Fuller on No Free Lunch

 My former student and now colleague Caleb Fuller has written a new book, No Free Lunch, that is both readable and insightful. He dismantles economic myths people still believe, which makes his book well suited to our time.

As Fuller relates in an interview discussing the book and why it is important,

Economics is deadly serious business. For many people in the modern world and throughout history, getting the economics right means the difference between life and death. Inspired by Hazlitt and Frederic Bastiat before him, I wanted to communicate the basic principles of economics, and what it tells us about human flourishing, to a new generation.

Herbener Contributes to New Book on the Theory of Costs

My friend and department Chairman Jeff Herbener has a chapter included in the new book The Economic Theory of Costs: Foundations and New Directions edited by Matt McCaffrey and published by Routledge. Herbener's chapter is entitled "Time and the Theory of Cost" The abstract reads as follows:

Production costs in Neoclassical models account for the physical conditions of production (MPP) and consumer demands (MR) but fail to incorporate time across the structure of production. Incorporation of real time in production necessitates the recognition that capitalist-entrepreneurs make production decisions. They discount the MRPs of factors when buying them in advance of selling their output and they must speculate about the DMRPs of factors in the face of uncertainty of the future when deciding what they will pay for them. This chapter develops a theory of cost in light of capitalist-entrepreneurs acting in real time.

It is a joy to work with colleagues who continue to add to our understanding of the laws of economics--laws that declare the glory of the Lord.

The Mises Reader!

I have edited a new book The Mises Reader published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. In the introduction to the volume I write:

The Mises Reader is intended to give a taste of the many facets of Mises’s thought in a way that accessibly communicates most of his key contributions to the social sciences. It therefore includes excerpts from his larger and more technically demanding works side-by-side with shorter, more introductory articles and lectures. The finished product is sort of an intelligent person’s guide to the work of Ludwig von Mises. It is especially suitable for those with an interest in Mises, but find jumping right into Human Action, Socialism, or The Theory of Money and Credit rather daunting. The hope is to give the reader a survey of Mises’s insights in a format that nourishes his intellectual soul, while also whetting the appetite for his larger corpus of work. Those ready to dive into deeper Misesian waters are encouraged to pick up The Mises Reader Unabridged which contains all of the material in The Mises Reader plus over 125 pages of additional material, primarily from his more scholarly works. It is hoped that together these two volumes will foster a rising generation of citizens more thoroughly acquainted with sound economics and the principles of the free society.

Salerno on Rothbard's THE MYSTERY OF BANKING

Here is Joseph Salerno's nice introduction of Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking.



I concur that The Mystery of Banking is an excellent introduction to monetary theory, how fractional reserve banking affects the quantity of money and its purchasing power, and the monetary history of the United States. In fact, if you come to Grove City College to study economics, you will use it as the main text in our Money and Banking course.

Rothbard on Austrian Textbooks

Robert Wenzel at Economic Policy Journal has provided us with an excerpt from a question and answer period following a public address made by Murray Rothbard. The excerpt is devoted to a question about economic textbooks ignoring Austrian economics.




Toward the end of his response, Rothbard notes that, given the state of economic education when he was speaking, "You can't have an Austrian textbook, because no college would use it." Thankfully that is no longer the case. A number of professors teaching introductory economics courses in various college and universities are having success using Foundations of Economics, which uses an explicitly Misesian framework in its analysis. To better understand when my book fits in the tradition of Austrian economics, I recommend Jeffrey Herbener's review.

Books for Black Friday

Traditionally, the Friday after Thanksgiving is the beginning of what has become known as the Christmas shopping season. When I was in high school working at a retail store similar to Wal-mart, but on a smaller scale, I remember having to make sure our store was decorated for Christmas by November 10th. Now, of course, most stores begin trying to manufacture the happy holidays cheer the day after Halloween. Nevertheless, Black Friday is still seen as THE big day.

This year I decided to do my bit to help the puzzled Christmas shopper by providing a list of the most rewarding books you can give your loved ones who are thoughtful people interested in economics, theology, and perhaps even philosophy.

The following is a list of books that I've found important and have positively influenced my thinking in a number of areas.

Economics 

Heurta de Soto, Jesus, Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles.

The finest economic treatise of the decade. Anyone who wants to do serious work on monetary or macroeconomic theory should begin here.

Hulsmann, Jorg Guido, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism.

A magisterial biography of the great economist. Well written and a tremendous scholarly achievement.

Mises, Ludwig von, Human Action.

Mises' magnum opus. The most important book written in the social sciences ever.

Mises, Planning for Freedom and Other Essays.

This is an excellent introduction to Mises' thought in the form of a collection of essays, the vast majority of which are written for the intelligent layman.

Rothbard, Murray N., Man, Economy, and State.

Rothbard's magnum opus in which he builds a grand edifice of economic theory upon the foundation laid by Ludwig von Mises.

Ritenour, Shawn, Foundations of Economics: A Christian View.

My own economics treatise written as an introduction to economic thought built upon the economics of Mises and Rothbard. It shows why and how sound economics develops out of a Christian view of creation and man. Tom Woods says that my book "is everything a textbook on economics should be: clear, well organized, easy to understand -- and interesting!"

Theology

Bavinck, Herman, Reformed Dogmatics

This is a massive and, as a colleague of mine put it, stirring systematic theology in four volumes. Bavinck maintains a wonderful mixture of outstanding scholarship, theological orthodoxy, and devotion to Christ.

Machen, J. Gresham, Christianity and Liberalism

Machen's trumpet blast against theological liberalism in which he conclusively demonstrates that liberalism is not merely a different, modern expression of the Christian faith. It is an entirely different religion.

Machen, The Christian View of Man.

Machen, The Christian Faith in the Modern World.

The above two works are what we could call Machen's popular theology. They are based on radio addresses he gave on parts of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Philosophy 

Carson, Clarence, Flight from Reality.

A profound mix of history, political thought, sociology, and philosophy. Carson attempts to explain how the drive to reform society in the Twentieth Century was largely the result of intellectuals turning their back on reality.

Clark, Gordon H., A Christian View of Men and Things.

An excellent and thorough introduction to philosophy from a Christian perspective. Clark devotes separate chapters on epistemology, history, politics, ethics, science, and religion. 

Schaeffer, Francis, The God Who is There.
Schaeffer, Escape from Reason.

Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent.

The above three works make up Schaeffer's "philosophy trilogy." They may not be the last word on the subject, but they are pretty good first words.

Schlossberg, Herbert, Idols for Destruction.

A monumental critique of modern American intellectual culture from a Christian perspective. One of the great books written during the 1980s. Any Christian who is at all concerned about modern culture must read this book.

Scruton, Roger, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture.


The title is very accurate in this case. In this relatively brief work, Scruton explains and critiques the various philosophies that underlie many aspects of modern culture. If one wants to make sense of our contemporary world, this is an excellent place to start.

Economic Policy Turning Points

At one of those great free market institutions known as the yard sale, I was speaking to a mother who teaches her son history. They had recently been going through the Great Depression and noticed a number of similarities between Roosevelt's economic policy in the 1930s and our present economic policies, noting that FDR's regime was an important starting point for much of the welfare state. It occurred to me that, while Roosevelt certainly did his share of the heavy lifting, the descent from liberty began even earlier.

One can see the beginnings of the mercantilist corporate state in the minds of people like Alexander Hamilton and then Henry Clay's so-called "American System." Regardless of one's opinion regarding the causes of the Civil War (slavery, tariffs, or simply states rights vs. the Union), the legacy of that conflict was a major tipping of the balance of power to the centralized national state.

The Progressive era added the ideology of social engineering and achieving the great society through a benevolent bureaucracy overseen by wise technocrats. It was during Woodrow Wilson's presidency that certain key parts of the economic statist apparatus--the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax--were put in place.

FDR erected even more of the institutional structure of interventionism by implementing social security and the framework for the welfare state. Lyndon Johnson greatly escalated the welfare state with his Great Society programs. And then we left the international gold standard in 1971 under Nixon and we've had serious inflationary credit expansion ever since. Now the interventionist state is accepted by all branches of the national government--the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

In such a legal environment, what is our best course of action? The very bright historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr. has an idea that stretches back to Thomas Jefferson and 1798 and is worth serious consideration. Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century is Woods' tenth book and in it he makes the provocative claim that "states can and must prevent the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws within their borders." I have not read Nullification yet, but I do know that everything Tom Woods writes is worth reading.  Here's an interesting and, dare I say, educational interview of Woods by the Mises Institute's ever-dapper Jeff Tucker.