150 Years of Austrian Economics in Less than 7 Minutes

Should a bottle of water cost $1000? 

Since water is so important to … ya know, keep us alive … why is it so cheap? On the other hand, diamonds do nothing to sustain life. And yet, they often DO cost $1000 — or more. 

This paradox troubled economists for centuries, but one group is responsible not only for solving it, but for expounding on its implications over the past 150 years: the Austrian economists. Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, among others, established the subjective theory of value and made groundbreaking advances in the study of how humans act.

You could — and should — read books likes Human Action, The Road to Serfdom, and Man, Economy, and State. They’re worth it, but they’ll take you months. This video, in just 6 minutes and 48 seconds, will lay the foundation for you to tackle those tomes. 

For more context, we spoke to the last Austrian economist who’s actually Austrian: Rahim Taghizadegan, Director of the Scholarium Academic Research Institute in Vienna. He took us back to the glory days of Vienna’s coffeeshop culture, where Mises, Hayek, and others debated big ideas and, ultimately, changed the world.