The Peter McCormack Show20 Feb 2023

Economics in One Podcast with Ben Prentice - WBD621

Ben Prentice is a producer of What Bitcoin Did and co-creator of WTFhappenedin1971.com. In this interview, we discuss 'Economics in One Lesson', the seminal work by Henry Hazlitt. It's as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1946. We also talk through the disruptive force of AI, and, of course, we cover Bitcoin.

- - - -

Henry Hazlitt was an American journalist who reported on economics and business between 1913 and 1969 for publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the New York Times. He is credited with introducing the ideas of Austrian economics to the English speaking world. But his legacy was burnished through his 1946 book 'Economics in One Lesson'.

Hazlitt's ideas have been acknowledged as being foundational in the development of neocolonialism in the United States. 'Economics in One Lesson' has been praised since its publication by numerous prominent economists opposing Keynesian economics. But it was it's impact on decision makers such as Ronald Reagan that set it apart from other works. And it is still having an impact today.

Hazlitt's book has resonated with different audiences for over 75 years because it developed arguments that have remained timeless. Two central ideas have as much relevance today as they did in 1946: firstly, policymakers underestimate the cause and long-term effect of policy decisions; secondly, many economic beliefs are based on logical fallacies. It is a work that strips away the complexity of economics to explain it in clear and recognizable terms.

The question should therefore be why we live in a world that seems to be making the same mistakes that formed the basis of Hazlitt's original work. Part of this is because the underlying monetary system is inherently weak. But, it is also because decision-makers, either through ignorance or arrogance, believe that they can allocate capital better than the market. This is why Hazlitt's work remains important: we must remember the past or be condemned to repeat it.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(1080)

#202 - Barry S. Strauss - "We Are In The Final Stages Of Western Collapse"

Barry Strauss has spent four decades studying how empires rise and fall. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Ten Caesars and Jews vs Rome, he argues the West is repeating a pat...

18 Aug 1h 15min

#201 - Connor Leahy - The AI That Escaped: Inside OpenAI's Rogue Agent Incident

Connor Leahy has spent his career at the frontier of AI, from reverse-engineering GPT-2 as a student and co-founding EleutherAI to building the AI safety company Conjecture. He now leads US policy wor...

14 Aug 1h 9min

#200 - Sebastian Thrun - The Singularity Is Here & We Are Completely Unprepared

Sebastian Thrun has spent his career working on technologies that once sounded like science fiction, from self-driving cars and flying vehicles to online education and artificial intelligence. He now ...

11 Aug 1h 34min

#199 - Aubrey de Grey - The Man Who Says Ageing Can Be Cured

Aubrey de Grey believes ageing is accumulated damage in a biological machine and argues that medicine may eventually become capable of repairing that damage faster than it appears. He gives humanity a...

6 Aug 1h 17min

#198 - Michael Shermer - Truth, Conspiracies & The Things We Can't Explain

Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, host of The Michael Shermer Show and author of Truth and Conspiracy. He joins Peter to ask whether we are really living in a post-truth w...

4 Aug 1h 27min

#197 - Brian Keating - What Came Before the Big Bang & Does Time Exist?

Brian Keating joins me to explore one of the deepest unanswered questions in physics: what is time, and why does it only appear to move in one direction? Brian argues that time may not exist as a fund...

30 Juli 1h 39min

#196 - Sam Bowman - The U.K. Is Becoming a Poor Country

Sam Bowman joins me to discuss why Britain is approaching two lost decades of stagnant median wages and why the country is now far poorer than it should be. Sam argues that Britain does not lack talen...

28 Juli 2h 9min

#195 - Lisa McKenzie & Keith Gildart - Who Is Britain For? The Destruction of the Working Class

Britain did not simply leave its working class behind. Sociologist Lisa McKenzie and historian and former coal miner Keith Gildart argue that political and economic decisions deliberately dismantled t...

25 Juli 2h 13min