A Brief Summary of Human Action – How and Why Humans Act the Way they Do

Derrick J Freeman and Brandon Bryant discuss Chapter One of the book, “Man, Economy, and State” by Murray Rothbard. Chapter One is basically a review of Ludwig von Mises’ book “Human Action, A Treatise on Economics,” published ten years prior. We use the Study Guide created by Robert P. Murphy, a fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His summary of each chapter’s key points plus study questions at the end of each chapter are absolutely the perfect companion to this book. We invite you to buy a copy of each (or download the free ones) at Mises.org

If you like this, consider watching our discussion of Human Action here.

What do you get BitCoin for his tenth birthday? A Pizza Party!

A local business owner walked into the Anypay offices a few weeks ago.

“Would be awesome to take bitcoin at my restaurant. Do you guys… do that?”

Turns out he owns a pizza shop and likes bitcoin. Well isn’t that good timing? Bitcoin Pizza Day right around the corner, and a guy walks in ready to sell me pizzas for bitcoin. It was fate.

He downloaded Anypay, set some addresses, and took a payment.

“Cool! That’s it?”

Yeah, that’s everyone’s reaction the first time they use Anypay.

I asked him if we could bring some friends to his restaurant and use bitcoin. He was like, “Yeah!” So a week later, we went to try it out. Bought some spicy chicken wings and a case of cold Guinness beers to go. Tap, tap, tap. Scan, ding, cha-ching! Easy.

Okay, that worked.

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Amazing Caller Declares “Fed Officially Lost Control”

Last night I tuned into Free Talk Live, and there was a caller sharing his professional commentary as a financial advisor that he believed that we could mark March 12, 2020 as the day that the Federal Reserve officially lost control of the dollar, and by extension, the entire American economy.

As far as I can understand from a laymen’s perspective, the stock market started to tumble because of panic and fears related to the corona virus — specifically, interruptions in “supply chains” because of factories and warehouses and transportation businesses telling workers to stay home. The idea is that some time needs to pass for people to be isolated and prevent the transmission of this deadly virus. After a while passes, and the number of new cases starts to decrease rather than increase, then life can begin to resume as normal. But until then, the economy is shutting down. There is a panic in the market, causing the biggest point drop in Dow history this week.

In response, the Federal Reserve (aka “The Fed”) injected (aka “printed”) $1.5 Trillion dollars into the economy. A trillion is a thousand billions, or put another way, a trillion is a million millions. It’s a lot!! And the market ate it up, rallied for a moment, and then continued its downward spiral. Woops. That wasn’t enough. If that wasn’t enough, then what WILL be enough? Can anything boost the confidence of the market? It seems not. And the only tool left in the Fed’s toolbox is money printing. They are talking about buying stocks now to help save the stock market. Will that work? Is that even a good idea? What if they are just trying to keep a sham economy going, and the jig is up? Uh oh.

So! Listen to this amazing call by Tim Picciott of TheLibertyAdvisor.com — I am not affiliated with Tim in any way other than we met at a conference one time and exchanged pleasantries. I think he’s a cool, smart guy, and his call into FTL was historic, so I ripped it from YouTube and uploaded it here for your enjoyment:

First time gun buyer? What should you get?

Some friends recently moved to the Shire from a less-free place. They asked me what gun they should get. I offered to teach them basic firearms safety, pointed them toward a few ranges that offer classes from beginner to advanced, some that rent guns so they can try a variety and see what they like. They said they are mainly looking for home defense, but also one that they might be able to carry around. He is big and she is small. After compiling this information, I thought it might be useful to make it a video presentation. That way others besides my friends can benefit. Maybe there are people out there like me, who didn’t have any of this knowledge at the beginning and would have loved a video like this to give me some basic understanding.

New Hampshire Youth Strike for the Climate

A group of about a hundred students took off from school today to attend an event in Prescott Park in Portsmouth, New Hampshire today as part of a larger day of action across the state and beyond. They brought signs, listened to speeches, and signed clipboards offered to them by political campaigners visiting from Massachusetts. Below is the video I captured from the event. It features interviews from young people explaining why they attended today and what they want their opposition to know.