Steve Horwitz — What Drives Progress?

Alex Aragona speaks with Steve Horwitz as he explores what drives human progress, and why the market is so crucial to that.

References from Episode 76 with Steve Horwitz

• Steve Horwitz is the author of Austrian Economics: An Introduction; Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective; Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order; and Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions which are available for purchase on Amazon Canada (titles hyperlinked).
• This article entitled Persistent Fallacies by Vuk Vukovic recounts the misconceptions surrounding growth and is a response to the book, Why Nations Fail, featuring an anecdote on Paul Samuelson’s forecast of the USSR overtaking the US economy that was referenced by Steve in the episode.   
• In case you missed Virginia Postrel’s episode on The Curious Task and wish to catch up with her research, her book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, can be purchased on Amazon Canada at this link.
• The Cato Institute published an article by Adam D. Thierer on permissionless innovation, which also provides an overview of Deidre McCloskey’s contributions to the theory. It can be read here.  
• You can read Steve’s article, Privilege and the Liberal Tradition, on libertarianism.org.
• Here is an excerpt on Ludwig’s von Mises’ concept of peaceful transference from his book, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition. 
• You can learn more about Robert Higgs’ concept of regime uncertainty through this downloadable PDF published by the Independent Institute. 
• This article by Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr. is an introduction to “sound money” that Steve also talks about during the podcast. 
• You can watch Hans Rosling’s TED video on The Magic Washing Machine at this link. 
• The joint research on inequality published by Steve and Vincent Geloso is available for reading here. 
• Here is the article written by Steve on Tyler Cowen’s joint article on The Great Stagnation, which is also available for reading online at this link.
• Here is some more background on precision medicine that Steve mentions briefly on the podcast.
• Here is the link to the 2007 panel discussion with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates that Alex mentions in the podcast.  
• The Back to the Future trilogy and Demolition Man can be purchased and/or streamed from Amazon Canada.  You can read more about John Stuart Mill’s “experiments of living” at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s website (Chapter 4.6).