Mises Around the World

0:00It's a great pleasure to be at the Mises Institute. It's a great pleasure to finally present the Mises biography, which was so long in the working, and I cannot possibly even try to thank all the people who helped me bringing this work about. I have two pages of acknowledgments, which do not full justice to those who do it, but let me just say this one thing, that the whole project would not have been even started without the encouragement, again, of Lew Rockwell. So, thank you very much. The Mises Institute is celebrating its 25th anniversary, which is magnificent. I wasn't even alive 25 years ago.

0:47At least, that's what Walter Block tells me all the time. And he assures me that he's my Jewish mother. I promise you, at Christmas, I'll have a talk to my father about this. And then we have always these wonderful conferences, and I'm aware that I'm about the last thing to stand in your way between, well, this wonderful talk by John Danson and Lew Rockwell's speech, and then finally the open bar. So, let me just apply one insight that I've gained by listening to Judge Napolitano's speech on yesterday evening, when he highlighted the importance of the Constitution by saying something like, it's the Fourth Amendment that stood between the U.S. government here and the taxpayer there.

1:42The Fourth Amendment, so it's a little bit the same thing with the Mises Institute. The only thing that stands between the U.S. government there and the poor taxpayers is the Mises Institute.

2:01As far as ideological justification is concerned. So we're giving them a hard time. We're working on this. Now my talk, the title of my talk is Mises Around the World and well, I guess of course what you guys want to know about is the world outside of the U.S. outside of the US, but the world is much larger than the US, which you have known since your army marched into Iraq and various other places. But for most people outside of the US, it's the other way around. So the US is part of this wonderful world that you can discover. And so it was for me when I first came across Austrian economics, I was so fascinated by I could not prevent myself from basing an entire doctoral dissertation on this work, and I was firmly convinced that you have to go after the truth, and that's, after all, what science is all about.

2:56Of course, at that time, I had no friends in academia who could have laughed at me and said, well, you are pretty naive, you have the least idea what academia is all about. Well, in any case, so they would have been right, yeah? So I was going after the truth, but I had the good sense of having my ex-girlfriend, now my wife,

3:28who was a little bit more concerned than I was about other things but truth, simply things like, well, who will pay the next bill? And so she writes, well it might be actually a good idea to present this work to somebody who might actually be interested in it. My doctoral committee was not really exactly enthusiastic about it, so they had to give me a little bit anyway. And so Natalie suggested that I get in touch with some people who might be interested in this. I got to know that the Mises Institute was organizing a 100th birthday tribute to Henry Hazlitt, who had just died the year before at the age of 99.

4:26in 1999. So that was in the fall of 1994 and I signed up for this and in preparation of the event sent three letters to three distinct Misesian scholars that I had discovered through my readings, Murray Rothbard, Israel Kirzner and Bettina Greaves. Now guess who was the only one to ever reply to my letters? Of course, Bettina Greaves. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Bettina. You're serious.

5:04Yeah, so Bettina then introduced me to everybody who was there, and then at the end of the evening I got to talk to Murray Rothbard, who unfortunately died a few weeks later, and all people here at the Mises Institute are being very nice to me. They always have told me that there was no causal relation involved. So at any case I was so happy to meet Murray Rothbard at least once in my life and I will be able to talk about this to my children and children's children and so on. I will bug you about this at the 50th anniversary and 75th anniversary and so on when I'll be about 59 years old, according to Walter Block. Yeah, and then, so I got to meet the rest of the Mises Institute faculty and got to meet those people who I only knew through writings and for every young scholar, that's one of the most significant events in one's life when one finally gets to meet the people in person whom one has only admired through their writings.

6:06Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Walter Block, Tom DiLorenzo, Robert Higgs, Barry Smith, David Gordon, Jeff Herbiner, Joseph Salerno, Mark Thornton, these were all the Gaians of Liberty, now they take the little German fellow from the woods. And then, two years later, Lew Rockwell started, well, he asked me to write this, start working on a Mises biography, and the main reason why I did this was because Hans Hoppe refused. And honestly, again, if I had known how much work was involved, I would have refused too, probably.

6:56And then, yeah, so then came a very painful 10 years, right, and then as from 2000 or so in 2001, and then John Danson would ask me every three months, so how, Guido, how is the Mises biography coming? Oh, very well, sir. It's really painful. You just don't get to the end. You see the light of the tunnel. At least you believe it's some light. It's not the fog or whatever. Yeah. and so i'm so i cannot tell you how happy i am that this project is finished women know how difficult it is to bear children but it's only nine months

7:44okay so now we've got to talk so this this was the new world that i discovered and it is still the world that all Austrians from outside of the US start discovering because the Mises Institute is the natural place to turn to once one gets interested in these kinds of ideas. And I'll come to talk a little bit more about this in a minute. But so let me first say something general about the impact of the Mises Institute. And I'll by and large just restate what Ron Paul said this lunch today in his wonderful speech, which he stated in his usually humble way, which so endears him to us, that in fact he's just bringing the troops together, and that's exactly correct. All that politics can do, I mean it would be completely wrong to infer from, despite all his merits, that Ron Paul, by just giving a few speeches and making a few ever-beats of brilliant TV Appearances creates a movement. That would be wrong. The movement is there. What Ron Paul does is to bring the people together, to create a focus, a rallying ground. But the movement is already there. It's latent. It's what's just waiting for the person who brings this all together. And he sees this very clearly. So the question is, so what prepares the ground? What creates the movement in the first place? Well, and then the simple answer is it's things like the Mises Institute.

9:15and it's not only things like the Mises Institute, I would say so, it's the Mises Institute quite essentially. When Ron Paul drives through the country and you have students being enthusiastic about the prospect of abolishing the IRS, it's not because they've listened to Ron Paul for two minutes. Well, it's because they've been confronted to materials being diffused, distributed by the Mises Institute for years and being confronted to books being published by the Mises Institute and similar editors but especially online by the Mises Institute for many years. So these latent forces have been prepared by a word that is 25 years in the making.

10:03That's the role of the Mises Institute, preparing the ground for, well, final political change. And even so, I'm very optimistic in the long run, even if Ron Paul should not succeed this time, he should not be the president, I mean there are worse things than not being the US president. Don't get me wrong. There are worse things. But even if he doesn't succeed this time, well, if we continue our work and if we prepare the ground ever further to permeate public thought, public opinion on these politically relevant questions, In the coming sessions, there will one day be a person who will bring the troops together and just get rid of all that is despicable in politics, even if he's not as brilliant as Ron Paul is.

10:51So that's the role of the Mises Institute in general, and this impact is being felt outside of the U.S. just as well. Ideas are a wonderful factor of production. It's the one factor of production that doesn't wear. Any other thing, any other machine or work and so on needs to be replaced in time. It cannot be shared indefinitely, but ideas can. One idea, one recipe used by an American can be used by a million other Americans, but can be used by every single other person outside of the US. Ideas don't wear and they're universal. And ideas are being shared by the Mises Institute in a magnificent way through three main vehicles. One is the website about which Jeff Tucker talked this afternoon of the wonderful institution of the internet and all the technology that comes with it.

11:44And we have the conferences for professional audiences. And then we have in particular, and that's the main mission of the Mises Institute, our educational programs. programs, here in particular the Summer University, but also Summer Fellowships, which give young talented people the opportunity to work with senior scholars in Austrian economics. And the results of this have been spectacular. So, I have been associated with the Mises of this institute since the age of 14 approximately, according to Walter Block, and in these past ten years the progress has been tremendous.

12:30What I'll go through with you now is just a short list, but I'll just go through the impact that I have personally experienced coming through, having been instigated through The true impact of the Mises Institute is much larger, much more tremendous because I'm just a little part of the whole movement of the whole faculty and there are many more people around the world who have been inspired in other ways by the Mises Institute. So we have, as far as the people with whom I have worked, I think one example would be Spain, right, where we have our summer fellow, several times, Gabrielle Casada. Could you please stand up, Gabrielle? Gabriel Casada Alvarez is a magnificent scholar, a very handsome person, which is very important, not for ideas, but for public relations.

13:28It's stupid, but look, I mean, why did Keynesianism gain such a hold in the US? Well, it was among other things because John Kenneth Galbraith did not look like Marty Feldman. And Gabriel has established, three and a half years ago, an institute called after Juan de Mariana, a medieval scholastic, who was a proto-libertarian, and Gabriel is pursuing an Austro-libertarian agenda relentlessly, and has tremendous success in Spain in TV appearances, news comments, newspaper appearances, and so on. newspaper appearances and so on. It's an incredible achievement. Then we have in Belgium one summer fellow who is not here with us tonight. Her name is Cécile Philippe. She's a young French woman and she has established also an institute which is called economic institute, Gustave Molinari, after a French, sorry a Belgian, Austrian, Well, proto-Austrian, but in any case libertarian, the first economist ever to consider the private production of security, security production without the state, and Cecile is doing also a tremendous job, she's president of the media, has also a few TV appearances, but is quoted constantly in the press in, well, Francophone countries, which we don't get to notice here because we're not in Quebec, at least not yet,

15:10But she is having her input in the French-speaking world. Then in the Czech Republic, we have people like Joseph Schima, Jan Havel, and others who are, again, very successful. They are actually, they are the majority in an entire department of the largest economics university in the country, which is the University of Economics in Prague, and they run this university actually, and so they have wonderful programs from undergraduate or master's programs, doctoral studies and so on, sending us their students to the U.S. but also doing wonderful work in their own right and having a tremendous impact in Central Europe. Then in Poland, there is a Polish Mises Institute, okay, Mises Institute, I cannot pronounce this in Polish, which is run also by a former Mises Institute summer My fellow, Mateusz Makai and Julius.

16:18So I don't speak in vain. Their fans are everywhere. You've got to be very careful not to say anything bad about them. And so they do the same thing of publications and media appearances and translations, a wonderful job. In Romania there is another Mises Institute, also established by former Mises fellows and summer fellows. They are having a similar impact in Romania. We are having in Georgia, which was one of my greatest surprises during my years at the Mises Institute, we are having a free market institute being established by two of our summer fellows, fellows which we accepted at the time with some mixed feelings because it was hard to tell how much English they actually spoke.

17:09Okay, the letters were not really English that we received and then I had them on the phone it was not much better but in any case I had some other feeling while these guys were really hot for free market economics and they wanted to know something completely different from what they were commonly offered and they arrived here spent a summer in Auburn and truly improved their English but especially became tremendously enthusiastic about Austrian economics and then upon their return immediately set up this think tank which is now a tremendous success, teaching programs, application programs stretching over three countries in this area, Azerbaijan which is a Muslim country, Armenia is Christian, George is also Christian, and running seminars with Mises Institute fellows like Hans Hoppe and others, it's a tremendous success.

18:07And then in France, well, okay, France is of course a very difficult ground. But well, at least there are a few things, and again, I mean there are others, but this, but I will just mention those who are involved, so I set up a private research seminar dedicated to Austrian Economics, and in the seminar we have three or four university professors and various people who already got their PhD and other doctoral students, most of whom have been in one way or another associated already with the Mises Institute. So there too I could rely for my crying out in the wilderness on the work that has been performed And last but not least, there are even Austrian economists in Austria, of all places.

19:00I remember well, nine years ago, I gave a talk at the Austrian Scholar's Conference, and one of the first talks I gave in the US, and I said, well, so, there are Austrian economists everywhere but in Austria, in Austria. So I got the polite laughter from my colleagues. That's a nice beginning. And at the time, it actually was true. There were no Austrian economists in Austria. But today, we have a handful of young men and women very dedicated to the cause. And they are, again, tremendously successful with what they're doing. It's all internet based. And they're offering courses, conferences, teaching seminars, publications. And it's again, it's really wonderful.

19:45and again, it would not have been possible without the work that is being carried on by the Mises Institute. So far I've been just talking about individuals. Sometimes I get the question, okay, so what about, sorry, but I've been just talking about institutions, what about individuals? One question that has been addressed to me during this conference was, okay, so who is the next Rothbard? Okay. Well, I mean, the Rothbards don't come along each day, right? That's a more tricky business. And actually, I am firmly convinced that, well, about two things. First of all, if there's the next Mises or the next Rothbard, he wouldn't need us necessarily to do, well, to help him.

20:32He would find his way anyway. And the best thing we can do is just stand out of the way. The second thing is that actually in many cases it's difficult to tell who will be the next Mises or the next Rothbard. In the case of Mises, for example, few people were actually convinced that he was tremendous intellectual when he was just 50 or 55 or 60 years old. Most people thought, well, he was pretty good and pretty brilliant, but there were a few other brilliant people around, so it was nothing particular. nd the next works by my friends Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Tom DiLorenzo and Joseph Salerno.

21:32Well, my growth, great hopes are there, but I wouldn't exclude any of the other ones. So, we've got to wait. And among the younger people, again, we have Mises Institute fellows who have already done great work. And among Americans, I would just mention three, especially Tom Woods, who is now happily working at the Mises Institute,

21:57who is not an economist, but nobody's perfect after all. Robert Murphy, who to his great credit didn't get a teaching job at a state university or state college, and Edward Stringham, who got one and has also been associated with the Mises Institute. Okay, there are more, but here I just mentioned the three who are most outspoken, most enthusiastically Austrian. Outside of, and that is probably because conditions are particularly bad in the US, right? Especially as far as economics is concerned, those of you who are academic economists know that, well, there's a kind of religion prevailing in the economics department.

22:47Either you are a neoclassical number cruncher or you are a philosopher. You don't belong. into the department, which makes it virtually impossible for anybody who doesn't go, doesn't pet the party line to be hired or to get tenure. Elsewhere, outside of the US, conditions are sometimes a little bit more favorable and as a consequence we have a couple of brilliant young people who might be the next Mises or the next Rothbard, who have been doing excellent work and I will just mention a few names. So we have in the Czech Republic Josef Schima, We have in France Nikolai Gurchev, we have Bogdan Glavan in Romania, Diana Kosta in Romania, Mateusz Makaj in Poland, Philip Bargos in Germany, Mario Spiridon in Romania.

23:36All of these, and I could continue the list with another five or ten names, and all of these guys are doing brilliant work, and they've all been summer fellows. So, all been part, all been products of the Mises Institute's mission of preparing the ground. So, ladies and gentlemen, I'll conclude here, just say, well, that your support is absolutely crucial to continue this work. And whatever you do, because ideas are a special, very special effect of production, it doesn't wear. Whatever your impact is, whatever your support is, your contribution is, it will necessarily carry far beyond the borders of the United States. Ron Paul may be the hope for America. Mises Institute is the hope for the world. Thank you.

24:40Thank you very much.