Special Replay:  Problems with Socialism - Episode 372
What is the problem with getting everything for free? Isn't that what socialism promises? Join Felice Gerwitz and Jeff Diest from the Mises Institute as they delve into this question.
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Recommended Books:

"Tuttle Twins " For younger children on economics

"Economics" by Henry Hazlitt. This book was written in the 1940s.

Today Felice welcomes the president of the Mises Institute - Jeff Diest.

Jeff Diest on Twitter here

Website: Mises Institute

Jeff takes an active role in what is happening in our culture. Not necessarily a political role. He thinks we ought to organize our society around civil institutions, around families, and around markets because markets in my view are, are cooperative.

Jeff states in this interview: I believe the marketplaces represent people coming together and doing things voluntarily and that a lot of people worry about what they think of as free-market fundamentalism. Regardless of our own particular viewpoints, we can start to agree when we look at the 20th century and what's unfolding in the 21st, that government is really not the best boss for us. And certainly not a faraway government in Washington DC that purports to rule over 330 million people with exceedingly diverse interests. We've become far too centralized in DC, and with the Supreme Court and with federal preemption of state law and that sort of thing. So long story short, I'm someone who had an opportunity to meet Ron Paul a long time ago when I was an undergraduate in college and just became interested in markets and economics as a result.

Felice:
We probably have some diversity of opinion on what we believe, but the point I want to make today is that we have to educate ourselves and be able to talk to people who think differently than we do, which is very important. And, and be civil about it, which is another thing that is very important. What concerns me, Jeff is the problem with socialism.

Jeff :

Ludvig von Mises was a giant of economics in the 20th century and to an extent, folks on the left and even some folks on the right tried to underplay or dismiss his contributions in the 20th century. But that's really been largely rectified. I think now, even his strongest critics would say that he was a very, very influential figure. And, and for our purposes today, he wrote a book in the 1920s called "Socialism." And it remains today, maybe one of the most readable and most accurate criticisms of a centrally planned economy. What would later unravel in the former Soviet Union? What would later bring into turmoil Nazi Germany, which affected his life in Vienna, Austria, very much. And ultimately as a Jew, he fled Vienna to Munich for a period and then ultimately to New York City, which is how he became you know, a de facto American later in his life.

So he wrote, "Human Action," (Free PDF on the Mises website here) which is one of his most important books a couple of decades later. And he wrote it in English, which was not his first language and it's really the comprehensive treaty or treatise, I should say for modern free market economics. So he was a very influential guy, but more importantly someone who really understood what socialism was and what it could evolve into up close. And someone who tried to caution the world about it.