Homeschooling isn’t just about math lessons and reading charts—it’s about who gets to shape how your kids see the world.
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Jonathan Newman from the Mises Institute, a homeschooling dad, economist, and libertarian who breaks down why he and his wife chose to keep their kids out of government schools, how they approach reading and “adulting” skills at home, and why there’s really no such thing as a “neutral” education.
We talk about:
- Teaching kids to read with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons—and why it works for some kids and not others
- The big differences between boys and girls when it comes to focus, readiness, and timelines
- Why homeschooling is so much more efficient than public school (and what to do with all that extra time together)
- The “adulting crisis” and how kids actually learn real-life skills like changing a tire, paying bills, and mailing a letter
- What Austrian economics is, why the Mises Institute exists, and how Jonathan teaches multiple perspectives instead of one government-approved narrative
- Capitalism vs. socialism, and why socialist systems struggle to get food, prices, and production right
- Indoctrination, values, and why parents—not the state—should decide which ideas get center stage in their child’s education
If you’re a Christian, liberty-minded, or simply skeptical of the one-size-fits-all system and the stories your kids are being told about history, money, and government, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.
Follow Dr. Jonathan Newman on X - @NewmanJ_R
Discover free books, articles, and lectures on economics and liberty at Mises.org
Learn more about Green Ember: Helmer in the Dragon Tomb—the new prequel book from S. D. Smith—and explore the companion video game now available on Steam: sdsmith.com/helmer
Perfect for parents seeking meaningful, courage-building stories for kids ages 8–12.
📘 The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide
Thinking about homeschooling but don’t know where to start? Cheryl created this comprehensive guide, compiling insights from interviews with over 120 homeschooling families across the country. From navigating state laws to balancing work and home life — this eBook covers it all. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident on your homeschooling journey.
Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How To.
I'm Cheryl, and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling?
How do you do it?
How does it differ from regionto region?
And should I homeschool mykids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these
(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome.
And with us today, I haveJonathan from the Mises
Institute.
Jonathan, how are you?
Speaker (00:37):
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, thank you for being here.
I had gotten talking to you andpeople from your company, and I
kind of wanted to showcase thison the podcast because I like
having resources, but I like theresources to also be from
people who are homeschoolingfamilies so that we can, you
know, talk a little bit aboutthat and talk about different
resources that we can usebecause it is overwhelming as a
homeschooling family to know,you know, what to use, what the
(01:03):
best thing is, when to switch.
So I'm excited to talk to youtoday.
So how old are your kids?
Speaker (01:08):
I have a seven-year-old daughter, a five-year-old son,
and a one-year-old daughterwho's about to turn two.
She actually uh was born onChristmas Day.
So we're looking forward tothat celebration.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I bet that was fun when mom was in the actually,
did you guys home birth or wereshe at a hospital?
Speaker (01:24):
No, it was at a hospital.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, mine were too.
But yeah, so hey, we're gettinga little baby, but mom's not
here on Christmas.
Speaker (01:33):
Yeah, it w it was uh it was a great uh Christmas sort
of surprise.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yes, awesome.
Yeah, my son is seven years oldand I have a three-year-old
daughter.
So we've been at this for youknow a couple of years.
I know there's some controversyon like, do you have to start
so young?
Do you not have to?
But I guess we are actuallyhomeschooling them from like day
one, you know, they're likelearning how to eat, learning
how to talk, learning how towalk.
So, you know, when we think ofit in those terms of just real
(01:58):
life, then we're alwayshomeschooling them.
But yeah, it's been it's beeninteresting kind of working with
my son with things, seeing someof the pushback and then some
of the differences between boysand girls.
Are you home with the kids oris your wife doing that?
Speaker (02:12):
Uh my wife is home with the kids.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so so that's kind of interesting coming from
the the spouse's perspective.
Um, how much of it do you likedo you take on?
Are there things that you'llyou'll be like, I I got this?
Maybe some of the more realworld stuff, change attire or
something.
Speaker (02:28):
Well, yeah, so uh I I'm um pretty handy around the
house.
And so like whenever I'm fixingsomething or building
something, working around thehouse, I always try to get the
kids there with me.
And even though sometimes theycan that that would actually
make the process slower.
So because they'll get in theway, they'll be asking
questions, they might getdistracted, they might do
something the wrong way.
(02:49):
I always try to get theminvolved because I think it's
important for them to just, youknow, see what is it like to
take care of the house.
But even beyond that, um, whenuh my daughter is uh working on
some of her homeschool work andand I happen to be around, I'm
I've always like to be there toanswer her questions, help her
out.
Uh I I'm sort of a math nerdand science guy, so I like to
(03:10):
help her out with those uhsubjects.
But also I I like reading withher and and she enjoys reading
as well.
So one thing that uh that wedid early on, is as soon as Lily
is my oldest, she's seven, assoon as she was able to read on
her own, uh we instituted a rulewhere um she at bedtime she
does not have to go to sleep,she doesn't have to turn the
lights out, she can stay up aslong as she wants to reading, as
(03:33):
long as she's doing just that,then she can you know stay read
in her bed until she's uh readyto fall asleep.
And and I think this has beenreally successful.
We talked with other parentswho are doing that same sort of
thing.
Um, and it seems to be a reallygood way to uh inspire that's
that habit of reading at anearly age.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I love that.
I I can't believe she's alreadyreading by herself.
I have the boy, seven-year-old.
So it's been like Yeah, yeah.
Read like his first elephantand piggy book this month.
And so it was like a wholelike, ooh, all right, it can be
done.
It can be done.
We're just trying to roll withthat now.
Were there any like tips ortricks or like curriculum that
(04:11):
you or your wife found workedbetter than others?
Speaker (04:13):
For for reading in particular, we uh we used a book
called uh I I I can't rememberthe exact title, but it's
something like Teach Your Childto Read in A Hundred Days.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
In a hundred easy lessons, yes.
Speaker (04:23):
A hundred easy lessons, yeah.
And uh that that was it wasgreat.
And so we started at I thinkaround when she was four years
old, late four, about to turnfive.
Um, and that was great.
It uh teaches reading in a in ain an easy and fun sort of way
for the kids.
Um and also she just she justenjoyed it.
It wasn't uh it wasn't achores.
(04:45):
Like she she's always wanted toread things on her own.
She's always wanted to be ableto read the the word that we're
on in in some book that we'rereading together.
And so it was it was fun forher.
Now, uh Joshua, myfive-year-old, I we we tried to
start it with him, but then werealized it wasn't really going
as well.
And so we said, okay, we'llwait a little bit later.
That might be the boy and girlthing that you're talking about.
(05:07):
Uh so we we've sort of hitpause on that.
And that's that's really one ofthe great things about
homeschooling is you can dothat.
You can you can see that yourchild is not quite ready for
something, and you can hitpause, you can come back to it
later, or you can approach it ina slightly different way uh
later on.
So that's just the I love theidea of homeschooling.
I think it's uh it has so manybenefits like that.
(05:29):
So like you can meet your childwhere where they're at, uh, you
get to invest time in them, solike you get to be a part of
them learning things, learninghow the world works.
Whereas like if you ship themoff to off to school, then
somebody else is getting thatblessing.
Somebody else is is getting thechance to to teach them uh
those things.
What one other I know I'm sortof like jumping ahead or or not
(05:50):
really answer the question thatyou asked, but another great
thing about homeschooling Ifound is how efficient it is,
like how like you don't have tospend, you know, six hours,
eight hours going throughlessons, uh like you can you can
knock things out very quickly.
And a lot of learning justhappens incidentally, like you
don't have to plan somethingahead of time, it just sort of
happens on its own.
Like where I people people talkabout the adulting crisis, that
(06:13):
there's a bunch of you knowkids coming out of college who
can't do like normal adultthings.
But if if a child is aroundtheir parents more often doing
adulting things like payingbills, going to the post office,
you know, changing attire,those sorts of things, then they
they see that.
So they see how it's done andthey learn along the way.
But if they're you know off atschool, at a public school
(06:34):
somewhere, uh then they don'tsee those essential skills and
you know, you know, basic thingsthat we take for granted.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Absolutely.
And funny story about theteacher child to read in a
hundred easy lessons.
I had done that with like somany people on my podcast
recommended that one.
So I'm like, this is it, thisis the curriculum, like
everybody loves it.
But it was like everybody wholoved it talked about it on the
podcast, right?
Like, not the people thatdidn't like so so I did it.
(07:01):
Lessons one through 50 with myson went well.
That 50, lesson 50 was like himtrying to climb Mount Anne.
I was like, you know what?
Maybe we just need to take abreak.
So we did that.
We took a few months off, maybesix months off of like actual
formal reading, and then we wentback to it starting at lesson
one.
And I was like, let's just gothrough it all again, like
(07:23):
really solidify what we learned,relearn it.
He got to lesson 50, and it waslike, my God, he hates it.
He can't he can't do these bigparagraphs that they were asking
him to do.
And I'm like, man, maybe it'sjust not the way he learns to
read.
So, you know, I tried a fewdifferent things, but it just
goes to show you that there isno one curriculum because it's
(07:45):
gonna be different for everychild and even every child in
your household, like you wereexplaining, you know, for your
daughter versus for your son.
Maybe it's a timing thingbecause boys do tend to like
their synapses in their brainconnect a little bit later.
Um you know, it makes moresense to them later on, so don't
push it early on.
But sometimes it's just theway, you know, like I'd rather
(08:06):
learn by, you know, inputting itinto, I don't know, if you're
trying to search for somethingon YouTube, well, how do I spell
this?
Hmm, sounds like, and you know,of physically doing it.
So that's funny.
And yes, I agree with youwholeheartedly on the I when you
said the adulting thing.
I was thinking of my nephew whowhen he, you know, was in
college, I think he got a ticketand he went to he didn't know
(08:28):
how to like write the envelopeto to mail the ticket back.
And he just mailed cash, likehe was going to just mail them
cash.
And it wasn't even saying heowed anything at that point.
It was like, what do you pleayou may owe up to?
And he just put that amount ofmoney in cash.
And he asked my sister, how doI write out the envelope?
And she's like, Oh my goodness,there's so many things going
(08:49):
on.
He's just like, it's you don'tmail money ever.
This is not saying that youneed to mail the money, and you
would mail a check.
And why don't you know how towrite out an envelope?
And like, as parents, when yousend your kids off to these
institutions from the timethey're three or four till
they're 18 and they're there forlike 40 hours a week, you think
that they're coveringeverything.
(09:11):
Like they're not saying to theparents in the beginning of the
year, like, I'm gonna go overalgebra, you go over envelope
writing, you know?
Like it's just we assumethey're doing it all, but lo and
behold, they are not.
Speaker (09:24):
Yeah.
So you you were talking aboutthe uh differences in boys and
girls, and it just thinking backto when Lily was but we were uh
doing the reading lessons withLily, and like she was just
grasping it, it was going well.
You know, it wasn't perfect,like obviously there were some
lessons that were more difficultthan others, but but she seemed
she seemed to enjoy it.
But then when when our son,when we're trying to do the same
(09:46):
thing with our sons, likethere's he's more easily
distracted.
He definitely seems moreinterested in like running
outside, playing in the dirt,throwing a ball around, you
know, tackling somebody, thatsort of thing.
So yeah, there's there's bigdifferences between uh boys and
girls, but also just between allchildren.
So, you know, everybody's anindividual.
So that's that's one of thegreat great things about
homeschooling is you can meetthem where they're at.
(10:08):
And also if they're if they'rewith you while you're doing
these day-to-day things, thenthey're ready once it is time
for them to go out into theworld on their own.
They're they've seen thesethings before.
They can write out an envelope,they can change a tire, they
can fix things around the house,all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah.
And what made you guys decideto homeschool in the first
place?
Speaker (10:24):
Well, it was it was a bunch of different things.
It wasn't uh just there wasn'tlike one main thing.
So we I'm I'm a libertarian, soI'm very skeptical of of the
government.
I don't think that thegovernment ought to be in charge
of of education.
So I mean that was one reason.
I I know for a fact that whatchildren are presented in public
schools is gonna be thegovernment narrative.
(10:44):
They're gonna they're gonna betaught that what the government
does is is great, uh, that thefree market has problems that
need to be fixed.
They're gonna get the thegovernment narrative on US
history as well.
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Speaker (12:00):
And so I didn't want my kids to obviously I want them
to be taught multipleperspectives, but I don't want
them to be taught oneperspective.
I don't want them to be taughtprimarily that that one
perspective.
It's not like uh uh the reasonI'm homeschooling is so I can
indoctrinate my kids on this oneparticular perspective.
I just think that it's moreappropriate to display a menu.
(12:22):
It's like, here's what thesepeople think, here's what these
people think, here's what Ithink is your parent as somebody
who's raising you.
I think that's you know totallyuh legitimate.
And I think that that role uhshould be borne by parents and
not by you know some somebodywho is uh a part of the
government.
So that's one thing.
Also, uh we're uh we're uhChristian, so we want to instill
Christian values in our in ourchildren.
Uh we want to teach them thatthe the Bible is true, that uh
(12:45):
Jesus is king, those sorts ofthings, that they're not going
to be taught in in a normal aregular school.
But also on a practical level,like I was saying before, it's
just more efficient.
Like I don't want my kids to towaste away these wonderful
years of their life, uh, youknow, waiting on other kids,
standing in line, you know,sitting in a desk with nothing
(13:06):
to do.
So I remember that.
So I I I went to public school.
I obviously I I like the schoolthat I went to.
I like my teachers, I like myfriends there, but it's just
that's not something that Iwanted uh for my kids.
I wanted them to be able to runand play and learn and and do
all these things without havingto do all the waiting that
happens in in a public school.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, yes.
So and and I think it'sdifferent too now than when we
were in school, right?
It was there was the waitingand all that, but it's like, I
mean, now you can't even mentionGod in school or Jesus, you
know.
It's just I think even forChristmas time, it's Christmas
time right now, they only letyou talk about songs that are
like generic about snowmen orthis and that.
It's it's just gotten wild.
(13:47):
But yet every other religionseems to be okay.
Like we have to be inclusive,you know, be okay with every
religion except with you.
How do you do that?
Because I mean, as a conspiracytheorist, I guess, or somebody
that just thinks like maybe whatthey're telling us isn't the
only way.
Like I've always wondered, youknow, like what if what if
Germany has a differentperspective about World War II?
(14:09):
Like, are they learning what'sin our American textbooks for
that?
You know, I probably not.
So, and then and to think aboutlike, wow, every war,
everything that we've gotteninto probably has not only two
sides, but multiple from nomatter what uh where it's coming
from.
So, how do you do that?
(14:29):
Like, do you pick a curriculumfor history, for economics, or
do you just kind of pick somedifferent things or real world
things?
Speaker (14:37):
So this is something that I have a lot of experience
with.
Uh so I I teach college levelcourses.
And so I um I'm here at theMises Institute, we're the
global headquarters, so tospeak, of of Austrian economics.
And so that's one particularschool of thought in economics.
And when I'm teaching mycollege courses, I don't just
give them the Austrian view onthings.
(14:58):
Like I don't just, you know,straight up teach them like
what's in Ludwig von Mises'human action or Bertie
Rothbard's Man Economy andState.
I I present them and I try tobe very objective when I do
this.
Like, here's what theKeynesians say, here's what the
monetarists say, here's what thesupply siders, the public
choicers, here's what all thesedifferent schools of thought say
about this particular topicthat we're looking at.
(15:18):
And by the way, here's alsowhat the Austrians say.
And oftentimes I'll do it inthird person.
I don't say, here's what wethink, or here's what I think,
here's what the Austrians say.
And so I think, I mean, that'sjust how you have to approach
it.
Uh, yeah, I mean, you have touse your best judgment because
you can't, it's it would beimpossible to teach every
perspective on every singleevent or every single topic, but
(15:38):
you've got to use yourjudgment, what what what views
are most commonly held and wherewhere is the tension, like what
what is the difference betweenwhat this school of thought is
saying and what this school ofthought is saying?
And what I found is that thisis actually uh a great way to
teach because if you think aboutit, one thing that motivates us
to learn more about somethinguh is uh is knowing that there
(16:00):
is a debate, knowing that thereis some difference of opinion,
because uh like we we we'reinherently valenced.
Like we we have we have tofigure out what do I think about
this particular topic, asopposed to just being told
here's uh here's the here's whatyou need to believe.
Um because if you're just toldhere's what you need to believe
or here's what you need to thinkabout this, then it's like it
(16:21):
just turns into like this rotememorization, just spit back
what the teacher just uh toldyou.
But once you know that there'sa debate that and like you get a
chance to think criticallyabout it and decide these people
are making good points here,these people are making good
points there, and you make yourmake up your own mind in that,
then you've got that interest,you've got that motivation on
the part of the student to learnit.
So, I mean, I can't say, likeyou were asking about particular
(16:45):
curricula to use.
I can't, I don't really haveany resources there to give you
except to say that you just gotto use your judgment.
Like what views are you goingto present?
And know that when you dopresent multiple views, then
you're actually giving yourchild this chance to become more
motivated in that particularsubject.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
It it kind of brings up what Iwas like going through this
whole episode in my head lastnight because you know, I I, you
know, I run my Instagram pagefor the podcast, so I'm always
kind of like it and because weare in the Christmas season, you
have, you know, people that aredoing the the Santa thing and
on all that good stuff.
And then you have the peoplethat are saying, Well, I'm not
(17:22):
going to tell my children thatthere is a Santa because I don't
want them to think I lied tothem about that, but then they
should trust me about Jesus.
And I, you know, I'm like, I Itotally understand that like a
thousand percent.
And then there's the other partof me that I'm like, it's a
satanic holiday anyway.
So that's like the thirdcompartment there.
But I'm like, well, you know,we do do the Santa thing.
And I'm I'm thinking about itin my head, and I'm like, you
(17:44):
know what?
I don't really want my kids totrust me on anything.
I want them to do the research.
I want them to like set up acamera if you want to see if
Santa comes on Christmas Evenight, you know?
Like, be be curious about it.
Ask the questions.
What's logical?
And then research Jesus.
And, you know, and I was kindof looking that stuff up last
(18:05):
night too.
Like, okay, well, how much isproven?
And I was the movie The Casefor Christ, which I guess is
really a book, but I watched themovie, The Case for Christ, you
know, came to mind.
And I'm like, I mean, that guy,he went out to, he was an
atheist that went to disprovethat the resurrection never
happened and ended up becoming apastor in the Christian faith
because the information that wasthere was so overwhelming to
(18:28):
Jesus and and and theresurrection that he was like,
Well, I all right, I give in.
And so, like, that's what Iwant from my kids.
I don't want them to just belike, Well, mom says it, so it's
true, or like, mom said Santawas real and she lied.
So she lies about everything.
Like, I want them to dig forall of it.
And I don't think there's anyright answer, but it's just how
(18:48):
how you parent.
And as long as you're doing itwith some sort of intention, not
just, well, because everybodyelse does it, then I think
you're okay.
If you can talk to your kidsabout that and have that
conversation one day, like,yeah, let's let's dig after this
together.
Let's find, let's go throughsome documents.
Speaker (19:02):
I agree 100%.
Uh one thing that I often dowith my kids is I is I'll play
like a sarcastic sort of devil'sadvocate.
So somebody, uh some questionmight come up.
I I don't even, I can't evencome up with an example.
And I'll I'll just sort of likeblurt out an obviously wrong
answer.
And of course, that's reallyfun for kids too, because they
get to say, Daddy, no, it's likethat's not right, daddy, or
(19:24):
something like that.
So I I like I like to so it'sit's not like it's not lying to
them.
It's getting them to I'm justtrying to get them to practice
critical thinking.
So don't accept everything Isay, don't accept everything
that you read, don't accepteverything that you watch on the
TV.
Think critically about it.
And and that's that's all wereally want for our kids is for
them to be prepared so that whennew things come up, when
(19:46):
they're adults, they have thatskill set.
They're their brains are areprimed to not immediately accept
what they're being told.
And that's in my mind, that'sthe probably the best possible
outcome for a well roundededucation.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
So where was the MisesInstitute born from?
Like what is it?
Explain it to us.
Speaker (20:05):
So the Mises Institute is an educational organization.
Sometimes people call us athink tank, but we're not really
a think tank.
We exist to teach and doresearch in Austrian economics.
And so Austrian economics, as Isaid earlier, is a particular
school of thought in economics.
It's it's the one that's themost radically laissez-faire,
radically free market.
(20:26):
The the ideas that are sort offoundational for us are those of
Ludwig von Mises and his greatstudent Murray Rothbard.
So we we look to them as likewhat they wrote is sort of our
foundation.
Of course, they didn't, it'snot like Austrian economics is
done with them because we'recontinually trying to build on
them, you know, write newthings, apply what they what
(20:47):
they wrote to new events and youknow, allow it to reach a
broader audience.
So the the way that we do thatis we have you know student
programs.
Our our flagship program isMises University, which is a
week-long crash course ineconomics that we host here in
Auburn, Alabama in the summer.
But we have graduate programsas well.
So graduate students can cometo a week-long seminar called
(21:08):
Rothbard Graduate Seminar.
We have academic conferences,we have events all around the
country, we have publications oflike publications for scholarly
audiences.
So we have uh a lot of articleson online for popular
audiences.
We are, like I said, our goalis to teach Austrian economics
and put it in front of as manypeople as possible.
(21:29):
So I mentioned that theconclusions of Austrian
economics are like radicallylaissez-faire, like very, very
free market.
I mean, so that means that alot of there's a lot of overlap
between us and libertarians.
We're not a politicalorganization, but you can find a
lot of our scholars write abouta libertarian uh political
philosophy.
So what does what what what areuh natural rights?
(21:50):
Uh what should what is the roleof government in this area or
that area, that that sort ofthing.
And so that's another thingthat we're known for as well.
But we're based here in Auburn,Alabama.
The reason we're based here isbecause back in the mid-1980s,
uh there were a few professorsat Auburn University that were
associated with Austrianeconomics.
And so that's it got startedactually on Auburn's campus, but
(22:12):
now we're adjacent to campusand and separate from Auburn
University.
And so we have a beautifulcampus where we have events here
and scholars writing all sortsof things, students coming for
events, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So is it in person or online?
Speaker (22:26):
So uh most uh our events are in person.
So at Mises University, we havestudents come from all over the
world here.
Uh anywhere from in the past wehad as many as like 300, I
think, but we I think werealized that we couldn't handle
that many all at one time.
And so it's now it's closer to100, 100.
But yeah, they come here inperson.
Same with our academicconferences.
We do have online programsavailable.
(22:48):
So recently we we started doingbook clubs, online book clubs,
uh, for undergraduate studentswho are interested in learning
more about Austrian economics.
So I've I've led a couple ofthose.
Um some other scholars have ledones, um, but those are those
are virtual, and that's becausethey happen during the the
school semester, so it's harderto get people to travel for for
that sort of thing.
But we try to do as as muchin-person as possible.
(23:09):
That was actually true evenduring the the whole COVID
fiasco.
So like we were one of the veryfew organizations on the planet
that were that were stillholding like in-person events,
just to sort of give you aflavor of the the sorts of
people in the in the culturehere.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, I'm surprised they let you.
They didn't stand out therewith tear gas or something.
Speaker (23:27):
So so there was there was a law passed in in Alabama
that uh like public eventscouldn't be held, location or
buildings that were open to thepublic couldn't be any longer.
And so we just put up signs outfront saying not open to the
public.
So we just put a sign on thefront door, it's not open to the
to the public, but we just youknow kept doing everything
normally.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Okay, so this is for like college level age?
Speaker (23:49):
So it's different.
So we but we have onlinecourses.
Uh so I recently made one forlike high schoolers.
It's called Lessons for theYoung Economist, and the target
audience was homeschoolfamilies.
So I was trying to provide a aneconomics curriculum that
homeschool families could adopt,uh, and that's mainly for high
schoolers who want an econcourse.
But I mean, I also uh have uhsome children's books for like
(24:12):
very young kids.
So like here's here's onethat's for the probably for the
youngest age, it's like arhyming version of this parable
in economics about about uhdestroyed resources.
But we also have academicconferences for you know faculty
around the world.
So it we really the whole agerange.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
And when you say Austrian economics, are you
talking about like the is thatjust where Murray Rothbard and
Ludwig von Mises were from?
They were from Austria.
Speaker (24:39):
Ludwig von Mises was from Austria.
Uh Murray Rothbard was uh fromthe United States, uh, but the
school of thought got its startin Austria, and that's why it's
called Austrian economics.
It actually got started with aguy named Carl Menger in the
late 1800s, and then he had astudent, Eugen von Bombaarwerk.
His student was Ludwig vonMises, and then with the uh
World War II, a lot of theseeconomists, including Mises,
(25:03):
immigrated over to the UnitedStates, and that's really how
Austrian economics got afoothold in the United States.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Thinking about homeschooling, but don't know
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Well, I've interviewed a fewpeople on the topic, actually
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You can grab the link to thisebook in the show's description
or head on over to thehomeschoolhow to.com.
Speaker (26:03):
And so Mises would hold seminars at NYU where people
like Murray Rothbard wouldattend.
But there's also, you know,many great American Austrian
economists.
It sort of sounds like anoxymoron or something, but
Austrian economists, the schoolof thought, who reside in the
United States.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Is this how the economy in Austria was?
Speaker (26:22):
Not particularly.
So I mentioned Eugen vonBombawork, which is sort of a
mouthful, is it's a big namethere.
He was uh a finance minister,uh, I think at one point.
No, uh, Karl Menger actuallydidn't have any formal training
in economics, and he's sort oflike the founder of the school
of thought.
He was he was a journalist.
He tutored some of the of themonarch's children in economics,
(26:44):
and he wrote this book,Principles of Economics.
Um, and so that's really whereit got its start.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, and I I find it interesting because I mean I'm
more of the libertarian aspectas well.
But we were back this summer,we were at in Mystic,
Connecticut, and we were likegoing through the C pour in the
museum there, and there was ahuge mural on the wall of a
whale.
And my husband would knowbetter what they actually
painted it with because heunderstood it.
But um, it was the whole thingwas basically anti-capitalism.
(27:13):
I mean, someone like me, like,I didn't know that.
I went to public school, I'mlooking at it, I'm like, oh
yeah, this is pretty cool.
This is a life-size whale.
And then the curator was like,Well, this is actually, you
know, they're showing because itwas a whaling exhibit, and
they're showing how capitalismwas the reason for all of these
horrible things that happened tothe whales and why the whales
(27:34):
are going extinct, and howcorrupt it was um, you know, to
just allow these people to gooff onto these ships for three
to five years and kill, youknow, 60 whales and eventually
certain kinds went extinct andor close to it.
And, you know, I'm listening toher and I'm like, yeah, okay.
And I was like, but I don'tknow, is the alternative better?
(27:56):
Are the people in governmentgoing to protect the whales?
Some sometimes, yes.
But sometimes if they benefitfrom it, or if their golf body
is a whaler, they might put inlaws to make whaling okay.
You know, like so I thought itwas super interesting.
Like, okay, yes, every I guessI came to the conclusion that
(28:18):
every form of government isgoing to have its setbacks, its,
it's, you know, weaknesses.
But what is the best one out ofwhat we're given?
I mean, we can look at the Imean, I I the opposite of
capitalism, I would assume,would be communism, right?
Speaker (28:34):
Yeah, yeah.
So I mean definitely Yeah, theopposite of capitalism would be
socialism.
So that's one thing that uhLudwig Mamisis wrote about a lot
is like what actually definessocialism, what defines
capitalism.
And for him, it boils down toprivate property.
So if if we have privateproperty, then it's capitalism.
But if if the private ownershipof the means of production is
(28:55):
abolished, then it's socialism.
And that's actually notsomething that socialists would
deny.
They would say, yeah, that'sthat's what we're arguing for.
We want collective ownership ofthe means of production.
On this point, one of Mises' uhgreat contributions to economic
thought was his critique ofsocialism, where he he showed
that if we don't have privateownership of the means of
(29:15):
production, then we don't havemarket prices for them.
And if we don't have marketprices for those factors of
production, it means that wecan't calculate profit and loss.
And if we can't calculateprofit and loss, then we're we
can't rationally arrangeproduct.
We can't we don't know thatwhat we're producing, how we're
producing it, how long it'staking for us to produce it is
what's actually in the bestservice of what consumers want.
(29:38):
Whereas in the capitalistsystem, if we have profit and
loss that's regulatingentrepreneurs' production plans,
then we know that factors ofproduction are being put in
their best possible place.
So that's why in socialistexperiments, wherever they've
been tried, whenever they'vebeen tried, they run out of
food.
They they make the wrong kindsof shoes, they they don't make
(29:59):
enough of this, they don't makeenough of that.
And it's because they don't,they literally don't have the
information, they don't haveprices to help them figure out
where should resources be usedin production to provide for
what consumers want.
So the interesting thing aboutthis critique is that it
sidesteps the usual critique.
The usual critique of socialismis the incentive problem.
(30:21):
So like under socialism, ifwe're all making the same amount
of money, then why wouldanybody choose the dirty jobs or
the dangerous jobs?
Why would anybody, you know,you know, spend a long time
learning how to do brainsurgery?
So like why, why, why wouldanybody do that?
Like, if we're gonna all bepaid the same, I'm gonna be a
food critic.
That's gonna be my job in thesocialist commonwealth.
But but the socialist responseto that, which is very dubious,
(30:44):
the socialist response is, well,human nature itself is going to
change.
Once we implement socialism,everybody's gonna be okay with
you know providing for theircomrades.
Everybody would be okay withdenying themselves, you know,
making whatever sacrifice theyneed to, as long as it's good
for the community.
And so Mises was like, okay,fine.
I I don't think that that'strue.
(31:05):
I don't think human nature isgonna change, but we'll grant
you that assumption, you stilldon't know how to produce what
you need to produce.
So, like, even if the centralplanning board is made up of the
greatest people, that you know,great experts, and everybody is
willing to contribute forcontribute towards the
production of what people want,they're still not gonna know how
to produce what people want andneed.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Well, okay, how come they don't know how to produce
it?
Or is it more that you did afavor for me, so I'm going to do
this favor for you?
I don't really care about theoutcome if there's enough food
or shoes that people likebecause I don't care about
making money because they'restuck buying this anyway.
Speaker (31:46):
I don't think I understand the question.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Like, okay, so like why can't they just say, let's
take a um, let's take a poll.
What kind of shoes do peoplelike?
Or how much food is out there?
Who's hungry, who's not?
Like, what is the differencebetween, and I'm not arguing
with you because I worked forthe government for 16 years, and
I definitely agree, but I'mwondering why our government,
which is socialist, like ifyou're a government worker, I
(32:09):
was basically I was a glorifiedwelfare recipient, is what I
like to say for 16 years.
And why did we mess up wherethe money went so often?
Like, why can't we just pull?
What do people want?
Speaker (32:23):
Yeah, yeah.
So why not why not just issuesurveys?
So, like, we'll give everybodya survey, they'll tell us what
they want.
So there's there's quite a fewproblems with that.
But like one issue is verypractical.
So if you think about what theUS Census is, like we send out
the survey to everyone, and wecan't even get you know good
collections on that.
(32:43):
We can't get accurateinformation, we can't pull
everybody.
So, like, there's just apractical problem with that.
But also another practicalissue is that it takes a long
time to administer these surveysand collect the information and
then figure out what to do withit.
Like, how do we deal with thisinformation?
In the meantime, technology ischanging, people's preferences
are changing, the supplies ofnatural resources are changing.
(33:05):
So everything is constantlychanging in our economy.
And those changes areaccommodated in when we have
profit and loss, you know,guiding entrepreneurial decision
making, but all of that isabsent in a social disorder
framework.
So by the time you actually getthe information, it's it's
outdated.
But also, people don't reallyknow what they want until
(33:25):
they're actually faced with achoice.
So one example that I oftentalk about is sometimes I walk
into the grocery store with alist of things that I need to
buy.
Usually my wife gives it to me,but then I walk out with
something completely different.
So I so maybe they didn't havea certain item, and so I had to
pick something else, or maybe Ijust changed my mind, or maybe
you know, something caught myeye that, oh yeah, that'd be
nice to have in the pantry, andso I'll grab that uh something
(33:49):
extra, something that wasn't onthe list, right?
So we make these decisions onthe spot.
Surveys are net the informationthat's in a survey, it's if
it's honest, if it's accurate,it's necessarily given in
advance, all the while our ourpreferences might change, and
also like what we actually wantis demonstrated in action,
right?
So that's that's another issue.
(34:10):
One final thing that I'llmention here with the with the
survey is that so suppose weactually do collect all of this
information, suppose it'stimely.
So so we will just assume awaythe the time issue there.
The one issue that the thecentral planning board that's
collecting all this informationfrom the surveys is they have to
turn those survey responsesinto numbers to use in
(34:33):
production.
So, what sort of informationwould we get from a survey?
I would rather have a red pairof shoes than a blue pair of
shoes.
I would rather have bananasthan apples, right?
So it's all of these rankings.
Like what goods do I wantcompared to other goods?
It's just a ranking of goods.
But so they get that for youknow millions of people.
How do they turn that into weneed to produce this many tons
(34:54):
of bananas, we need to producethis many tons of of or excuse
me, this many pairs of red shoesin this size, this many pairs
of blue shoes in that size, andso on and so forth for all these
things.
There's not a mathematical waybecause you've got rankings over
here, but you need cardinalnumbers.
You need to assign a certainnumber of workers to this
factory, you need to say, thisacre of land is going to be used
(35:15):
to make this particularagricultural product, this acre
of land is going to be used forhousing, this acre of land is
going to be used for that.
So you have to make those sortsof specific judgments, specific
decisions, which you can't dojust based on a ranking of what
somebody prefers to what.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
That that makes a lot of sense when you think about
it in terms of food.
You know, why do thesesocialist countries end up with
no food on the shelves?
And it's like, okay, well, yes,if you are producing just all
bananas and maybe there ends upbeing um a banana allergy or
something goes wrong with thebatch.
It's like, okay, we we didn'thave the demand to like make the
(35:53):
the cost go up so that when thecosts go up, you can say, hey,
we need another factory to oryou know, another farm to start
making bananas for us.
Because you you don't have themoney there now because you've
collected all of the tax money,but it's probably already been
divvied out.
So there really is no thatbasically you're taking away
supply and demand, right?
You're just saying, this iswhat I am supplying you with.
(36:15):
I don't care if you demand itor not.
Speaker (36:17):
Yeah, exactly.
There are some forms ofsocialism that don't even have
money.
So they just take money outentirely.
So all of the decisions arejust made by central planning
boards.
Like, where do I work?
Well, wherever the planningboard tells me to.
What am I going to consume?
What goods am I going to bringback to my household?
It's whatever rations I getfrom the uh central planning
board.
But you're but you're right,there are other forms of
(36:39):
socialism that do try to retainsome role for money.
Usually it's in consumer goods.
So people get like thesetickets, these tokens that they
get for for working for acertain number of hours.
And so they get these ticketsand then they can take that to
the grocery store and spend themon different uh food items that
they want.
But the what Mises showed isthat even if you have a market
for consumer goods, if you don'thave private ownership of the
(37:02):
means of production, then youcan't calculate the cost of
production and compare it to therevenues and say, yes, this is
a productive, profitable use ofresources, or no, that is not a
productive and profitable use ofresources.
We should we should expand theprofitable ones and diminish or
take away the unprofitable onesso that we're producing what
(37:22):
exactly what consumers want andneed.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yeah, that is super interesting.
They don't teach us about thatin school a whole lot.
What to finish up, how do yousee, like, what is their reason
for favoring socialism inschool?
Because I know I even had thatschool of thought that's like,
well, why would there need to bebillionaires if they're
homeless people?
They should redistribute itall.
(37:44):
And you know, that's until Ihad kids and I was like, wait,
and kind of worked for thegovernment for 16 years looking
around, like, all right,everybody here just watches
YouTube all day.
Like there's like, there's liketwo people working.
This cannot be the best use ofour time and money in our tax
dollars.
But why do you think they'repushing that in in schools?
There's obviously an agenda atplay.
Speaker (38:04):
Yeah, um, yeah, there's definitely an agenda.
I think it's there's a lot ofheterogeneity.
So it probably just depends onthe school or the teacher that
you have, and it depends ontheir own values.
So obviously, some areasthere's going to be more
teachers who are biased towardssocialist ideas, and so students
in their classes are gonna beintroduced to like a or be
introduced to a favorableopinion of of socialism more
(38:26):
than other schools and otherareas.
But yeah, so I mean that'sthat's the thing.
Like you can't, there's there'sno way to teach things in a
completely neutral way.
It's just because at the verybasic level, you have to choose
what to teach.
And by choosing what to teach,you're saying stating your
preference for teaching dad asopposed to teaching something
else.
But of course, it seeps infurther than that because like
(38:47):
the way that you presentsomething is is necessarily
going to be a biased.
And if you think about it,there's a selection issue here.
So, who what ideas and whatbiases and values are people who
sign up to teach in publicschools?
What what ideas are they gonnahave?
And they're gonna be favorabletowards the government, they're
gonna think that the governmentcan solve problems more often
(39:08):
than not.
They're they're gonna be, youknow, in line with what the
government is saying.
Um, and so I think that thatmight be another reason.
But also we just get, you know,plain old top-down, the
government says we're gonna beteaching this, and so that's
what everybody's teaching.
And obviously, the government'sgonna choose, you know, a
curriculum that aligns with withwhat they want, whether that's
you know, this this war wasactually a good idea, or it's
(39:31):
okay for the government tointervene in this part of the
economy, or whatever thegovernment wants to to
indoctrinate, then they're gonnathey're gonna do it.
I just use the wordindoctrinate.
A lot of people use that aslike a bad word, but I don't
think it's a bad word.
I think it depends on whatdoctrines you're teaching,
right?
So I I'm I am 100% okay withindoctrinating my kids, right?
So I want to teach them thatGod is real, that you know, free
(39:55):
markets work, that I want toteach them certain things about
history.
Of course.
With the caveat of what I saidearlier, it's like I want them
to be able to think criticallyabout it.
But I mean, there's certainprinciples and values that I
want to instill in my children.
So everybody, like anybodywho's involved in teaching, is
doing some level ofindoctrination.
The homeschooling choice issaying, I want to be the one
who's in charge of that, notsomebody else.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah.
And the government is not goingto teach your kids that the
government can be wrong ordangerous.
They're not going to tell youthat they're dangerous
sometimes.
Absolutely.
So where can we find out moreinformation about the Mises
Institute for anybody that wantsto check it out?
And I'll put it in the show'sdescription as well.
But why don't I have you lay itall out here?
Speaker (40:34):
Sure.
So our website is Mises.org.
That's N-I-S-E-S dot or G.
And there on that main page,you can find lots of articles.
At the top, there's a tab thatsays Academy, and that's where
you can find the econ coursethat I mentioned earlier.
If you go over to the libraryor to our bookstore, then you
can see the children's booksthat I've written.
And these children's books areabout Austrian economic
(40:57):
principles, like the brokenwindow fallacy, Austrian
business cycle theory, money andbanking, like where did money
come from?
It's a great little kid storyabout that.
And so you can find all of thatat our website.
We have podcasts, we havearticles, we have uh student
programs, so so come check usout.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Oh, yeah, I'll definitely get that book out.
That is so fun.
And it's never too early tostart talking to our kids about
that stuff.
So thank you so much, Jonathan,for being here today.
This has been so fun to talkabout.
Speaker (41:23):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been great.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the
Homeschool How To.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group Facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly
(41:48):
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How To.
I'm Cheryl, and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why are people homeschooling?
How do you do it?
How does it differ from regionto region?
And should I homeschool mykids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these
(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome.
And with us today, I haveJonathan from the Mises
Institute.
Jonathan, how are you?
Speaker (00:37):
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, thank you for being here.
I had gotten talking to you andpeople from your company, and I
kind of wanted to showcase thison the podcast because I like
having resources, but I like theresources to also be from
people who are homeschoolingfamilies so that we can, you
know, talk a little bit aboutthat and talk about different
resources that we can usebecause it is overwhelming as a
homeschooling family to know,you know, what to use, what the
(01:03):
best thing is, when to switch.
So I'm excited to talk to youtoday.
So how old are your kids?
Speaker (01:08):
I have a seven-year-old daughter, a five-year-old son,
and a one-year-old daughterwho's about to turn two.
She actually uh was born onChristmas Day.
So we're looking forward tothat celebration.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I bet that was fun when mom was in the actually,
did you guys home birth or wereshe at a hospital?
Speaker (01:24):
No, it was at a hospital.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, mine were too.
But yeah, so hey, we're gettinga little baby, but mom's not
here on Christmas.
Speaker (01:33):
Yeah, it w it was uh it was a great uh Christmas sort
of surprise.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yes, awesome.
Yeah, my son is seven years oldand I have a three-year-old
daughter.
So we've been at this for youknow a couple of years.
I know there's some controversyon like, do you have to start
so young?
Do you not have to?
But I guess we are actuallyhomeschooling them from like day
one, you know, they're likelearning how to eat, learning
how to talk, learning how towalk.
So, you know, when we think ofit in those terms of just real
(01:58):
life, then we're alwayshomeschooling them.
But yeah, it's been it's beeninteresting kind of working with
my son with things, seeing someof the pushback and then some
of the differences between boysand girls.
Are you home with the kids oris your wife doing that?
Speaker (02:12):
Uh my wife is home with the kids.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so so that's kind of interesting coming from
the the spouse's perspective.
Um, how much of it do you likedo you take on?
Are there things that you'llyou'll be like, I I got this?
Maybe some of the more realworld stuff, change attire or
something.
Speaker (02:28):
Well, yeah, so uh I I'm um pretty handy around the
house.
And so like whenever I'm fixingsomething or building
something, working around thehouse, I always try to get the
kids there with me.
And even though sometimes theycan that that would actually
make the process slower.
So because they'll get in theway, they'll be asking
questions, they might getdistracted, they might do
something the wrong way.
(02:49):
I always try to get theminvolved because I think it's
important for them to just, youknow, see what is it like to
take care of the house.
But even beyond that, um, whenuh my daughter is uh working on
some of her homeschool work andand I happen to be around, I'm
I've always like to be there toanswer her questions, help her
out.
Uh I I'm sort of a math nerdand science guy, so I like to
(03:10):
help her out with those uhsubjects.
But also I I like reading withher and and she enjoys reading
as well.
So one thing that uh that wedid early on, is as soon as Lily
is my oldest, she's seven, assoon as she was able to read on
her own, uh we instituted a rulewhere um she at bedtime she
does not have to go to sleep,she doesn't have to turn the
lights out, she can stay up aslong as she wants to reading, as
(03:33):
long as she's doing just that,then she can you know stay read
in her bed until she's uh readyto fall asleep.
And and I think this has beenreally successful.
We talked with other parentswho are doing that same sort of
thing.
Um, and it seems to be a reallygood way to uh inspire that's
that habit of reading at anearly age.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
I love that.
I I can't believe she's alreadyreading by herself.
I have the boy, seven-year-old.
So it's been like Yeah, yeah.
Read like his first elephantand piggy book this month.
And so it was like a wholelike, ooh, all right, it can be
done.
It can be done.
We're just trying to roll withthat now.
Were there any like tips ortricks or like curriculum that
(04:11):
you or your wife found workedbetter than others?
Speaker (04:13):
For for reading in particular, we uh we used a book
called uh I I I can't rememberthe exact title, but it's
something like Teach Your Childto Read in A Hundred Days.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
In a hundred easy lessons, yes.
Speaker (04:23):
A hundred easy lessons, yeah.
And uh that that was it wasgreat.
And so we started at I thinkaround when she was four years
old, late four, about to turnfive.
Um, and that was great.
It uh teaches reading in a in ain an easy and fun sort of way
for the kids.
Um and also she just she justenjoyed it.
It wasn't uh it wasn't achores.
(04:45):
Like she she's always wanted toread things on her own.
She's always wanted to be ableto read the the word that we're
on in in some book that we'rereading together.
And so it was it was fun forher.
Now, uh Joshua, myfive-year-old, I we we tried to
start it with him, but then werealized it wasn't really going
as well.
And so we said, okay, we'llwait a little bit later.
That might be the boy and girlthing that you're talking about.
(05:07):
Uh so we we've sort of hitpause on that.
And that's that's really one ofthe great things about
homeschooling is you can dothat.
You can you can see that yourchild is not quite ready for
something, and you can hitpause, you can come back to it
later, or you can approach it ina slightly different way uh
later on.
So that's just the I love theidea of homeschooling.
I think it's uh it has so manybenefits like that.
(05:29):
So like you can meet your childwhere where they're at, uh, you
get to invest time in them, solike you get to be a part of
them learning things, learninghow the world works.
Whereas like if you ship themoff to off to school, then
somebody else is getting thatblessing.
Somebody else is is getting thechance to to teach them uh
those things.
What one other I know I'm sortof like jumping ahead or or not
(05:50):
really answer the question thatyou asked, but another great
thing about homeschooling Ifound is how efficient it is,
like how like you don't have tospend, you know, six hours,
eight hours going throughlessons, uh like you can you can
knock things out very quickly.
And a lot of learning justhappens incidentally, like you
don't have to plan somethingahead of time, it just sort of
happens on its own.
Like where I people people talkabout the adulting crisis, that
(06:13):
there's a bunch of you knowkids coming out of college who
can't do like normal adultthings.
But if if a child is aroundtheir parents more often doing
adulting things like payingbills, going to the post office,
you know, changing attire,those sorts of things, then they
they see that.
So they see how it's done andthey learn along the way.
But if they're you know off atschool, at a public school
(06:34):
somewhere, uh then they don'tsee those essential skills and
you know, you know, basic thingsthat we take for granted.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Absolutely.
And funny story about theteacher child to read in a
hundred easy lessons.
I had done that with like somany people on my podcast
recommended that one.
So I'm like, this is it, thisis the curriculum, like
everybody loves it.
But it was like everybody wholoved it talked about it on the
podcast, right?
Like, not the people thatdidn't like so so I did it.
(07:01):
Lessons one through 50 with myson went well.
That 50, lesson 50 was like himtrying to climb Mount Anne.
I was like, you know what?
Maybe we just need to take abreak.
So we did that.
We took a few months off, maybesix months off of like actual
formal reading, and then we wentback to it starting at lesson
one.
And I was like, let's just gothrough it all again, like
(07:23):
really solidify what we learned,relearn it.
He got to lesson 50, and it waslike, my God, he hates it.
He can't he can't do these bigparagraphs that they were asking
him to do.
And I'm like, man, maybe it'sjust not the way he learns to
read.
So, you know, I tried a fewdifferent things, but it just
goes to show you that there isno one curriculum because it's
(07:45):
gonna be different for everychild and even every child in
your household, like you wereexplaining, you know, for your
daughter versus for your son.
Maybe it's a timing thingbecause boys do tend to like
their synapses in their brainconnect a little bit later.
Um you know, it makes moresense to them later on, so don't
push it early on.
But sometimes it's just theway, you know, like I'd rather
(08:06):
learn by, you know, inputting itinto, I don't know, if you're
trying to search for somethingon YouTube, well, how do I spell
this?
Hmm, sounds like, and you know,of physically doing it.
So that's funny.
And yes, I agree with youwholeheartedly on the I when you
said the adulting thing.
I was thinking of my nephew whowhen he, you know, was in
college, I think he got a ticketand he went to he didn't know
(08:28):
how to like write the envelopeto to mail the ticket back.
And he just mailed cash, likehe was going to just mail them
cash.
And it wasn't even saying heowed anything at that point.
It was like, what do you pleayou may owe up to?
And he just put that amount ofmoney in cash.
And he asked my sister, how doI write out the envelope?
And she's like, Oh my goodness,there's so many things going
(08:49):
on.
He's just like, it's you don'tmail money ever.
This is not saying that youneed to mail the money, and you
would mail a check.
And why don't you know how towrite out an envelope?
And like, as parents, when yousend your kids off to these
institutions from the timethey're three or four till
they're 18 and they're there forlike 40 hours a week, you think
that they're coveringeverything.
(09:11):
Like they're not saying to theparents in the beginning of the
year, like, I'm gonna go overalgebra, you go over envelope
writing, you know?
Like it's just we assumethey're doing it all, but lo and
behold, they are not.
Speaker (09:24):
Yeah.
So you you were talking aboutthe uh differences in boys and
girls, and it just thinking backto when Lily was but we were uh
doing the reading lessons withLily, and like she was just
grasping it, it was going well.
You know, it wasn't perfect,like obviously there were some
lessons that were more difficultthan others, but but she seemed
she seemed to enjoy it.
But then when when our son,when we're trying to do the same
(09:46):
thing with our sons, likethere's he's more easily
distracted.
He definitely seems moreinterested in like running
outside, playing in the dirt,throwing a ball around, you
know, tackling somebody, thatsort of thing.
So yeah, there's there's bigdifferences between uh boys and
girls, but also just between allchildren.
So, you know, everybody's anindividual.
So that's that's one of thegreat great things about
homeschooling is you can meetthem where they're at.
(10:08):
And also if they're if they'rewith you while you're doing
these day-to-day things, thenthey're ready once it is time
for them to go out into theworld on their own.
They're they've seen thesethings before.
They can write out an envelope,they can change a tire, they
can fix things around the house,all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah.
And what made you guys decideto homeschool in the first
place?
Speaker (10:24):
Well, it was it was a bunch of different things.
It wasn't uh just there wasn'tlike one main thing.
So we I'm I'm a libertarian, soI'm very skeptical of of the
government.
I don't think that thegovernment ought to be in charge
of of education.
So I mean that was one reason.
I I know for a fact that whatchildren are presented in public
schools is gonna be thegovernment narrative.
(10:44):
They're gonna they're gonna betaught that what the government
does is is great, uh, that thefree market has problems that
need to be fixed.
They're gonna get the thegovernment narrative on US
history as well.
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Speaker (12:00):
And so I didn't want my kids to obviously I want them
to be taught multipleperspectives, but I don't want
them to be taught oneperspective.
I don't want them to be taughtprimarily that that one
perspective.
It's not like uh uh the reasonI'm homeschooling is so I can
indoctrinate my kids on this oneparticular perspective.
I just think that it's moreappropriate to display a menu.
(12:22):
It's like, here's what thesepeople think, here's what these
people think, here's what Ithink is your parent as somebody
who's raising you.
I think that's you know totallyuh legitimate.
And I think that that role uhshould be borne by parents and
not by you know some somebodywho is uh a part of the
government.
So that's one thing.
Also, uh we're uh we're uhChristian, so we want to instill
Christian values in our in ourchildren.
Uh we want to teach them thatthe the Bible is true, that uh
(12:45):
Jesus is king, those sorts ofthings, that they're not going
to be taught in in a normal aregular school.
But also on a practical level,like I was saying before, it's
just more efficient.
Like I don't want my kids to towaste away these wonderful
years of their life, uh, youknow, waiting on other kids,
standing in line, you know,sitting in a desk with nothing
(13:06):
to do.
So I remember that.
So I I I went to public school.
I obviously I I like the schoolthat I went to.
I like my teachers, I like myfriends there, but it's just
that's not something that Iwanted uh for my kids.
I wanted them to be able to runand play and learn and and do
all these things without havingto do all the waiting that
happens in in a public school.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, yes.
So and and I think it'sdifferent too now than when we
were in school, right?
It was there was the waitingand all that, but it's like, I
mean, now you can't even mentionGod in school or Jesus, you
know.
It's just I think even forChristmas time, it's Christmas
time right now, they only letyou talk about songs that are
like generic about snowmen orthis and that.
It's it's just gotten wild.
(13:47):
But yet every other religionseems to be okay.
Like we have to be inclusive,you know, be okay with every
religion except with you.
How do you do that?
Because I mean, as a conspiracytheorist, I guess, or somebody
that just thinks like maybe whatthey're telling us isn't the
only way.
Like I've always wondered, youknow, like what if what if
Germany has a differentperspective about World War II?
(14:09):
Like, are they learning what'sin our American textbooks for
that?
You know, I probably not.
So, and then and to think aboutlike, wow, every war,
everything that we've gotteninto probably has not only two
sides, but multiple from nomatter what uh where it's coming
from.
So, how do you do that?
(14:29):
Like, do you pick a curriculumfor history, for economics, or
do you just kind of pick somedifferent things or real world
things?
Speaker (14:37):
So this is something that I have a lot of experience
with.
Uh so I I teach college levelcourses.
And so I um I'm here at theMises Institute, we're the
global headquarters, so tospeak, of of Austrian economics.
And so that's one particularschool of thought in economics.
And when I'm teaching mycollege courses, I don't just
give them the Austrian view onthings.
(14:58):
Like I don't just, you know,straight up teach them like
what's in Ludwig von Mises'human action or Bertie
Rothbard's Man Economy andState.
I I present them and I try tobe very objective when I do
this.
Like, here's what theKeynesians say, here's what the
monetarists say, here's what thesupply siders, the public
choicers, here's what all thesedifferent schools of thought say
about this particular topicthat we're looking at.
(15:18):
And by the way, here's alsowhat the Austrians say.
And oftentimes I'll do it inthird person.
I don't say, here's what wethink, or here's what I think,
here's what the Austrians say.
And so I think, I mean, that'sjust how you have to approach
it.
Uh, yeah, I mean, you have touse your best judgment because
you can't, it's it would beimpossible to teach every
perspective on every singleevent or every single topic, but
(15:38):
you've got to use yourjudgment, what what what views
are most commonly held and wherewhere is the tension, like what
what is the difference betweenwhat this school of thought is
saying and what this school ofthought is saying?
And what I found is that thisis actually uh a great way to
teach because if you think aboutit, one thing that motivates us
to learn more about somethinguh is uh is knowing that there
(16:00):
is a debate, knowing that thereis some difference of opinion,
because uh like we we we'reinherently valenced.
Like we we have we have tofigure out what do I think about
this particular topic, asopposed to just being told
here's uh here's the here's whatyou need to believe.
Um because if you're just toldhere's what you need to believe
or here's what you need to thinkabout this, then it's like it
(16:21):
just turns into like this rotememorization, just spit back
what the teacher just uh toldyou.
But once you know that there'sa debate that and like you get a
chance to think criticallyabout it and decide these people
are making good points here,these people are making good
points there, and you make yourmake up your own mind in that,
then you've got that interest,you've got that motivation on
the part of the student to learnit.
So, I mean, I can't say, likeyou were asking about particular
(16:45):
curricula to use.
I can't, I don't really haveany resources there to give you
except to say that you just gotto use your judgment.
Like what views are you goingto present?
And know that when you dopresent multiple views, then
you're actually giving yourchild this chance to become more
motivated in that particularsubject.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
It it kind of brings up what Iwas like going through this
whole episode in my head lastnight because you know, I I, you
know, I run my Instagram pagefor the podcast, so I'm always
kind of like it and because weare in the Christmas season, you
have, you know, people that aredoing the the Santa thing and
on all that good stuff.
And then you have the peoplethat are saying, Well, I'm not
(17:22):
going to tell my children thatthere is a Santa because I don't
want them to think I lied tothem about that, but then they
should trust me about Jesus.
And I, you know, I'm like, I Itotally understand that like a
thousand percent.
And then there's the other partof me that I'm like, it's a
satanic holiday anyway.
So that's like the thirdcompartment there.
But I'm like, well, you know,we do do the Santa thing.
And I'm I'm thinking about itin my head, and I'm like, you
(17:44):
know what?
I don't really want my kids totrust me on anything.
I want them to do the research.
I want them to like set up acamera if you want to see if
Santa comes on Christmas Evenight, you know?
Like, be be curious about it.
Ask the questions.
What's logical?
And then research Jesus.
And, you know, and I was kindof looking that stuff up last
(18:05):
night too.
Like, okay, well, how much isproven?
And I was the movie The Casefor Christ, which I guess is
really a book, but I watched themovie, The Case for Christ, you
know, came to mind.
And I'm like, I mean, that guy,he went out to, he was an
atheist that went to disprovethat the resurrection never
happened and ended up becoming apastor in the Christian faith
because the information that wasthere was so overwhelming to
(18:28):
Jesus and and and theresurrection that he was like,
Well, I all right, I give in.
And so, like, that's what Iwant from my kids.
I don't want them to just belike, Well, mom says it, so it's
true, or like, mom said Santawas real and she lied.
So she lies about everything.
Like, I want them to dig forall of it.
And I don't think there's anyright answer, but it's just how
(18:48):
how you parent.
And as long as you're doing itwith some sort of intention, not
just, well, because everybodyelse does it, then I think
you're okay.
If you can talk to your kidsabout that and have that
conversation one day, like,yeah, let's let's dig after this
together.
Let's find, let's go throughsome documents.
Speaker (19:02):
I agree 100%.
Uh one thing that I often dowith my kids is I is I'll play
like a sarcastic sort of devil'sadvocate.
So somebody, uh some questionmight come up.
I I don't even, I can't evencome up with an example.
And I'll I'll just sort of likeblurt out an obviously wrong
answer.
And of course, that's reallyfun for kids too, because they
get to say, Daddy, no, it's likethat's not right, daddy, or
(19:24):
something like that.
So I I like I like to so it'sit's not like it's not lying to
them.
It's getting them to I'm justtrying to get them to practice
critical thinking.
So don't accept everything Isay, don't accept everything
that you read, don't accepteverything that you watch on the
TV.
Think critically about it.
And and that's that's all wereally want for our kids is for
them to be prepared so that whennew things come up, when
(19:46):
they're adults, they have thatskill set.
They're their brains are areprimed to not immediately accept
what they're being told.
And that's in my mind, that'sthe probably the best possible
outcome for a well roundededucation.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, absolutely.
So where was the MisesInstitute born from?
Like what is it?
Explain it to us.
Speaker (20:05):
So the Mises Institute is an educational organization.
Sometimes people call us athink tank, but we're not really
a think tank.
We exist to teach and doresearch in Austrian economics.
And so Austrian economics, as Isaid earlier, is a particular
school of thought in economics.
It's it's the one that's themost radically laissez-faire,
radically free market.
(20:26):
The the ideas that are sort offoundational for us are those of
Ludwig von Mises and his greatstudent Murray Rothbard.
So we we look to them as likewhat they wrote is sort of our
foundation.
Of course, they didn't, it'snot like Austrian economics is
done with them because we'recontinually trying to build on
them, you know, write newthings, apply what they what
(20:47):
they wrote to new events and youknow, allow it to reach a
broader audience.
So the the way that we do thatis we have you know student
programs.
Our our flagship program isMises University, which is a
week-long crash course ineconomics that we host here in
Auburn, Alabama in the summer.
But we have graduate programsas well.
So graduate students can cometo a week-long seminar called
(21:08):
Rothbard Graduate Seminar.
We have academic conferences,we have events all around the
country, we have publications oflike publications for scholarly
audiences.
So we have uh a lot of articleson online for popular
audiences.
We are, like I said, our goalis to teach Austrian economics
and put it in front of as manypeople as possible.
(21:29):
So I mentioned that theconclusions of Austrian
economics are like radicallylaissez-faire, like very, very
free market.
I mean, so that means that alot of there's a lot of overlap
between us and libertarians.
We're not a politicalorganization, but you can find a
lot of our scholars write abouta libertarian uh political
philosophy.
So what does what what what areuh natural rights?
(21:50):
Uh what should what is the roleof government in this area or
that area, that that sort ofthing.
And so that's another thingthat we're known for as well.
But we're based here in Auburn,Alabama.
The reason we're based here isbecause back in the mid-1980s,
uh there were a few professorsat Auburn University that were
associated with Austrianeconomics.
And so that's it got startedactually on Auburn's campus, but
(22:12):
now we're adjacent to campusand and separate from Auburn
University.
And so we have a beautifulcampus where we have events here
and scholars writing all sortsof things, students coming for
events, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So is it in person or online?
Speaker (22:26):
So uh most uh our events are in person.
So at Mises University, we havestudents come from all over the
world here.
Uh anywhere from in the past wehad as many as like 300, I
think, but we I think werealized that we couldn't handle
that many all at one time.
And so it's now it's closer to100, 100.
But yeah, they come here inperson.
Same with our academicconferences.
We do have online programsavailable.
(22:48):
So recently we we started doingbook clubs, online book clubs,
uh, for undergraduate studentswho are interested in learning
more about Austrian economics.
So I've I've led a couple ofthose.
Um some other scholars have ledones, um, but those are those
are virtual, and that's becausethey happen during the the
school semester, so it's harderto get people to travel for for
that sort of thing.
But we try to do as as muchin-person as possible.
(23:09):
That was actually true evenduring the the whole COVID
fiasco.
So like we were one of the veryfew organizations on the planet
that were that were stillholding like in-person events,
just to sort of give you aflavor of the the sorts of
people in the in the culturehere.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, I'm surprised they let you.
They didn't stand out therewith tear gas or something.
Speaker (23:27):
So so there was there was a law passed in in Alabama
that uh like public eventscouldn't be held, location or
buildings that were open to thepublic couldn't be any longer.
And so we just put up signs outfront saying not open to the
public.
So we just put a sign on thefront door, it's not open to the
to the public, but we just youknow kept doing everything
normally.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Okay, so this is for like college level age?
Speaker (23:49):
So it's different.
So we but we have onlinecourses.
Uh so I recently made one forlike high schoolers.
It's called Lessons for theYoung Economist, and the target
audience was homeschoolfamilies.
So I was trying to provide a aneconomics curriculum that
homeschool families could adopt,uh, and that's mainly for high
schoolers who want an econcourse.
But I mean, I also uh have uhsome children's books for like
(24:12):
very young kids.
So like here's here's onethat's for the probably for the
youngest age, it's like arhyming version of this parable
in economics about about uhdestroyed resources.
But we also have academicconferences for you know faculty
around the world.
So it we really the whole agerange.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
And when you say Austrian economics, are you
talking about like the is thatjust where Murray Rothbard and
Ludwig von Mises were from?
They were from Austria.
Speaker (24:39):
Ludwig von Mises was from Austria.
Uh Murray Rothbard was uh fromthe United States, uh, but the
school of thought got its startin Austria, and that's why it's
called Austrian economics.
It actually got started with aguy named Carl Menger in the
late 1800s, and then he had astudent, Eugen von Bombaarwerk.
His student was Ludwig vonMises, and then with the uh
World War II, a lot of theseeconomists, including Mises,
(25:03):
immigrated over to the UnitedStates, and that's really how
Austrian economics got afoothold in the United States.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
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Speaker (26:03):
And so Mises would hold seminars at NYU where people
like Murray Rothbard wouldattend.
But there's also, you know,many great American Austrian
economists.
It sort of sounds like anoxymoron or something, but
Austrian economists, the schoolof thought, who reside in the
United States.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Is this how the economy in Austria was?
Speaker (26:22):
Not particularly.
So I mentioned Eugen vonBombawork, which is sort of a
mouthful, is it's a big namethere.
He was uh a finance minister,uh, I think at one point.
No, uh, Karl Menger actuallydidn't have any formal training
in economics, and he's sort oflike the founder of the school
of thought.
He was he was a journalist.
He tutored some of the of themonarch's children in economics,
(26:44):
and he wrote this book,Principles of Economics.
Um, and so that's really whereit got its start.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, and I I find it interesting because I mean I'm
more of the libertarian aspectas well.
But we were back this summer,we were at in Mystic,
Connecticut, and we were likegoing through the C pour in the
museum there, and there was ahuge mural on the wall of a
whale.
And my husband would knowbetter what they actually
painted it with because heunderstood it.
But um, it was the whole thingwas basically anti-capitalism.
(27:13):
I mean, someone like me, like,I didn't know that.
I went to public school, I'mlooking at it, I'm like, oh
yeah, this is pretty cool.
This is a life-size whale.
And then the curator was like,Well, this is actually, you
know, they're showing because itwas a whaling exhibit, and
they're showing how capitalismwas the reason for all of these
horrible things that happened tothe whales and why the whales
(27:34):
are going extinct, and howcorrupt it was um, you know, to
just allow these people to gooff onto these ships for three
to five years and kill, youknow, 60 whales and eventually
certain kinds went extinct andor close to it.
And, you know, I'm listening toher and I'm like, yeah, okay.
And I was like, but I don'tknow, is the alternative better?
(27:56):
Are the people in governmentgoing to protect the whales?
Some sometimes, yes.
But sometimes if they benefitfrom it, or if their golf body
is a whaler, they might put inlaws to make whaling okay.
You know, like so I thought itwas super interesting.
Like, okay, yes, every I guessI came to the conclusion that
(28:18):
every form of government isgoing to have its setbacks, its,
it's, you know, weaknesses.
But what is the best one out ofwhat we're given?
I mean, we can look at the Imean, I I the opposite of
capitalism, I would assume,would be communism, right?
Speaker (28:34):
Yeah, yeah.
So I mean definitely Yeah, theopposite of capitalism would be
socialism.
So that's one thing that uhLudwig Mamisis wrote about a lot
is like what actually definessocialism, what defines
capitalism.
And for him, it boils down toprivate property.
So if if we have privateproperty, then it's capitalism.
But if if the private ownershipof the means of production is
(28:55):
abolished, then it's socialism.
And that's actually notsomething that socialists would
deny.
They would say, yeah, that'sthat's what we're arguing for.
We want collective ownership ofthe means of production.
On this point, one of Mises' uhgreat contributions to economic
thought was his critique ofsocialism, where he he showed
that if we don't have privateownership of the means of
(29:15):
production, then we don't havemarket prices for them.
And if we don't have marketprices for those factors of
production, it means that wecan't calculate profit and loss.
And if we can't calculateprofit and loss, then we're we
can't rationally arrangeproduct.
We can't we don't know thatwhat we're producing, how we're
producing it, how long it'staking for us to produce it is
what's actually in the bestservice of what consumers want.
(29:38):
Whereas in the capitalistsystem, if we have profit and
loss that's regulatingentrepreneurs' production plans,
then we know that factors ofproduction are being put in
their best possible place.
So that's why in socialistexperiments, wherever they've
been tried, whenever they'vebeen tried, they run out of
food.
They they make the wrong kindsof shoes, they they don't make
(29:59):
enough of this, they don't makeenough of that.
And it's because they don't,they literally don't have the
information, they don't haveprices to help them figure out
where should resources be usedin production to provide for
what consumers want.
So the interesting thing aboutthis critique is that it
sidesteps the usual critique.
The usual critique of socialismis the incentive problem.
(30:21):
So like under socialism, ifwe're all making the same amount
of money, then why wouldanybody choose the dirty jobs or
the dangerous jobs?
Why would anybody, you know,you know, spend a long time
learning how to do brainsurgery?
So like why, why, why wouldanybody do that?
Like, if we're gonna all bepaid the same, I'm gonna be a
food critic.
That's gonna be my job in thesocialist commonwealth.
But but the socialist responseto that, which is very dubious,
(30:44):
the socialist response is, well,human nature itself is going to
change.
Once we implement socialism,everybody's gonna be okay with
you know providing for theircomrades.
Everybody would be okay withdenying themselves, you know,
making whatever sacrifice theyneed to, as long as it's good
for the community.
And so Mises was like, okay,fine.
I I don't think that that'strue.
(31:05):
I don't think human nature isgonna change, but we'll grant
you that assumption, you stilldon't know how to produce what
you need to produce.
So, like, even if the centralplanning board is made up of the
greatest people, that you know,great experts, and everybody is
willing to contribute forcontribute towards the
production of what people want,they're still not gonna know how
to produce what people want andneed.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Well, okay, how come they don't know how to produce
it?
Or is it more that you did afavor for me, so I'm going to do
this favor for you?
I don't really care about theoutcome if there's enough food
or shoes that people likebecause I don't care about
making money because they'restuck buying this anyway.
Speaker (31:46):
I don't think I understand the question.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Like, okay, so like why can't they just say, let's
take a um, let's take a poll.
What kind of shoes do peoplelike?
Or how much food is out there?
Who's hungry, who's not?
Like, what is the differencebetween, and I'm not arguing
with you because I worked forthe government for 16 years, and
I definitely agree, but I'mwondering why our government,
which is socialist, like ifyou're a government worker, I
(32:09):
was basically I was a glorifiedwelfare recipient, is what I
like to say for 16 years.
And why did we mess up wherethe money went so often?
Like, why can't we just pull?
What do people want?
Speaker (32:23):
Yeah, yeah.
So why not why not just issuesurveys?
So, like, we'll give everybodya survey, they'll tell us what
they want.
So there's there's quite a fewproblems with that.
But like one issue is verypractical.
So if you think about what theUS Census is, like we send out
the survey to everyone, and wecan't even get you know good
collections on that.
(32:43):
We can't get accurateinformation, we can't pull
everybody.
So, like, there's just apractical problem with that.
But also another practicalissue is that it takes a long
time to administer these surveysand collect the information and
then figure out what to do withit.
Like, how do we deal with thisinformation?
In the meantime, technology ischanging, people's preferences
are changing, the supplies ofnatural resources are changing.
(33:05):
So everything is constantlychanging in our economy.
And those changes areaccommodated in when we have
profit and loss, you know,guiding entrepreneurial decision
making, but all of that isabsent in a social disorder
framework.
So by the time you actually getthe information, it's it's
outdated.
But also, people don't reallyknow what they want until
(33:25):
they're actually faced with achoice.
So one example that I oftentalk about is sometimes I walk
into the grocery store with alist of things that I need to
buy.
Usually my wife gives it to me,but then I walk out with
something completely different.
So I so maybe they didn't havea certain item, and so I had to
pick something else, or maybe Ijust changed my mind, or maybe
you know, something caught myeye that, oh yeah, that'd be
nice to have in the pantry, andso I'll grab that uh something
(33:49):
extra, something that wasn't onthe list, right?
So we make these decisions onthe spot.
Surveys are net the informationthat's in a survey, it's if
it's honest, if it's accurate,it's necessarily given in
advance, all the while our ourpreferences might change, and
also like what we actually wantis demonstrated in action,
right?
So that's that's another issue.
(34:10):
One final thing that I'llmention here with the with the
survey is that so suppose weactually do collect all of this
information, suppose it'stimely.
So so we will just assume awaythe the time issue there.
The one issue that the thecentral planning board that's
collecting all this informationfrom the surveys is they have to
turn those survey responsesinto numbers to use in
(34:33):
production.
So, what sort of informationwould we get from a survey?
I would rather have a red pairof shoes than a blue pair of
shoes.
I would rather have bananasthan apples, right?
So it's all of these rankings.
Like what goods do I wantcompared to other goods?
It's just a ranking of goods.
But so they get that for youknow millions of people.
How do they turn that into weneed to produce this many tons
(34:54):
of bananas, we need to producethis many tons of of or excuse
me, this many pairs of red shoesin this size, this many pairs
of blue shoes in that size, andso on and so forth for all these
things.
There's not a mathematical waybecause you've got rankings over
here, but you need cardinalnumbers.
You need to assign a certainnumber of workers to this
factory, you need to say, thisacre of land is going to be used
(35:15):
to make this particularagricultural product, this acre
of land is going to be used forhousing, this acre of land is
going to be used for that.
So you have to make those sortsof specific judgments, specific
decisions, which you can't dojust based on a ranking of what
somebody prefers to what.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
That that makes a lot of sense when you think about
it in terms of food.
You know, why do thesesocialist countries end up with
no food on the shelves?
And it's like, okay, well, yes,if you are producing just all
bananas and maybe there ends upbeing um a banana allergy or
something goes wrong with thebatch.
It's like, okay, we we didn'thave the demand to like make the
(35:53):
the cost go up so that when thecosts go up, you can say, hey,
we need another factory to oryou know, another farm to start
making bananas for us.
Because you you don't have themoney there now because you've
collected all of the tax money,but it's probably already been
divvied out.
So there really is no thatbasically you're taking away
supply and demand, right?
You're just saying, this iswhat I am supplying you with.
(36:15):
I don't care if you demand itor not.
Speaker (36:17):
Yeah, exactly.
There are some forms ofsocialism that don't even have
money.
So they just take money outentirely.
So all of the decisions arejust made by central planning
boards.
Like, where do I work?
Well, wherever the planningboard tells me to.
What am I going to consume?
What goods am I going to bringback to my household?
It's whatever rations I getfrom the uh central planning
board.
But you're but you're right,there are other forms of
(36:39):
socialism that do try to retainsome role for money.
Usually it's in consumer goods.
So people get like thesetickets, these tokens that they
get for for working for acertain number of hours.
And so they get these ticketsand then they can take that to
the grocery store and spend themon different uh food items that
they want.
But the what Mises showed isthat even if you have a market
for consumer goods, if you don'thave private ownership of the
(37:02):
means of production, then youcan't calculate the cost of
production and compare it to therevenues and say, yes, this is
a productive, profitable use ofresources, or no, that is not a
productive and profitable use ofresources.
We should we should expand theprofitable ones and diminish or
take away the unprofitable onesso that we're producing what
(37:22):
exactly what consumers want andneed.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yeah, that is super interesting.
They don't teach us about thatin school a whole lot.
What to finish up, how do yousee, like, what is their reason
for favoring socialism inschool?
Because I know I even had thatschool of thought that's like,
well, why would there need to bebillionaires if they're
homeless people?
They should redistribute itall.
(37:44):
And you know, that's until Ihad kids and I was like, wait,
and kind of worked for thegovernment for 16 years looking
around, like, all right,everybody here just watches
YouTube all day.
Like there's like, there's liketwo people working.
This cannot be the best use ofour time and money in our tax
dollars.
But why do you think they'repushing that in in schools?
There's obviously an agenda atplay.
Speaker (38:04):
Yeah, um, yeah, there's definitely an agenda.
I think it's there's a lot ofheterogeneity.
So it probably just depends onthe school or the teacher that
you have, and it depends ontheir own values.
So obviously, some areasthere's going to be more
teachers who are biased towardssocialist ideas, and so students
in their classes are gonna beintroduced to like a or be
introduced to a favorableopinion of of socialism more
(38:26):
than other schools and otherareas.
But yeah, so I mean that'sthat's the thing.
Like you can't, there's there'sno way to teach things in a
completely neutral way.
It's just because at the verybasic level, you have to choose
what to teach.
And by choosing what to teach,you're saying stating your
preference for teaching dad asopposed to teaching something
else.
But of course, it seeps infurther than that because like
(38:47):
the way that you presentsomething is is necessarily
going to be a biased.
And if you think about it,there's a selection issue here.
So, who what ideas and whatbiases and values are people who
sign up to teach in publicschools?
What what ideas are they gonnahave?
And they're gonna be favorabletowards the government, they're
gonna think that the governmentcan solve problems more often
(39:08):
than not.
They're they're gonna be, youknow, in line with what the
government is saying.
Um, and so I think that thatmight be another reason.
But also we just get, you know,plain old top-down, the
government says we're gonna beteaching this, and so that's
what everybody's teaching.
And obviously, the government'sgonna choose, you know, a
curriculum that aligns with withwhat they want, whether that's
you know, this this war wasactually a good idea, or it's
(39:31):
okay for the government tointervene in this part of the
economy, or whatever thegovernment wants to to
indoctrinate, then they're gonnathey're gonna do it.
I just use the wordindoctrinate.
A lot of people use that aslike a bad word, but I don't
think it's a bad word.
I think it depends on whatdoctrines you're teaching,
right?
So I I'm I am 100% okay withindoctrinating my kids, right?
So I want to teach them thatGod is real, that you know, free
(39:55):
markets work, that I want toteach them certain things about
history.
Of course.
With the caveat of what I saidearlier, it's like I want them
to be able to think criticallyabout it.
But I mean, there's certainprinciples and values that I
want to instill in my children.
So everybody, like anybodywho's involved in teaching, is
doing some level ofindoctrination.
The homeschooling choice issaying, I want to be the one
who's in charge of that, notsomebody else.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah.
And the government is not goingto teach your kids that the
government can be wrong ordangerous.
They're not going to tell youthat they're dangerous
sometimes.
Absolutely.
So where can we find out moreinformation about the Mises
Institute for anybody that wantsto check it out?
And I'll put it in the show'sdescription as well.
But why don't I have you lay itall out here?
Speaker (40:34):
Sure.
So our website is Mises.org.
That's N-I-S-E-S dot or G.
And there on that main page,you can find lots of articles.
At the top, there's a tab thatsays Academy, and that's where
you can find the econ coursethat I mentioned earlier.
If you go over to the libraryor to our bookstore, then you
can see the children's booksthat I've written.
And these children's books areabout Austrian economic
(40:57):
principles, like the brokenwindow fallacy, Austrian
business cycle theory, money andbanking, like where did money
come from?
It's a great little kid storyabout that.
And so you can find all of thatat our website.
We have podcasts, we havearticles, we have uh student
programs, so so come check usout.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Oh, yeah, I'll definitely get that book out.
That is so fun.
And it's never too early tostart talking to our kids about
that stuff.
So thank you so much, Jonathan,for being here today.
This has been so fun to talkabout.
Speaker (41:23):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been great.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the
Homeschool How To.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group Facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly
(41:48):
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.
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