Ludwig von Mises is identified in The Bob Zadek Show as one of the founders and icons of the Austrian school of economics, and as the namesake of the Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics in Auburn, Alabama. Across three episodes he is invoked less as a biographical subject than as an authority: the man whose name the Institute carries, the source of the “calculation problem,” and a link in a chain of libertarian thinkers that runs from Frédéric Bastiat through Murray Rothbard.
The Mises Institute and the Austrian school
Bob Zadek opened a March 2021 episode by describing his own path to economics: a required first-year course at what he called a somewhat mediocre university, taught from Paul Samuelson’s textbook, which he found big and fat and heavy and full of graphs, and which turned him off the subject immediately. He said it was only later, after finding his political home in libertarianism, that he discovered Austrian Economics and asked himself why he had not been taught it. He told listeners that when one thinks of Austrian Economics one is driven to the leading Austrian economists, those who founded the discipline, and named Ludwig von Mises as one of the founders and icons of the school Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021).
Zadek then introduced the Ludwig von Mises Institute, more formally the Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics and known in shorthand as the Mises Institute, located in Auburn, Alabama, and welcomed its president, Jeff Deist, for an hour of conversation. The episode’s stated purpose was to show how someone with an Austrian orientation would analyze the difficulties then facing the world, how an Austrian economist would approach the problem and solve it, and how that solution compares with the one being imposed by state, local and federal governments Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021). The excerpt of Deist’s own remarks breaks off at the point where he begins to speak, so the episode as preserved here records Zadek’s framing rather than Deist’s exposition.
The calculation problem
Mises appears in a September 2022 episode through Thomas DiLorenzo, who was discussing the knowledge problem and the failure of socialism. DiLorenzo recounted teaching an MBA class at Loyola University in Baltimore in the 1990s, where he asked students whether they could think of any product produced by the Soviet Union under socialism that was competitive in world markets. A student who was an army officer answered “AK-47s.” DiLorenzo said he had to remind him that since there was no private property and no free-market prices in the Soviet Union under socialism, as far as we know they might have spent $10,000 producing every AK-47 that would sell for $1,000, because there were no profit and loss statements under socialism Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
A second student suggested caviar, and DiLorenzo noted that he had just published an article about pollution in the Soviet Union having almost eliminated the sturgeon population, the source of caviar. His conclusion was that the Soviets never produced a single product, despite all their efforts, that was competitive in world markets with capitalism. He gave two reasons: what Friedrich Hayek called the “pretence of knowledge,” the idea that a group of politicians could have superior knowledge to the thousands of individuals who make the economic world work; and the absence of free-market prices determined by supply and demand, which he likened to street signs in a city. Without prices, he said, you have no idea how to produce things — an automobile has something like 2,000 separate parts, and the windshield alone might involve 20 different types of glass Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
It is at this point that DiLorenzo assigned the two formulations to their authors: Ludwig von Mises called this the “calculation problem,” while Hayek called his theory the “knowledge problem.” DiLorenzo added that he considered the absence of prices an even more important reason why socialism failed and will always fail than Hayek’s pretence of knowledge Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
Zadek responded by calling the AK-47 explanation telling, and said it explained much about economic life in the United States. He argued that defenders of a top-down economic system can always point to something produced that other people will want at the price, but that the question is what is behind the curtain — what was lost in producing that one victory, and what the money would have been used for otherwise. He compared this to wealth transfers: if you point only to the recipient and ignore the person from whom the wealth was transferred, it looks like heaven, because you see only half the story Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
Mises in a lineage
In a September 2021 episode, Vít Jedlička described reading Frédéric Bastiat at age 13, having come across his books by coincidence, and becoming a keen supporter of laissez-faire from that point on. He recommended Bastiat’s The Law, which he described as summarizing all that is wrong with modern society although it was written some 250 years ago, and remarked that Bastiat is not very well known in France Founding the Free Republic of Liberland (2021).
Jedlička placed Mises within Bastiat’s legacy. He called Bastiat the grandfather of the libertarian movement, from whom Mises and Rothbard and all the other thinkers, as he put it, were taking the source. He said he was keen to push Bastiat’s idea forward and to free society from the oppression being exercised by the state, and that through the book he could understand how much energy can be unleashed. He went on to describe studying economics at the Economic School of Prague and Charles University, and at the CEVRO Institute, which he described as one of the few libertarian universities, based in Prague, and which he recommended for an MBA. He also described starting a think tank called Reformy.cz, which he said has some 20 million views on YouTube and other channels, and later a political party that got one member into the European Parliament Founding the Free Republic of Liberland (2021).
Jedlička’s conclusion from that political experience was that even a majority in the European Parliament would not allow one to change the system, and that it might be much easier to start a new country than to try to fix the system from within. He cited a quotation he attributed to Maxwell — that it is much easier to stop fighting the existing reality, change things, and let reality change itself — as what got him going on the Liberland story Founding the Free Republic of Liberland (2021).
Across episodes: no development
Mises is touched on in three episodes — the March 2021 conversation with Jeff Deist, the September 2021 conversation with Vít Jedlička, and the September 2022 conversation with Thomas DiLorenzo — and the excerpts show no development in the treatment: he is named as a founder and icon of the Austrian school, as the namesake of the Mises Institute, as the author of the “calculation problem,” and as an heir to Bastiat, with no episode revisiting or revising what an earlier one said.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts supply no biography of Mises: no birth or death dates, no birthplace, no account of his career, teaching posts or emigration, and no list of his books. They do not state when the Mises Institute was founded, who founded it, or what it does beyond being located in Auburn, Alabama and having Jeff Deist as its president. They do not explain the content of the calculation problem beyond DiLorenzo’s summary, nor how Mises’s version differs from Hayek’s knowledge problem. The Deist excerpt breaks off before he speaks, so his own account of Austrian economics is absent from the record here.