Richard Ebeling

@GeorgeSelgin What is “Disgraceful,” as George says? Viewing war as a video game with artificial people. Treating war as a leisurely game of golf. Another example of Trump’s child-like lack of seriousness. That war is a spectacular sport to watch and cheer your team. Disgusting.

Disgraceful.

@EricLDaugh @ILA_NewsX Since most Americans believe in many of the 10 planks in Marx and Engels’s “The Communist Manifesto,” then banishing communism from the United States probably would require deporting two-thirds to three-quarters of the entire population of the country, maybe more.

@ILA_NewsX Communism must be banished from the United States.

🚨 BREAKING: New Yorkers are shocked after footage goes viral of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Tenant Director stating that white people will be HEAVILY impacted after they transition property "as an individual good to a collective good" Absolutely doomed.

@JonathanTurley The Cornell University English Dept. decision to change its name to “The Department of Literatures in English” as an anti-racism statement is like a parody of “Wokism “ and “political correctness.” Our time will be looked back on as “the age of mass intellectual delusions.”

... As it pledges to “making anti-racist teaching central in each one," the Department could dump "English" in favor of a more inclusive term. The Cornell English Department previously had this moment of self-loathing. jonathanturley.org/2020/10/15/cor…

Loyola University Maryland’s Department of English is the latest example of turning woke into a virtual state of insomnia. In addition to possibly renaming itself, it declared “Literature and the literary canons have been used to validate white supremacy.” thecollegefix.com/loyola-marylan…

@GeorgeSelgin To support George Selgin’s observation on Friedman’s change of views on fiat money and central bank “rules,” please see my book, “Monetary Central Planning and the State” (2015), Ch. 27 on, ‘Milton Friedman’s Second Thoughts on the Costs of Paper Money.’ amazon.com/Monetary-Centr…

Friedman admitted no such thing. He quit advocating monetary aggregate targeting in response to the post-1970s instability of velocity, but he still insisted on need for monetary control, eventually recommending a frozen-base-plus-free-banking alternative. cato.org/blog/milton-fr…

@PerBylund @caduca_candor Classical liberalism and libertarianism too easily get thrown around. Almost all 19th century liberals were for limited gov’t. In the 20th century, those liberals started calling themselves libertarians since “the left” stole the word “liberal.” It does not imply “no state.”

@caduca_candor No, only actual libertarianism vs LINO.

This recent surge of "libertarians" who express support for politicians because (!) they are "rightwing" or "anti-left" is really nauseating. Even if libertarianism to you is "rightwing" (it's not), the (pretend-)enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Both of them are statists.

@FriedrichHayek The new female prime minister of Japan says she admires Thatcher as a role model. But her fiscal and monetary policies are simply old-fashioned textbook Keynesianism. Plus, her acceptance of trade deals with Trump, which have government directing investments, is central planning.

How people use Stalin's ancient categories of "left" and "right" is truly moronic. Exactly what makes this Japanese politician "right wing"? cnbc.com/2025/10/04/san…

@FriedrichHayek I find that conversations and discussions rarely change the minds of those already holding fairly firm views on something. It is others who have not made up their minds or not as firmly, who are “listening in,” who are open to thinking and re-thinking.

I have a deeply conflicted understanding of this important point. Larry Wright taught me that conversation is critical to the advance of our understanding. Kuhn's work & Hayek's fraught life in science teaches me that across rival paradigms scientists do not want conversation.

@ojblanchard1 The question, in my view, is not what the distribution of income is, but what has brought it about. In the open, competitive market process, it is one of the unintended consequences of voluntary exchange based on what people think others’ services are worth. That makes it just.

Dear John I strongly disagree. When economists propose a policy, they have (hopefully) some welfare function in mind, which depends in some way on distribution. Distribution matters. I suspect you have one and you would not agree to a welfare function that gave all of GDP to one individual and none to the others.

@elonmusk Musk says that ability to predict the future is best measure of intelligence. So, does he passively wait around for Grok to tell him his next predicted thoughts, ideas, inventions? And just do with what Grot tells him, since Grot knew it before himself?

The ability to predict the future is the best measure of intelligence

@PerBylund Howard Buffett wrote a couple of articles for “The Freeman” in the 1950s. .

Warren Buffett may not "be" an Austrian, but he's well aware of Austrian economics--and it has obviously inspired his investment philosophy. And his father was an Austrian.

@FriedrichHayek If FDR had not dumped Wallace as the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket in the 1944 election, we might have had a “Manchurian Candidate” in the White House after FDR died in April 1945. (It is hard to say anything nice about anything FDR did, but, , , ,)

Wallace was a famously dishonest man who lied to people to advance his career and advance his idiotic political fantasies for designing and remaking society on the model of how Wallace redesigned farm crops and he remade prices using production, pricing, and trade restrictions.

"Liberal" for Vice President Henry Wallace meant the system Joseph Stalin had put into place in Soviet Russia.

In August 1940, Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, arrived in America from war torn Europe. One of the tragedies of war: if not for Mises’s coming to the U.S. there may not have been a postwar Austrian School in America. fff.org/explore-freedo…

@GeorgeSelgin Surely, in a truly free banking environment, there could be a spectrum of bank offerings based on experienced and anticipated depositor demands concerning the types and degrees of reserve-backed accounts. As long as everything is “transparent” and honest, what is the problem?

Note: neither I nor any other apologist for fractional reserve banking has ever suggested outlawing the 100-percent option: we only note that that option has never flourished w/out state support (cato.org/blog/friday-fl…). 1/2

@donelkins @jk_rowling If a child waves their arms and says, “I am a bird,” we may say, “What an imagination.” If a thirty year old does the same thing, we are likely to say they need help of a profession type. No matter what the thirty year old may do or say, they are not a bird.

@jk_rowling Love your books, but you’re really losing it on this issue. It’s a case of a very rich successful person punching down on the less powerful.

Western society is currently divided between people who know this is a man and are prepared to say so and those who know this is a man but lie out of obedience to an ideology. There is no third option. Literally nobody on earth thinks "Roxanne Tickle" is actually a woman.

@PeterBoettke But, Pete, you forget that however imperfect, Marx, Veblen and Keynes cared about “the people.” Those like Hayek and Buchanan only served the capitalist interests of white men. They sacrificed humanity for “the few.” Get with the message, Pete.

Let me be clear, there are many critical avenues to take exploring Buchanan’s thought in economics, political economy and social philosophy. And let me be further clear, Cooper is a good writer and engaging speaker, and the questions she wants to ask are valuable to get a constructive conversation about, but NOT this way. Treat Buchanan (or Smith or Hayek) the way you would like Marx, Veblen, and Keynes to be intellectually treated and we might make progress. It really is that simple.

Let me make something very clear, there is no archival evidence that links James Buchanan to Southern Democrats nor to Harry Byrd in particular. This is a figment of Nancy MacLean’s imagination, recently reproduced by Melinda Cooper. Listen to exact claim she makes at mark 1:01 … ‘translator’ of Byrd’s politics into academic research. This is so off mark as to really discredit what could be most fascinating history of ideas and practical affairs. @PhilWMagness This game of telephone scholarship is getting old. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new…

@GeorgeSelgin The likelihood of malinvestments going on in the 1920s before the crash was also suggested by Benjamin Anderson in some of his “Chase Bulletins,” and precisely due to relative price distortions beneath a Fed manipulated stable price level.

On the other hand, Mises and some other Austrian economists did complain that a malinvestment boom was underway in the 20s. See mises.org/online-book/sk….

"[Austrian economists] never identify [malinvestments] before the downturn." Neither, of course, do investors themselves! The _whole point_ of the theory is that no-one can tell where funds are being malinvested 'til the crash because easy money is distorting relative prices! 1/2

@PerBylund @oldhand_35 But how will you be preserved for posterior — I mean posterity? :-)

@oldhand_35 No, it's not being recorded.

Next up

@realDavidBJr Yes, I was at the 1975 Austrian conference. I have an article about it that will be in the July 2025 issue of “Future of Freedom.” I will link it when it has been posted.

@RMEbeling Did you go? What was it like?

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Austrian Economics conference in June 1975, held at the University of Hartford in CT. A great event with F.A. Hayek, Israel Kirzner, Murray Rothbard, W.H. Hutt, Leland Yeager, Gerald O’Driscoll, Roger Garrison, and others.

@PeterBoettke My understanding from Hayek’s comments at various times was the rift between a fruitfully developing microeconomics (merging “schools of thought”) and Keynes’s macroeconomics, which did away with a micro-underpinning for analyzing dynamic (monetary) processes.

Food for thought… what did Hayek think was lost, what was the agenda to be picked up where they left off?