What have I been up to?

Well, I have been out of touch for over a month.  The first part of that was due to basketball.   But I have since returned to economics work with writing and lecturing.

Last week I made my annual trip to lecture at the Foundation for Economic Education in the Advanced Seminar in Austrian Economics.  I first made a trip to FEE in 1980 and I returned to FEE often since then as a student and then as a faculty.  There is something very special about the place.  For many years the "specialness" of FEE was in reality little more than a memory of student days and the excitement of wrestling with the ideas of economic freedom for the first time.  But Richard and Anna Ebeling have done an amazing job at FEE.  Students from around the world migrate to FEE and have a wonderful educational experience.  Richard is an amazing intellect --- deep historical knowledge, great passion for the truth, and a commitment to Austrian economics and liberalism that is awe inspiring.  Anna is an amazing hostess and a feisty intellect in her own right.  She matches Richard's commitment to the ideas of political and economic liberty.  It is always fantastic to be in their company and they have created an educational reality at FEE that for the current generation of students far surpasses the experience I had in 1980.  I just am amazed with the work they have done, and continue to do, at FEE.

At FEE, I was able to connect again with several close friends within the Austrian economics community: Bill Butos, Bruce Caldwell, Steve Horwitz, Sanford Ikeda, Peter Lewin and Lawrence White. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to see Mario Rizzo.  But I was fortunate to see lecture, and talk to, Professor Israel Kirzner, who in my opinion is the greatest of all the Austrian economist since 1950.  Kirzner's talks were fantastic and they took off from the recent NYT article on heterodox and orthodox economics and he explained in wonderful detail why orthodox neoclassical economics could not serve as the foundation for an intellectual case for the market economy. 

The students at FEE were intellectually curious, the lectures by the faculty were first rate, and the conversation among the faculty was stimulating.  I had the great opportunity to talk with Peter Lewin about many topics, including not only economics and management theory but religion, and also tennis and rugby, over breakfast and dinner.  On Friday night after the program had officially ended, FEE hosted a wonderful talk by Amity Shlaes on her new book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.  I had met Amity before, but never really had the opportunity to talk with her at any length.  But over dinner and at her talk she  proved to be extremely intelligent and engaging.  I hope her important book gets an extremely wide reading by both intellectuals and the general public.

I drove to FEE so I could visit family in NJ after the seminar. Unfortunately, I ran into a lot of traffic both on the way up and coming back home due to accidents, road construction and sheer volume.  Thankfully, I had my I-Pod and I was able to listen to many of Russ Roberts podcasts.  When I tired of learning, I would switch to music.  One of the things I love about I-Pods is that I can create "collected works" collections of artists.  I like to listen to artists from their first to their latest albums so I can see the continuity and discontinuity in their work.  This drives Rosemary (my wife) nuts --- she and my kids also don't really like my taste in music.  On this occasion, I listened to Bob Dylan --- who I believe has written the most important "protest songs" of the 1960s and 1970s.  His song about Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter from 1975 still raises great emotions in me as it did when I was a teenager growing up less than a few miles from Rahway State Prison.  Economics, Dylan, and cannot forget NY/NJ pizza --- pretty good times. 

I am looking forward to making the trip again to FEE and encourage all students of Austrian economics and classical liberal political economy to do the same.

Comments

[Matt C.]

Your editorial in the Journal, Economic Affairs was right on point. Your note regarding the Malthusian impact on Africa was especially critical with the addition of the natural resources. I forget where I read or heard it, but the author spoke about natural resources. They said that the natural resources are truly not “natural.” Up until that point I hadn’t thought about it at all. Crude bubbling up to the surface is nothing more than a hindrance to farming. A rock containing iron ore or aluminum is just a rock, not a resource. It is human ingenuity that makes the ability of that resource come to life. This was the problem with Malthus and the classical economists. They did not understand how technology can make things better, cheaper and more abundant.

I have always thought that if Africa had better property rights I could make a killing. Rail road’s could be put into place, water pumped from far off places to farms. But because most countries in Africa have found, with the help of rich western countries, to violate property rights enriches those in charge. There will be no irrigation to places where that water is most highly valued, there will be no rails going to the places that would benefit most from those rails. Those natural resources lie dormant because human ingenuity hasn’t been able to extract the benefits from them.

How is it that a place in the middle of a no-man’s land desert can become a thriving tourist attraction? How is it that a man can put rail across the northern states without the help of the government? How is it that the uneducated of Europe can create a country so economically robust, but poorly educated Africa can’t without the help of the West? There was no one there during the beginning of the colonies that redistributed the wealth of Europe to the western states. There was no one there providing aid to farmers on the plains. The only difference seems to be a “lawless” country in the west and a overly regulated continent. I am glad to hear progress is finally being made, hopefully places like Zimbabwe and the Sudan will pull their governments out of the hole by providing freedom in the form of property rights.