Lecture series
Economic Policy
Economic Policy is a free lecture series (3 recordings, 0 hours) you can stream or download at freecapitalists.org, with Murray N. Rothbard.
Three short clips of Rothbard on economic policy under intervention and socialism. He explains why intervention tends to be self-perpetuating and why a socialist economy cannot solve the calculation and incentive problems of central planning.
Cover painting: firefighters battle a burning South Bronx tenement during the World Series, October 1977. See every painting in the art gallery.
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01
0:35 Download MP3
What is the calculation problem under socialism?
Rothbard argues a socialist government cannot calculate what to produce without ownership and prices. Without prices, Rothbard argues, a socialist state has no way to decide who does what work or at what wage, and the result is chaos.
Read the transcript 123 words
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02
0:49 Download MP3
What is the incentive problem under socialism?
Rothbard argues socialism's incentive problem is summed up as who will take out the garbage. The traditional socialist answer is moral incentive, a new socialist man molded to love the collective, which in practice means the state must assign unwanted labor like slaves.
Read the transcript 158 words
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03
0:40 Download MP3
How does intervention cause problems?
Rothbard argues government intervention tends to be cumulative and creates new side-effect problems. Each new problem then becomes the justification for further intervention rather than a reason to abandon the original policy.
Read the transcript 147 words
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Recording dates and topics for 0 of these 3 lectures come from the Mises Institute's page for Economic Policy, checked 2026-07-23. The series and lecture summaries above them are written for this archive from the transcripts.
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About this series
- Is Economic Policy free to listen to?
- Yes. All 3 mirrored recordings stream in the browser or download as audio, at no cost and with no signup.
- How long is Economic Policy?
- 3 recordings, 0 hours in total.
- Is there a transcript of Economic Policy?
- Yes. Every lecture in the series has one, 428 words in total, free to read on each lecture's page and searchable in the browser.
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