“Babies and young children are like the R&D division of the human species,” says psychologist Alison Gopnik. Her research explores the sophisticated intelligence-gathering and decision-making that babies are really doing when they play.

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD. from Oxford University. Her honors include a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada University Research Fellowship, an Osher Visiting Scientist Fellowship at the Exploratorium, a Center for the Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship, and a Moore Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was the first to argue that children’s minds could help us understand deep philosophical questions. She was one of the founders of the study of “theory of mind”, illuminating how children come to understand the minds of others, and she formulated the “theory theory”, the idea that children learn in the same way that scientists do.

She is the author of over 100 articles and several books including “Words, thoughts and theories” (co-authored with Andrew Meltzoff), MIT Press, 1997, “The Scientist in the Crib” (co-authored with Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl) William Morrow, 1999, and “The Philosophical Baby; What children’s minds tell us about love, truth and the meaning of life” Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009. “The Scientist in the Crib” was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, was translated into 20 languages and was enthusiastically reviewed in Science, The New Yorker, the Washington Post and The New York Review of Books (among others). She has also written for Science, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, New Scientist, and Slate.

She has spoken extensively on children’s minds including speeches to political organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the Organization for Economic Development, children’s advocacy organizations including Parents as Teachers and Zero to Three, museums including The Exploratorium, The Chicago Children’s Museum, and the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and science organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Psychological Association, the Association of Psychological Science, and the American Philosophical Association. She has also appeared on many TV and radio programs. She has three sons and lives in Berkeley, California. For more see www.alisongopnik.com.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com/translate.

John provides some expansive answers to questions about children, society, schools, and homeschooling in the debut of this raw footage.

Via vforvoluntary, from pfarenga2 @ youtube.

Bob discusses President Obama’s proposal to deal with high gas prices by removing tax breaks for oil companies.

Tradeoffs

Oil Speculators and Iran

Bob explains how successful oil speculators actually perform a useful social function.

Unintended Consequences

Bob discusses tradeoffs, using his low production values and Sandra Fluke’s testimony as examples.

Enjoy these enlightening Econ Moments, brought to you by Bob Murphy, Renegade Economist. Visit his blog for more wonderful information. Also, please support the Bob Murphy vs Paul Krugman debate. If you pledge to donate, that money will get donated to a food bank in New York. Your creditcard will only get charged if and when the debate actually happens. Besides feeding the hungry, you will also get to see Paul Krugman debate Bob Murhpy, which should be extra delicious.

Robert Murphy

Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to “Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market”, the “Human Action” Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist.

You can find his media, articles and full list of publications at mises.org.

Gene Burns is a talk radio host and ran for the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party in 1984. At this speech at a Libertarian Party of Georgia event in 1991, Burns describes the nature of government generally and the state of libertarianism at the end of the 20th century.

Also available is an mp3 version of this lecture for download here.

More videos on liberty at the YouTube channel of Libertarianism.org.

David Friedman is an economist, political philosopher, and the author of many books including The Machinery of Freedom, wherein he lays the groundwork for a society based exclusively on voluntary transactions. In this Exploring Liberty lecture, Friedman discusses the main premises of The Machinery of Freedom (PDF) and offers a few additional conclusions he has reached in the years after the first edition of the book was published in 1973.

Also available is an mp3 version of this lecture for download here.

Produced by Evan Banks. More videos on liberty at the YouTube channel of Libertarianism.org.

Recorded February 9-10, 1996 at the Mises Institute Supporters Summit in San Francisco, CA.
Available for download here.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Austrian School economist and anarchocapitalist philosopher, is professor emeritus of economics at UNLV, a distinguished fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and founder and president of The Property and Freedom Society.

In this video Chris Martenson, economic analyst at http://chrismartenson.com and author of ‘The Crash Course’, explains why he thinks that the coming 20 years are going to look completely unlike the last 20 years. In his presentation he focuses on the so-called three “Es”: Economy, Energy and Environment. He argues that at this point in time it is no longer possible to view either one of those topics separately from one another.

Since all our money is loaned onto existence, our economy has to grow exponentially. Martenson proves this point empirically by showing a 99.9% fit of the actual growth curve of the last 40 years to an exponential curve. If we wanted to continue on this path, our debt load would have to double again over the next 10 years. By continually increasing our debt relative to GDP we are making the assumption that our future will always be wealthier than our past. He believes that this assumption is flawed and that the debt loads are already unmanageable.

Martenson explains how exponential growth works and why it is so scary that our economy is based on it. In an example he illustrates how unimaginably fast things speed up towards the end of an exponential curve. He shows that an exponential chart can be found in every one of the three “E’s” for instance in GDP growth, oil production, water use or species extinction. Due to the natural limitations on resources, Martenson comes to the conclusion that we are facing a serious energy crisis.

This energy predicament is namely that the quantity of oil as well as the quality of oil are in decline. He shows that oil discoveries peaked in 1964 and oil production peaked 40 years later. Martenson also shows how our return on invested energy is rapidly declining — the “cheap and easy” oil fields have already been exploited. In 1930 the energy return for oil was 100:1 or greater. Today it is already down to 3:1 and newer technologies such as corn-based ethanol only provide a 1.5:1 return. Martenson predicts that the time in between oil shocks will get shorter and shorter and that oil prices will go much higher.

Not only oil but also other natural resources are being rapidly used up as well. At the current projected pace of use, known reserves for many metals and minerals will be gone within the next 10 to 20 years. The energy needed to get these non-renewable resources out of the ground is growing exponentially. So we live in a world that must grow, but can’t grow and is subject to depletion. The conclusion out of all this is that our money system is poorly designed and that we need to rethink how we do things as quickly as possible.

After finishing his presentation Chris Martenson answers questions regarding a rise in efficiency, alternative technologies and oil prices. He also responds to questions regarding electricity, shale gas, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and uranium and the race for global resources.

This video was recorded on November 16 at the Gold & Silver Meeting 2011 in Madrid. Subscribe to the newsletter at http://www.goldmoney.com/goldresearch.

Steve Horwitz explains the costs of inflation at the 2011 Advanced Austrian Economics Seminar in Irvington, NY.

Find out more about the costs of inflation at http://www.thefreemanonline.org

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The kind of economic arrangements that we see in our world today, which are dominated by cronies of those with state power, that’s not the kind of economic arrangement that anyone who believes in freedom ought to favor

Gary Chartier is an Associate Dean at La Sierra School of Business and co-editor of the new book “Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty.” Chartier, who co-edited the book along with Charles W. Johnson, sat down with Reason.tv’s Zach Weissmueller to discuss wy libertarians should stop embracing the word “capitalism,” why there’s reason to take the concerns of the political Left seriously, and why the economic system in the United States does not even begin to resemble a free market.

“If we want freedom, it’s something to be achieved,” says Chartier. “It’s not a matter of celebrating what we have now. It’s a matter of making something dramatically different and exciting happen.”

Shot by Paul Detrick and Alex Manning; edited by Zach Weissmueller.

Visit Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube Channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Reason.tv

This is an hour long video recorded in the Casey Research Pavilion at the Cambridge House Vancouver Investment Conference, starring Doug Casey, Eric Sprott, John Hathaway, and Rick Rule.

www.caseyresearch.com

Robert J. Smith, Director of the Center for Private Conservation, explains in this short video the Tragedy of the Commons.

A celebrated author and environmental historian, Smith demonstrates why private property rights protect the environment.

Joining host Dennis McCuistion, Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (Ludwig von Mises Institute) and Doug Casey (“The Casey Report”) focus their discussion on the credit crisis, free markets and limited government.

This video was made available by Dr. Woods, and is posted with permission from McCuistion TV. Copyrighted McCuistion Productions, Inc.

Bob Murphy presented this sample lecture from the Mises Academy‘s latest online Economic history course, “Anatomy of the Fed,” on 16 January 2011. PowerPoint slides are available for download here. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools’ dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers.

Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation.  He is also one of the world’s leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere.  The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries.

He works with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. In 1998, he led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to wide acclaim in 1999. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, working with the ministers for training, education enterprise and culture. The resulting blueprint for change, Unlocking Creativity, was adopted by politicians of all parties and by business, education and cultural leaders across the Province. He was one of four international advisors to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of South East Asia.

For twelve years, he was professor of education at the University of Warwick in the UK and is now professor emeritus. He has received honorary degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design, Ringling College of Arts and Design, the Open University and the Central School of Speech and Drama, Birmingham City University and the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. He was been honored with the Athena Award of the Rhode Island School of Design for services to the arts and education; the Peabody Medal for contributions to the arts and culture in the United States, the LEGO Prize for international achievement in education, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the Royal Society of Arts for outstanding contributions to cultural relations between the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2005, he was named as one of Time/Fortune/CNN’s ‘Principal Voices’. In 2003, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the arts. He speaks to audiences throughout the world on the creative challenges facing business and education in the new global economies.

His book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything(Penguin/Viking 2009) is a New York Times best seller and has been translated into twenty-one languages. His latest book is a 10^th anniversary edition of his classic work on creativity and innovation, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative(Capstone/Wiley).  Sir Ken was born in Liverpool, UK, as one of seven children. He is married to Therese (Lady) Robinson. They have two children, James and Kate, and now live in Los Angeles, California.

www.sirkenrobinson.com

Archived from the live Mises.tv broadcast, this lecture by Robert Murphy was presented at the 2011 Mises University in Auburn, Alabama.

Robert Murphy

Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to “Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market”, the “Human Action” Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist.

You can find his media, articles and full list of publications at mises.org.

Via Common Sense Capitalism.

Milton Friedman giving a speech when receiving his Nobel Prize in 1976

Milton Friedman was the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets. Born in 1912 to Jewish immigrants in New York City, he attended Rutgers University, where he earned his B.A. at the age of twenty. He went on to earn his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1933 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1946. In 1951 Friedman received the John Bates Clark Medal honoring economists under age forty for outstanding achievement. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for “his achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.” Before that time he had served as an adviser to President Richard Nixon and was president of the American Economic Association in 1967. After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, Friedman became a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“Milton Friedman.” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. 2008. Library of Economics and Liberty. 21 November 2011.

Should government provide law enforcement? Most would argue that government is absolutely necessary for law enforcement. Prof. Edward Stringham, however, argues that government may not even be necessary at all.

To come to this conclusion, Prof. Stringham asks a few important questions. First, if something is really important, does it logically follow that government should provide it? Second, are markets capable of providing law enforcement and security in the modern world? Third, how are disputes currently settled between people of different countries?

Looking at the first question, it doesn’t seem to be the case that important things must be provided by a government. For instance, think about food. Food is necessary for life, and yet, markets do an excellent job of providing food to consumers.

Even if you’re convinced that markets can provide important things, you may think law enforcement and security are a special case that markets are incapable of providing in a modern world. However, markets already enforce private rules and provide security. Disney World, Las Vegas, and malls all have private rules that are enforced by private security.

Accepting the arguments above, you may still be skeptical about market’s abilities to settle disputes between different systems of rules or law. This, in fact, was Ayn Rand’s primary reason for advocating a minimal state. Current interactions in the real world provide examples as to how markets resolve these disputes. Think about an international soccer game or international trade. In both instances, individuals are interacting across state boundaries, and are only subject to the jurisdiction of their own territory. In these situations, these individuals contract with the arbiters such as a soccer league or a private court to resolve disputes.

Credits: This lecture was delivered in 2009 at the Metropolitan State College of Denver School of Business, as part of the Exploring Economic Freedom Lecture Series, directed by Prof. Alexandre Padilla. This video was produced and directed by Scott Houck, and edited by Adrienne Christy. Video production provided by the Educational Technology Center at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Video used by LearnLiberty.org with permission.

This year’s report reveals a decline in economic freedom in the United States, hindering recovery from the recession. To explain the impact this decline has on our future, lead author of the report Professor Nathan Ashby states,

While some states fare better than others, Alberta, Canada has risen to the top of the list of most economically-free places in North America, ousting Delaware from its top spot.

To view individual state rankings and read more about the report, the Fraser Institute’s full report is available below as well as at www.freetheworld.com.

Via economicfreedom.org.

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken by the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km.

HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc.
All in all I tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible,
avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since in my opinion the original
footage itself already has an almost surreal and aestethical visual nature.

Michael König

Music: Jan Jelinek | Do Dekor, faitiche back2001
w+p by Jan Jelinek, published by scape Publishing / Universal

Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,
NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

Editing: Michael König

www.koenigm.com