George Reisman

I hope to soon make available to the general public recordings of my lectures in my final year of teaching at Pepperdine University. They will be offered wi thout charge and in the hope that whoever downloads them will make them available, also without charge, to as many people as possible; for example, by posting them on his website if he has one. The lectures will be accompanied by the pdf version of my main written work, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. Here's the link to it: drive.google.com/open?id=1hUVjK…

Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged and the founder of the philosophy of Objectivism died forty-four years ago on this day.

11_18_25 If you want to educate yourself on the subject of Marxism/Socialism, I urge you to read my book on the subject. Its title, which is as long as the book itself is short (795 KB), is Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived in Gross Error and Ignorance, Culminating in Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, and Mass Murder: A Contribution to Its Death Here's a link to my book, which is in pdf format: acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc… Feel free to send it to anyone you wish and to post it (or the essay itself) on your website if you have one. Provided you name me as the source, you can quote whatever parts of the essay you wish. Finally, please note that every entry in the essay’s table of contents is hyperlinked to the material to which it refers.

11_18_25 If you want to understand capitalism, socialism, and virtually every other aspect of economics as well, I urge you to read my main work Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, which was described by The Freeman as “the most comprehensive defense of capitalism ever written.” The link to its pdf version is drive.google.com/open?id=1hUVjK… Again, provided I am credited, please feel free to transmit/quote whatever passages you wish, and to post the above link and, indeed, the book itself, on your website if you have one. As before, please note that every entry in the book’s table of contents Is hyperlinked to the material to which it refers.

Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism I offer this lecture in the belief that it is highly appropriate for Columbus Day. A printed, Kindle version is available on Amazon.com for 99 cents. youtu.be/F7TsPg99mhI?si… via @YouTube

Our Half-Cent Paper Dollar The price of gold is now slightly above $4,000 per ounce. This implies that the price of today’s US paper dollar is slightly below one-half of a pre-1933, i.e., pre-New Deal, gold cent. Here's the explanation: The pre-New Deal dollar was defined as one-twentieth of an ounce of gold. A $4,000 per ounce price of gold is now the price of a one-ounce $20 gold coin, such as the US Double Eagle, which is actually stamped "twenty dollars." [See below.] This implies that the price of one-twentieth of an ounce of gold, which is the weight of a single gold dollar, is $200 in today's paper money, i.e., $4,000/$20. If 200 paper dollars is the price of one gold dollar, the price of 1 paper dollar is 1/200 of a gold dollar, i.e., one-half of a gold cent.

@FreeSmart @borkedsys Excellent comment! You understand it perfectly.

@borkedsys @GGReisman The goal is profit. Service, while important, is merely the means. Just covering expenses leaves nothing to motivate, nothing to fund other ventures, and nothing to build the next level. Also creates an information desert.

Capitalists Are Public Benefactors Capitalists, especially large capitalists, use the overwhelming bulk of their wealth (often ninety-five percent or more) to produce for the benefit of other people, who are almost always total strangers to them. These other people are the capitalists’ customers. In the process, the capitalists employ scores of millions of people to help them in their work, and who, because the capitalists must not only pay them but must compete for their labor, are enabled to be customers of capitalists throughout the economic system and thereby determine through, as Mises put it, “their buying and abstention from buying,” what it is profitable or unprofitable for the capitalists to produce. Leftists/Socialists appear not to understand any of this. They seem unaware of the fact that the wealth of the capitalists is employed in the production of products that go to others. Rather, they think of it as being of benefit only to the capitalists and wish for it to be taxed away. Note: You can obtain a free copy of the pdf version of Reisman’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by clicking on the link below. Please do so and feel free both to forward the link to others and to post it on your website if you have one. Here’s the link (you may have to put it in a browser to activate it): drive.google.com/open?id=1hUVjK…

Earning profit is the motive of the capitalists. The effect of their saving and investing the profits they earn is to benefit more people, more extensively. The classic example is that of Henry Ford. He started the Ford Motor Company in 1903, with a capital of about $25,000. When he died in 1946, he had accumulated a capital of about $1 billion. What enabled him to earn the profits, the saving and investing of which resulted in his fortune, was the introduction of massive improvements in efficiency, such as interchangeable mass-produced parts and the moving assembly line, which enabled him to sell new cars in the 1920s profitably for $300, down from $10,000 when he started.

@GGReisman I’m just curious, if capitalists are producing mainly to benefit strangers, why do they still need profit margins on top of costs? Wouldn’t covering expenses be enough if the goal is service?

Here is Track II of my lecture "The Toxicity of Environmentalism" delivered at the University of Michigan. youtube.com/watch?v=eKSbK-…

This is Part I of my lecture "The Toxicity of Environmentalism" that I delivered at the University of Michigan sometime in the 1990s. For elaboration, see my pamphlet of the same title and Chapter 3 "Natural Resources and the Environment" which appears in my book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics. You can download, without charge, the pdf version of my book by going to drive.google.com/open?id=1hUVjK… youtube.com/watch?v=f4kXRK…