Enemy Of The State: Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard died before he could write the third volume of his famous History of Economic Thought, which would cover the birth and development of the Austrian School, through the Keynesian Revolution and Chicago School. With this six-lecture course, however, the History of Economic Thought is complete. 5. Mises and Austrian Economics The essence of Austrian economics is based on the analysis of individual action. In other words, it is about individuals doing things, having purposes and goals and pursuing them. Other schools of economics deal with aggregates, groups, classes, wholes of one sort or another, without focusing on the individual first and building up from there. Austrian economics builds on an earlier French and Italian tradition, really beginning with the Spanish scholastics in the 16th century, and then proceeding on in France with Cantillion and Turgot in the 18th century. Economics not only predated Smith by several centuries, but also was much better than Smith. It seems not to be an