The Human Action Podcast

This week, Bob walks through Javier Milei’s 2026 address to the World Economic Forum, explaining the Austrian and neoclassical ideas behind Milei’s defense of capitalism—from Rothbard and Kirzner to Pareto efficiency and the welfare theorems. Related: Mises.org/HAP539aThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob lays out California’s proposed 5% wealth tax on billionaires, using it to explain why taxes on wealth are especially destructive, how different tax structures change incentives, and what recent migration data says about people voting with their feet. Related: Mises.org/HAP538aMises.org/HAP538bPoliticians don’t build prosperity. Entrepreneurs do. Join Keith Smith, Caitlin Long, Ryan McMaken, Per Bylund, and Timothy Terrell for our first event of 2026: Mises.org/OKCHA The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob talks with Dr. Keith Smith of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma about how posting cash prices, walking away from government money, and working with self-funded employers created an alternative to the cartel of big hospitals and insurers. Politicians don’t build prosperity. Entrepreneurs do. Join Keith Smith, Caitlin Long, Ryan McMaken, Per Bylund, and Timothy Terrell for our first event of 2026: Mises.org/OKCHA The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob applies Mises’ taxonomy of money and the regression theorem to Bitcoin, asking whether it should be classified as commodity or fiat money and whether Austrian theory really rules out Bitcoin ever becoming money. Related: Mises.org/HAP536aMises.org/HAP536bMises.org/HAP536cPoliticians don’t build prosperity. Entrepreneurs do. Join Keith Smith, Caitlin Long, Ryan McMaken, Per Bylund, and Timothy Terrell for our first event of 2026: Mises.org/HAHC The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob responds to James Rickards’ recent tweet on record U.S. gold exports driving an improved trade balance, walking through the official data on non-monetary gold, Trump-era tariff uncertainty, and the broader question of what chronic trade deficits really mean in a post-gold-standard world. Related: Mises.org/HAP535aPoliticians don’t build prosperity. Entrepreneurs do. Join Keith Smith, Caitlin Long, Ryan McMaken, Per Bylund, and Timothy Terrell for our first event of 2026: Mises.org/HAHC The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob revisits Böhm-Bawerk’s critique of the exploitation theory of interest to answer modern claims that billionaires like Elon Musk must have “stolen” their wealth from workers who supposedly create 100 percent of a firm’s value. Related: Mises.org/HAP534aMises.org/HAP534bPoliticians don’t build prosperity. Entrepreneurs do. Join Keith Smith, Caitlin Long, Ryan McMaken, Per Bylund, and Timothy Terrell for our first event of 2026: Mises.org/HAHC The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob talks with Dr. Peter Klein about the recent U.S. operation in Venezuela and the social-media backlash against “international law,” using it as a springboard to clarify what law is, how it can exist without a world government, and why Austrians care about polycentric legal orders. The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

This week, Bob talks with macroeconomist Roger Farmer—who places himself “between Keynes and Hayek”—about how twentieth-century macroeconomics evolved. They discuss how overlapping generations and search theory change the story on unemployment and asset prices, and where Professor Farmer thinks both neoclassicals and MMT advocates go wrong. Farmer contrasts the old “rocking horse” vision of the economy with his preferred “windy boat” metaphor, where the economy can drift for long periods, and variables like unemployment behave more like random walks than quick returns to a single steady state. Related: Mises.org/HAP532aThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob uses three recent controversies–Richard Murphy’s “Christmas all year” claim, Elon Musk’s net worth, and Ron DeSantis on the Great Depression–to clear up common economic fallacies about work, wealth, and wartime spending. The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob uses clips from his recent interview with Eric Weinstein to explain why Weinstein thinks gauge theory can fix how economists measure the cost of living, unify competing price indices, and handle changing preferences over time, and why Austrians shouldn’t dismiss him as a crank. He summarizes Eric’s claim that standard mathematical economics relies on the simplest kind of derivative, explaining how much of modern economic modeling is using the wrong math. Related: Mises.org/HAP530aThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

This week, Bob walks through two related debates: Hoppe’s criticism of Argentina's President Milei for not immediately closing Argentina’s central bank, and the follow-up exchange between Guido Hülsmann and Philipp Bagus on Mises.org over dollarization and the peso. Along the way, he reviews Mises’s distinctions among commodity, credit, and fiat money, the concepts of money substitutes and fiduciary media, and the interesting structure of Argentina’s short-term central bank debt Mises.org/HAP529aMises.org/HAP529bMises.org/HAP529cThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob walks through a recent WIRED video on “the economics behind the Great Depression,” correcting its claims on lax regulation, Hoover’s alleged inaction, the role of the Fed and the gold standard, and the notion that World War II ended the slump. Mises.org/HAP528aMises.org/HAP528bMises.org/HAP528cThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Bob revisits capital and interest theory to show why the textbook result “interest = MPK” only holds in a one-good world, and why in actual markets the interest rate emerges from time, prices, and capital valuation—not raw productivity. Mises.org/HAP527aMises.org/HAP527bThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Prompted by an online debate about whether economics belongs with the hard sciences, Bob reviews common defenses of mainstream practice and explains why they don’t settle the scientific status of the field. He outlines the Mises–Rothbard view: economics as praxeology (logic of action), closer to geometry than laboratory testing, with core insights on opportunity cost, incentives, prices, money, and policy constraints that don’t depend on forecasting the exact timing of crashes. Mises.org/HAP526aMises.org/HAP526bMises.org/HAP526cMises.org/HAP526dThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Dr. Jonathan Newman joins the Human Action Podcast to discuss his recent QJAE article disputing the claim that 'sticky prices' prevent markets from clearing--i.e., when the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded. Dr. Newman applies Mises’s “plain state of rest” to show that each voluntary exchange equates quantities supplied and demanded, so observed “stickiness” doesn’t imply non-clearing markets. Mises.org/HAP525aThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Is paying down the federal debt a recession trigger? Bob takes on the MMT claim and checks the record, citing US debt payoffs, Canada’s 1990s reforms, and ECB case studies. Conclusion: real wealth beats accounting tricks and paydowns aren’t a mechanical path to recession. Mises.org/HAP524aMises.org/HAP524bMises.org/HAP524cThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Dr. Alex Pollock joins the Human Action Podcast to explain his recent Congressional testimony on the Fed’s growing insolvency and mandate overreach. The Fed now admits to $243 billion in operating losses and nearly $1 trillion in mark-to-market losses, leaving it with negative capital of about $197 billion. Dr. Pollock explains how the central bank transformed itself into “the biggest 1980s-style savings and loan in history” — funding short while buying long, and bleeding cash as interest rates rose. Mises.org/HAP523aMises.org/HAP523bThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

In this episode of the Human Action Podcast, Bob unpacks Lerner’s Symmetry Theorem—the classic result that, under tight conditions, an import tariff is equivalent to an export tax. He applies the framework to recent 100% China‑tariff headlines, explaining why the dollar might strengthen in theory yet sometimes weakens in practice once retaliation and policy signaling are factored in. Mises.org/HAP522a Mises.org/HAP522bThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

This week, Bob tackles growing concerns about artificial intelligence, automation, and mass unemployment. Using the principles of marginal productivity and comparative advantage, he shows how the standard economic arguments still apply—even in the age of ChatGPT and robotics. Responding directly to viral tweets from Matt Walsh, Bob dismantles the popular belief that AI will inevitably destroy human labor markets. He explains why highly skilled labor has always coexisted with less-skilled workers and why new technologies, despite their disruptive effects, tend to improve standards of living for everyone over time. The Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree

Jonathan Newman returns to join Bob in a critique of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s viral theory of investment bubbles. Yudkowsky states that the bad investment during bubbles should be felt before the bubble pops, not after. They argue that his perspective—while clever—fails to consider the Austrian insights on capital structure, time preference, and the business cycle. They use analogies from apple trees to magic mushrooms to show why Austrian economics provides the clearest explanation for booms, busts, and the pain that follows. Mises.org/HAP520aMises.org/HAP520bMises.org/HAP520cMises.org/HAP520dMises.org/HAP520eThe Mises Institute is giving away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Get your free copy at Mises.org/HAPodFree