View in browser
A few weeks ago someone asked a pretty good question on one of the monthly Q&A calls we do at Liberty Classroom in addition to our on-the-go, listen-whenever courses: if you could eliminate one concept from mainstream economics, what would it be?

I gave two answers: "perfect competition," an absurd model that is used to justify no end of government intervention, since nothing in reality ever lives up to its unrealistic standards; and "public goods" theory, which is used to generate the consent of slow-witted people to government provision of a variety of goods and services.

("Perfect Competition" is well refuted in chapter 11 of Milton Shapiro's Foundations of the Market Price System, and public goods theory in chapter 10 of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.)

Let us recall that Ludwig von Mises envisioned the economist as the thorn in the side of the power-hungry. As he wrote in Human Action:

It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.

An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well founded, the more they hate him.

But for a long time, the discipline of economics, as well as its practitioners themselves, have been no such thing. Rather, equipped with novel doctrines like the ones I mentioned at the beginning, economists have given aid and comfort to those in power, providing intellectual cover for the various destructive things they do.

Likewise, try taking a "government" course in college -- as I foolishly did one semester at Harvard. Your textbook takes for granted that of course government needs to do X, Y, and Z. It doesn't even bother justifying these things. The book you'll read proceeds as if the need for government intervention is simply obvious, so all that remains to debate is its extent.

Well, my friends, when a certain Dr. Ron Paul invited me to create a government course for him, I remembered the inane propaganda I'd had to endure as a student in a government class, and I thought: I am so ready to do this.

So in my course we actually ask the questions whose answers are simply assumed in the mainstream courses.

We do not automatically assume that government needs to do X, Y, and Z. That needs to be justified.

And the major thinkers -- like John Rawls, for example, but many others as well -- whose ideas have been used to promote continuous growth of government power, are subjected to systematic critique.

Then we have this problem: the general public, most of which has been educated in schools that have a vested interest in keeping the narrative going, genuinely believes that without their overlords their kids would be getting their limbs blown off in mines for three cents a day, their computer monitors would be exploding for lack of regulation, and they would search in vain for a sandwich that wouldn't kill them instantly.

None of that survives my course, either.

Here are the topics (these are available in audio or video format, online -- I don't ship out DVDs):

1. Introduction
2. Natural Rights Theories: High Middle Ages to Late Scholastics
3. Natural Rights Theories: John Locke and Self-Ownership
4. Natural Rights Theories: Argumentation Ethics
5. Week 1 Review

6. Locke and Spooner on Consent
7. The Tale of the Slave
8. Human Rights and Property Rights
9. Negative Rights and Positive Rights
10. Week 2 Review

11. Critics of Liberalism: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the General Will
12. Critics of Liberalism: John Rawls and Egalitarianism
13. Critics of Liberalism: Thomas Nagel and Ronald Dworkin
14. Critics of Liberalism: G.A. Cohen
15. Week 3 Review

16. Public Goods
17. The Standard of Living
18. Poverty
19. Monopoly
20. Week 4 Review

21. Science
22. Inequality
23. Aid to Developing Countries
24. Discrimination
25. Week 5 Review

26. The Socialist Calculation Problem
27. Working Conditions
28. Child Labor
29. Labor and Unions
30. Week 6 Review

31. Health Care
32. Antitrust
33. Farm Programs
34. War and the Economy
35. Week 7 Review

36. Business Cycles
37. Industrial Policy
38. Government, the Market, and the Environment
39. Prohibition
40. Week 8 Review

41. Taxation
42. Government Spending
43. The Welfare State: Theoretical Issues
44. The Welfare State: Practical Issues
45. Week 9 Review

46. Price Controls
47. Government and Money, Part I
48. Government and Money, Part II
49. Midterm Review
50. Week 10 Review

51. The Theory of the Modern State
52. American Federalism and the Compact Theory
53. Can Political Bodies Be Too Large?
54. Decentralization
55. Week 11 Review

56. Constitutionalism: Purpose
57. The American Case: Self-Government and the Tenth Amendment
58. The American Case: Progressives and the "Living, Breathing Document"
59. The American States and the Federal Government
60. Week 12 Review

61. Monarchy
62. Social Democracy
63. Fascism I
64. Fascism II
65. Week 13 Review

66. Marx I
67. Marx II
68. Communism I
69. Communism II
70. Week 14 Review

71. Miscellaneous Intervention: Postwar Africa
72. Public Choice I
73. Public Choice II
74. Miscellaneous Examples of Government Activity and Incentives
75. Week 15 Review

76. The Industrial Revolution
77. The New Deal I
78. The New Deal II
79. The Housing Bust of 2008
80. Week 16 Review

81. Are Voters Informed?
82. Is Political Representation Meaningful?
83. The Myth of the Rule of Law
84. The Incentives of Democracy
85. Week 17 Review

86. The Sweeping Critique: Robert LeFevre
87. The Sweeping Critique: Murray N. Rothbard
88. Case Study: The Old West
89. Economic Freedom of the World
90. Week 18 Review

I sell this course for $50 at TomWoodsHomeschool dot com. Until midnight tonight, you can get it as a free bonus when you pick up Andy Keusal's excellent course on money -- which he created for homeschoolers, but which anyone seeking adult enrichment will surely also enjoy.

You get a discount on it, too: take 15% off Andy's course with (what else?) code WOODS:
 
Forward your receipt for Andy's course to bonuses@tomwoods.com and we'll send you my government course for free! But the deal expires at midnight, so get clicking....

Tom Woods






 






This email was sent to junelesley@gmail.com
why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences
Tom Woods · PO Box 701447 · Saint Cloud, FL 34770 · USA