In this video Chris Martenson, economic analyst at http://chrismartenson.comand 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

Sign up to be notified when a new video is released!

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

Subscribe to Conversations with Casey for free: http://bit.ly/psPcTE
At the Casey Research/Sprott Summit When Money Dies, Gordon Chang, a columnist for Forbes, spoke with Stefan Molyneux about the past, present and future of China.

The sold-out When Money Dies summit was a huge success, with attendees and participants alike receiving much to think about. If you missed it, you can still “be there,” via a full set of audio recordings. These are available now, in CD or MP3 format for your convenience.

Gordon Chang

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World, released by Random House in January 2006. Showdown focuses on nuclear proliferation in general and the North Korean crisis in particular. His first book is The Coming Collapse of China (Random House, August 2001). He is a columnist at Forbes.com and The Daily.

He lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as Partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie.

His writings on China and North Korea have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Barron’s.

He has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities and at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, RAND, the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other institutions. He has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Pentagon. He has also spoken before industry and investor groups including Bloomberg, Sanford Bernstein, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia. Chang has appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
He has appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, and Bloomberg Television. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Outside the United States he has spoken in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, The Hague, London, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

He has served two terms as a trustee of Cornell University.

www.gordonchang.com

www.caseyresearch.com

The Philosophy of Liberty (PoL) is a flash animation created by Kerry Pearson based on the prologue of Ken Schoolland’s book, “The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible.” It’s a basic summary and introduction to the theory of individual rights.

The philosophy of liberty is based on self-ownership. This simple but elegant and hard-hitting animation will explain exactly what that means. It’s a great tool anyone can use to educate children and adults about our right to life, liberty, and the property we create – and our responsibility to think, speak and act.

CREDITS

The animation has been written by Ken Schoolland, produced by Kerry Pearson, music by Music2Hues. Donations can be made to the Jonathan Gullible fund. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0 Generic.

Today, the US House Judiciary Committee has a hearing on the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. The text of the bill is here. This bill would strengthen copyright holders’ means to go after allegedly infringing sites at detrimental cost to the freedom and integrity of the Internet. As a result, we are joining forces with organizations such as the EFF, Mozilla, Wikimedia, and the FSF for American Censorship Day.

Part of this act would undermine the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act which would make sites like reddit and YouTube liable for hosting user content that may be infringing. This act would also force search engines, DNS providers, and payment processors to cease all activities with allegedly infringing sites, in effect, walling off users from them.

Source: Reddit

censor verb
cen·sored | cen·sor·ing

Definition of CENSOR

transitive verb
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable

Censorship is as old as man itself. It doesn’t only apply to information or ideas, the act of censoring is to use force to prevent actions from being taken by others.

People have tried censoring books, plays, movies, VHS tapes, audio cassette tapes, alcohol, weed and other drugs, the licking of exotic frogs, other people, words, languages, rituals, cartoons, toys, smoking, gay marriage, weapons, monies, gold, silver, video games, flags, congregations, ideas, religions, travel, burkas, hats, child pornography, online poker, certain forms of poker in California, tv ads, etc etc. The list goes on and on.

Whenever people disagree with the actions of others, government is called in to take action on their behalf. In this current case, the US movie industry has been bribing people in government to get them to threaten people in order to keep them from sharing files.

There is a demand for both privacy and the sharing of information. That demand can’t be censored or regulated away, trying it will only yield new and creative ways to meet those demands. You can’t fight smoke with fire.

Lecture presented by Robert Higgs at the Ludwig von Mises Institute‘s 25th Anniversary Celebration held in New York City; 12-13 October 2007.

Robert Higgs is an American economist of the Austrian School and a libertarian anarchist. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and is an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Mr. Higgs is also a regular contributor to LewRockwell.com and he is the 2007 recipient of the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty.

His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government growth. Some of the books he has authored include, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government; Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11, and Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy. He is also the editor of the collections, Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy; The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today; and Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism.

Transcript of entire speech

Related links:

Robert Higgs’ official blog
Robert Higgs’ profile on the Independent Institute
Robert Higgs’ books on Mises.org
Robert Higgs’ articles on Mises.org
Robert Higgs’ articles on LRC

DISCLAIMER: The Ludwig von Mises Institute has given permission under the Creative Commons license that this media presentation can be publicly reposted as long as credit is given to the Mises Institute and other guidelines are followed.

This YouTube channel is in no way endorsed by or affiliated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, any of its lecturers or staff members.

Check out LibertyInOurTime’s YouTube channel for more great videos.

This timely film explains the characteristics necessary for honest money and defines inflation — its cause and cure. Also warns of the danger of an unbacked dollar issued and controlled by a central bank like the Federal Reserve system and exposes the planned debauchery of our currency. Produced in 1975 by The John Birch Society and written by John F. McManus.

DISCLAIMER: The Ludwig von Mises Institute has given permission under the Creative Commons license that this media presentation can be publicly reposted as long as credit is given to the Mises Institute and other guidelines are followed.

This YouTube channel is in no way endorsed by or affiliated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, any of its lecturers or staff members.

Check out LibertyInOurTime’s YouTube channel for more great videos.

Walter Block, an Austrian school economist and anarcho-libertarian philosopher, is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Chair in Economics and professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans and senior fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of the books Defending the Undefendable, Labor Economics From A Free Market Perspective, Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, and his latest, The Privatization of Roads and Highways.

Check out Walter Block’s official website, his profile on Mises.org and his articles on lewrockwell.com.

Published by LibertyInOurTime.

DISCLAIMER: The Ludwig von Mises Institute has given permission under the Creative Commons license that this media presentation can be publicly reposted as long as credit is given to the Mises Institute and other guidelines are followed.