Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Austrian economics did not begin in 1871. Mark Thornton traces its lineage back through the thinkers the mainstream dismisses: the Spanish Scholastics, who worked out subjective value and the effects of inflation while dismantling the case against usury; the anti-mercantilists who told Louis XIV to abolish his taxes; the Physiocrats; and above all Richard Cantillon, whom Rothbard called the father of modern economics. Drawing on twenty-five years of his own research, Mark makes the case for why the history of economic thought is not antiquarianism but a laboratory—and notes that the good ideas tend to appear precisely when the state grows tyrannical, overtaxes, and overspends.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2026.
Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
0:00 Intro: The Precursors of the Austrian School
2:20 Why the History of Economic Thought Matters
5:18 Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down: Austrians and Their Opponents
8:33 The Ancient Greeks
11:02 The Spanish Scholastics
17:21 Mercantilism
19:35 The Anti-Mercantilists and the Birth of Laissez-Faire
24:46 Richard Cantillon
29:07 Cantillon's Death and the Underground Manuscript
31:52 The Physiocrats
36:23 Turgot
39:22 From Cantillon to Hume to Adam Smith
41:46 The Classical Period and Bastiat
43:20 Conclusion: The Laboratory of Ideas
Find free books, daily articles, podcasts, lecture series, and everything about the Austrian School of Economics at https://Mises.org.
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Austrian economics did not begin in 1871. Mark Thornton traces its lineage back through the thinkers the mainstream dismisses: the Spanish Scholastics, who worked out subjective value and the effects of inflation while dismantling the case against usury; the anti-mercantilists who told Louis XIV to abolish his taxes; the Physiocrats; and above all Richard Cantillon, whom Rothbard called the father of modern economics. Drawing on twenty-five years of his own research, Mark makes the case for why the history of economic thought is not antiquarianism but a laboratory—and notes that the good ideas tend to appear precisely when the state grows tyrannical, overtaxes, and overspends.
Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 23, 2026.
Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.
0:00 Intro: The Precursors of the Austrian School
2:20 Why the History of Economic Thought Matters
5:18 Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down: Austrians and Their Opponents
8:33 The Ancient Greeks
11:02 The Spanish Scholastics
17:21 Mercantilism
19:35 The Anti-Mercantilists and the Birth of Laissez-Faire
24:46 Richard Cantillon
29:07 Cantillon's Death and the Underground Manuscript
31:52 The Physiocrats
36:23 Turgot
39:22 From Cantillon to Hume to Adam Smith
41:46 The Classical Period and Bastiat
43:20 Conclusion: The Laboratory of Ideas
Find free books, daily articles, podcasts, lecture series, and everything about the Austrian School of Economics at https://Mises.org.
X ► https://x.com/mises/
Facebook ► facebook.com/mises.institute
Instagram ► instagram.com/misesinstitute
SoundCloud ► soundcloud.com/misesmedia
Apple Podcasts ► podcasts.apple.com/us/artist/mises-institute/1280664810
Rumble ► rumble.com/c/c-2212754
Odysee ► odysee.com/@mises
Podcasts ► mises.org/podcasts
