The New Deal: History, Economics, and Law

0:00Music We have a new technology, it's called the Mises Academy. It's a wonderful environment for teaching, online teaching, so that you can enter into the living rooms or, you know, Starbucks is all over the world, you know, teaching, and you're going to be teaching a class for us in the fall. That's right, and before I mention that, I want to say that I don't want to exaggerate the significance of the Mises Academy, but I think it may be the greatest development in the history of the world. Every time the subject comes up, I want to sing the theme song to the Jetsons. Yeah, exactly. The only improvement would be when we can be in a spaceship and do it, otherwise.

0:48But yeah, I'm teaching a course on the New Deal, because I think this is one of these things that you've got to just get down cold. I don't want to say your opponents, because the human race has a certain solidarity. They're friends you haven't met yet, basically, but people who are on the other side of this argument about the consequences of the New Deal, a lot of them are just average people who are just repeating what they've been taught in school. But if you really know the history, not just have a few libertarian talking points, but really know the history, I mean you can overwhelm any argument that's made against you so and it's not like that's all we're interested in is winning arguments about we want to acquire the knowledge but the fact is in this area we've got to get this right because he's such at Franklin Roosevelt is such an icon that if if we begin to chip away at this icon then you know things things start to fall after that

1:42and it's strange isn't the New Deal is the prototype of almost all planning and and all stimulus and everything. It's assumed to be a wonderful success or its only failure was not going far enough. And I want to look, in fact, we even have people who try to claim that the New Deal was actually really a stunning success if you look at the numbers and blah, blah, blah. Oh, it still goes on. So I want to evaluate all that, but let's go through those numbers, look exactly what they are, we'll look at the progress or lack thereof, all that stuff. But really starting with the stock market crash and looking at Austrian business cycle theory, looking at the relationship between the central bank in the US and in England, and then the Herbert Hoover thing. We'll get that down. Again, not just superficially, but we'll just get it down and look at the arguments that Hoover was, you know, was not spending enough and so on, all that.

2:35We're going to look at the actual numbers and the actual policies, which is very rare. I mean, Rothbard does it, a few others do it, and then get into Roosevelt. So we're covering the economics, we're covering the history. We're covering the law, because we're going to look at the Supreme Court, we'll read some Supreme Court cases, and just because it's interesting to read some of these opinions, Supreme Court opinions, because they seem like they're coming from another universe. You'd never imagine an opinion like this being written. and seeing the arguments they made and then noting the transformation of the court over the years after 37, so the law will be in there as well, so we're going to look at this from a lot of different angles. And who's the class designed for?

3:21Well, it's designed basically for anybody, it's designed with, I'm not assuming any prior knowledge, so some people may feel like, well, I already knew a little bit of this, a little bit of that, okay, but I want to start from ground zero and build up so that by the time it's all over you say okay this was worthwhile I've got a really substantial background but I'm not going to assume people know Austrian Business Cycle Theory or anything I want it to be something that homeschoolers could get so that therefore homeschoolers will continue their great tradition of crushing everybody in debate give them all the ammunition they need but then also people who just adults who feel like they were deprived they didn't get the education they wanted to get or they you know or they got The demographics of the Mises Academy so far have been all over the place. Software CEOs, we've got people working in international, American companies abroad who are anxious to continue their education, high school students in their home schools, and also matriculating students in college. It just occurred to me, how great would it be to take your class at the same time you're in an academic class? Wouldn't that be fun?

4:32And then you can come in and when we have a discussion you can say, well now my professor says so and so, what do I say to him? And then we'll all join together, not just me, but all other participants say, oh, why don't you go tell him this or that thing? And my hope is also, well not my hope, my absolute intention is that once I'm done with this book project that I'm working on right now, you and I are speaking in the summer of 2010, once I've finished this book project, by 2011 I want to start offering more general courses, survey courses of American history, in the colonial period and going up as far as I can get it in eight-week segments and give American history from a point of view that I think Mises people will find interesting. You know, it's so different being in the Mises Academy versus a big classroom where you're teaching at a university level.

5:18For me, I feel like, being on the receiving end of these lectures, that Thomas D. Lorenzo or Hunt Tooley, I mean, whoever happens to be teaching, or in your case, you know, it'll be, it'll tumble in the fall, has come into my living room, and come into my dining room, and is speaking to me individually. I mean, it's, you don't get that effect in a regular classroom. I would say that there are aspects that are better than a physical classroom for that reason. Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's intimate. Yeah, it's, because I follow, just to have a sense of it, I followed a little bit of Bob Murphy's course. Yeah, Bob Murphy. And that's exactly it. And there he is with his coat and tie, sitting there in his room. He's right there on your computer, he's live, you're able to ask him questions, and then even while he's talking, he'll try and field them, but then afterward he'll just have a question-answer period, and that, you know, there's no bell that rings and makes you leave, you know, if people are all done, you stop, but you can just get people hanging around, and sometimes, you know, I'll be inclined to just hang around, and then maybe even the topic moves on to something else, and we talk about that for a while. Did that ever occur to you while watching this? How's a regular classroom going to survive? Yeah, yeah, who's going to want that?

6:23You get exactly the courses you want by people you trust and to be able to also interact with people who are of like mind in the course and get to know them. I mean, really, and you'll learn a lot from your fellow students, too. I mean, it can be extremely enriching. And by the way, I intend to be a student in some of these other courses, but maybe under an assumed name. So if I make a mistake, nobody will say, oh, this guy, it turns out he's a charlatan after all. But you don't have to be graded in the Mises Academy. That's right. If you want to be, that's fine, but you have the option of just saying, I just want to audit this and so on. Are you a tough grader? Well, I used to be, but for these people, I'm going to be such a pushover. Look, I love you guys. That's an A. Come on. We very much look forward to this, Tom.

7:09Thanks, Jeff. Me too. And this class and many more in the future. Thanks a lot.