my own free will, accept him. It is free will. The foundation of Catholicism is free will. It's the exercise of free will.

13:26And isn't Austrian economics based on humans exercising their free will? I mean, in the basis, in the fundamental dimension of the free will of men, the free will that was endowed to us by our Creator, we are exactly the same, the Catholics and the Austrians. Maybe that's the reason why I found my house here, maybe that's the reason why I found my home here. So, I conclude by saying that if the adoption of bourgeois values is what made the Industrial Revolution possible, then the rejection of the same values is directly linked to the current crisis.

14:22For us Americans, it's difficult to understand this because we don't have a bourgeoisie here in the United States. There's no anti-bourgeois rhetoric in the U.S. Now substitute bourgeois with capitalism, there is a lot of anti-capitalism rhetoric. And go outside of the United States, ask any of the people here who are from other countries. There's plenty of anti-bourgeois rhetoric in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Spain, and in many countries that are not American. So are we in the same path? I don't know. Now, being here, how can you have something beyond your conclusions?

15:10Please indulge me for a second, because I have been stimulated. This is not part of the paper, the paper is available online, but how do we go about this, win the battle, I cannot just say that we lose the battle, how do we win the battle? I teach at a management school, I teach at a business school, so I have tools from other worlds. Simon Sinek, who's an interesting thinker about leadership, claims that it's what you What you do, how you do it and why you do it, it's so simple, it's stupid. But if you look at the way companies are and the way companies become successful and the way leaders are successful, the successful ones are not the ones that say, this is what we do.

16:03The successful ones are not the ones that say, this is how we do it. The successful ones are the ones that say, why we do it. So now you understand why you have it in your pocket. Why? We must very humbly tell you that maybe we must reflect on why Austrian economics is important and maybe that's the message we must carry. When we talk about returning to the gold standard, when we talk about free markets, when we talk about a defense of capitalism, when we talk about the socialist Economic Calculation, we are talking about the what's and the how's. Maybe the why is free will. Should we be talking about free will and should we be talking about how important each individual is and about how important freedom is and how important it is to liberate ourselves? I don't know, but those thoughts came to me here in this conference. C.S. Lewis There's a wonderful book called the Screwtape Letters. It's about bureaucracy. It's the

17:14bureaucracy in hell. So Screwtape is a senior demon who's advising his nephew, who's a junior demon trying to conquer a soul here on earth to take to hell. And Screwtape reveals that one of the devil's most successful subterfuges is making us humans believe that he does not exist. So maybe that's the reason why our motto is yield not to evil. And I write evil with a capital E. Thank you very much.