I often think of the great Henry Hazlitt, a hero and supporter of the Mises Institute. He was a tireless voice of reason. He once said at a Mises birthday celebration, “We have a duty to speak even more clearly and courageously, to work hard, and to keep fighting this battle while the strength is still in us. Even those of us who have reached and passed our seventieth birthdays cannot afford to rest on our oars and spend the rest of our lives dozing in the Florida sun. The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of liberty, which means the future of civilization.”
Henry Hazlitt never retired to the beach, and his great voice, once described by Ludwig von Mises as “the economic conscience of our country and our nation,” lives on at the Mises Institute. Hazlitt was a founding member of our board. Today we publish his books and articles. In fact, we printed one hundred thousand copies of his classic Economics in One Lesson and gave them to students and many others. It has been a life-changing read for thousands of people.
Hazlitt loved our flagship program, Mises University. This year we had one hundred smart and dedicated students attend. Over the years, a total of 4,650 students have graduated from the program.
Mises University is the world’s leading instructional program in the Austrian School of Economics. Since 1986, it has been the training ground for college and university students who are looking beyond the mainstream. Students are taught about competition, value and utility, money and banking, business cycles, entrepreneurship, method, economic history, the philosophy of science, financial economics, and more.
Classes are interspersed with lively seminars, faculty panels, and special presentations. The discussions go way into the night. I’m not sure these students sleep!
The Rothbard Graduate Seminar is for those students interested in a deeper understanding of the Austrian tradition. Next year will mark its twenty-fifth anniversary. The seminar has equipped many graduate students with a solid understanding of the ideas of Mises and Rothbard, and they apply this understanding to their graduate studies and research.
This year, RGS students studied Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market. Next year, Mises’s Human Action will be the focal text.
This summer, we had nine Research Fellows. These fellowships are a unique opportunity for full-time research and writing under the guidance of our faculty.
Our first class of Apprentices will finish their six-month apprenticeship in December. The program has brought together five talented and passionate young content creators in an exciting new program, broadening their knowledge of Austrian economics, real history, and the philosophy of liberty. Their training also included direct guidance from our editorial team, who cultivated their writing talent. They wrote some of the most popular articles on mises.org this summer, and their work has even been republished on other platforms.
Our Apprentices have also produced social media content viewed by hundreds of thousands, and they have appeared on podcasts. The battle of ideas requires reaching the new generation on the platforms they use in their daily lives. The Mises Apprentice program helps in that important work. We were guided by the ideas of Mises, Rothbard, and Hazlitt as the inspirations for this program. They would be proud of these talented, passionate young writers and thinkers who are becoming skilled ambassadors.
We continued to publish our journals, the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and the Journal of Libertarian Studies, in which graduate students and seasoned scholars published their best work.
In recent years, we have stepped up our investing in the Mises Media Network, which includes mises.org, our vast number of online books and podcasts, and our audios and articles, all of which are free. We utilize alternative media platforms to bypass the censorship of Big Tech. Our podcasts have a regular audience of tens of thousands who are interested in a deeper discussion of current events than is available from mainstream talking heads. We livestreamed over sixty lectures and panels this year. We narrated almost five hundred articles and published five free audiobooks.
Mises.org continues to be one of the most important outlets we have to, in the words of Murray, “de-bamboozle” the public against the lies and propaganda promoted by the state. Our most popular topics this year represented our core mission: exposing the economic and cultural damage done by the Federal Reserve, condemning the weaponization of the state against the public, and standing boldly for peace in a time of global unrest. Mises.org submissions have never been higher, reflecting the urgency of our ideas and the recognition that our site remains one of the top destinations for readers seeking wisdom in an age of shallow political punditry and AI-generated clickbait.
Our Beginner Series is performing better than we could have dreamed. We have video series on economics, history, money, and energy. These short videos, ranging from three to five minutes, have been viewed by millions, providing an important alternative to the progressive-controlled programming found within government schools. Our latest series, Fueling a Freer Future, has been our most successful yet. The series focuses on the lies of global-warming alarmists and combatting the global campaign to centralize and control the economy in the name of “green” energy.
There’s hunger for what we provide. The Institute is unique because we tell the truth. We do not compromise. And we do not give in to evil. We keep fighting.
I have passed my seventieth birthday, but I have no plans to rest. The Mises Institute won’t rest either!
We have big plans for 2024. Our Abolish the Fed documentary will show the disaster that is the Federal Reserve—how it inflates, causes crisis after crisis, and enriches the state and the elite.
In 2024, we will distribute one hundred thousand free copies of a new edition of Murray Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money? to students and other interested people. It’s readable and extremely persuasive.
We fight by continuing to educate the next generation. We teach students and anyone else who is interested in the truth about economics, money, and the evils of the state.
The fascists are running wild. They are at war with Russia. They want war with China, the Middle East, and anyone else who stands in the way of their empire building.
They are in the deliberate process of destroying the dollar and Western civilization.
They have created the greatest accumulation of debt in the history of the human race.
The state does not compromise, and neither will we. In the struggle for liberty against power, more and more people oppose the state and the conventional wisdom it urges us to adopt. More and more of us reject the state and its programs root and branch. The harder we work and the more people we can teach, the better the prospects for liberty will be.
This is our mission today, as it has been the mission of the Mises Institute for the past forty-one years.
One big reason we’re looking forward to the future is our new president, Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, a brilliant economist, scholar, writer, and speaker. Tom has long been dedicated to the Mises Institute’s mission. You’ll be hearing from him soon.
With your support, we will, in this critical moment, carry on publishing our books, periodicals, and videos; aiding research and teaching in Austrian economics; promoting the Austrian School to the public; and training tomorrow’s champions of the economics of freedom.
Please help us do more of this good work. Our liberty and our civilization depend on it.
