The Homeschool How To

#150: Indoctrination Wars: Taking Back Control of What Your Kids Actually Learn with Mises Institute Economist, Dr. Newman

• Cheryl - Host • Episode 150

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Homeschooling isn’t just about math lessons and reading charts—it’s about who gets to shape how your kids see the world.

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Jonathan Newman from the Mises Institute, a homeschooling dad, economist, and libertarian who breaks down why he and his wife chose to keep their kids out of government schools, how they approach reading and “adulting” skills at home, and why there’s really no such thing as a “neutral” education.

We talk about:

  • Teaching kids to read with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons—and why it works for some kids and not others
  • The big differences between boys and girls when it comes to focus, readiness, and timelines
  • Why homeschooling is so much more efficient than public school (and what to do with all that extra time together)
  • The “adulting crisis” and how kids actually learn real-life skills like changing a tire, paying bills, and mailing a letter
  • What Austrian economics is, why the Mises Institute exists, and how Jonathan teaches multiple perspectives instead of one government-approved narrative
  • Capitalism vs. socialism, and why socialist systems struggle to get food, prices, and production right
  • Indoctrination, values, and why parents—not the state—should decide which ideas get center stage in their child’s education

If you’re a Christian, liberty-minded, or simply skeptical of the one-size-fits-all system and the stories your kids are being told about history, money, and government, this conversation will give you a lot to think about.

Follow Dr. Jonathan Newman on X - @NewmanJ_R

Discover free books, articles, and lectures on economics and liberty at Mises.org


Learn more about Green Ember: Helmer in the Dragon Tomb—the new prequel book from S. D. Smith—and explore the companion video game now available on Steam: sdsmith.com/helmer 

Perfect for parents seeking meaningful, courage-building stories for kids ages 8–12.


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How To. I'm Cheryl, and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling? How do you do it? How does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome. And with us today, I have Jonathan from the Mises Institute. Jonathan, how are you?

Speaker:

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you for being here. I had gotten talking to you and people from your company, and I kind of wanted to showcase this on the podcast because I like having resources, but I like the resources to also be from people who are homeschooling families so that we can, you know, talk a little bit about that and talk about different resources that we can use because it is overwhelming as a homeschooling family to know, you know, what to use, what the best thing is, when to switch. So I'm excited to talk to you today. So how old are your kids?

Speaker:

I have a seven-year-old daughter, a five-year-old son, and a one-year-old daughter who's about to turn two. She actually uh was born on Christmas Day. So we're looking forward to that celebration.

Speaker 1:

I bet that was fun when mom was in the actually, did you guys home birth or were she at a hospital?

Speaker:

No, it was at a hospital.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah. Yeah, mine were too. But yeah, so hey, we're getting a little baby, but mom's not here on Christmas.

Speaker:

Yeah, it w it was uh it was a great uh Christmas sort of surprise.

Speaker 1:

Yes, awesome. Yeah, my son is seven years old and I have a three-year-old daughter. So we've been at this for you know a couple of years. I know there's some controversy on like, do you have to start so young? Do you not have to? But I guess we are actually homeschooling them from like day one, you know, they're like learning how to eat, learning how to talk, learning how to walk. So, you know, when we think of it in those terms of just real life, then we're always homeschooling them. But yeah, it's been it's been interesting kind of working with my son with things, seeing some of the pushback and then some of the differences between boys and girls. Are you home with the kids or is your wife doing that?

Speaker:

Uh my wife is home with the kids.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so so that's kind of interesting coming from the the spouse's perspective. Um, how much of it do you like do you take on? Are there things that you'll you'll be like, I I got this? Maybe some of the more real world stuff, change attire or something.

Speaker:

Well, yeah, so uh I I'm um pretty handy around the house. And so like whenever I'm fixing something or building something, working around the house, I always try to get the kids there with me. And even though sometimes they can that that would actually make the process slower. So because they'll get in the way, they'll be asking questions, they might get distracted, they might do something the wrong way. I always try to get them involved because I think it's important for them to just, you know, see what is it like to take care of the house. But even beyond that, um, when uh my daughter is uh working on some of her homeschool work and and I happen to be around, I'm I've always like to be there to answer her questions, help her out. Uh I I'm sort of a math nerd and science guy, so I like to help her out with those uh subjects. But also I I like reading with her and and she enjoys reading as well. So one thing that uh that we did early on, is as soon as Lily is my oldest, she's seven, as soon as she was able to read on her own, uh we instituted a rule where um she at bedtime she does not have to go to sleep, she doesn't have to turn the lights out, she can stay up as long as she wants to reading, as long as she's doing just that, then she can you know stay read in her bed until she's uh ready to fall asleep. And and I think this has been really successful. We talked with other parents who are doing that same sort of thing. Um, and it seems to be a really good way to uh inspire that's that habit of reading at an early age.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I I can't believe she's already reading by herself. I have the boy, seven-year-old. So it's been like Yeah, yeah. Read like his first elephant and piggy book this month. And so it was like a whole like, ooh, all right, it can be done. It can be done. We're just trying to roll with that now. Were there any like tips or tricks or like curriculum that you or your wife found worked better than others?

Speaker:

For for reading in particular, we uh we used a book called uh I I I can't remember the exact title, but it's something like Teach Your Child to Read in A Hundred Days.

Speaker 1:

In a hundred easy lessons, yes.

Speaker:

A hundred easy lessons, yeah. And uh that that was it was great. And so we started at I think around when she was four years old, late four, about to turn five. Um, and that was great. It uh teaches reading in a in a in an easy and fun sort of way for the kids. Um and also she just she just enjoyed it. It wasn't uh it wasn't a chores. Like she she's always wanted to read things on her own. She's always wanted to be able to read the the word that we're on in in some book that we're reading together. And so it was it was fun for her. Now, uh Joshua, my five-year-old, I we we tried to start it with him, but then we realized it wasn't really going as well. And so we said, okay, we'll wait a little bit later. That might be the boy and girl thing that you're talking about. Uh so we we've sort of hit pause on that. And that's that's really one of the great things about homeschooling is you can do that. You can you can see that your child is not quite ready for something, and you can hit pause, you can come back to it later, or you can approach it in a slightly different way uh later on. So that's just the I love the idea of homeschooling. I think it's uh it has so many benefits like that. So like you can meet your child where where they're at, uh, you get to invest time in them, so like you get to be a part of them learning things, learning how the world works. Whereas like if you ship them off to off to school, then somebody else is getting that blessing. Somebody else is is getting the chance to to teach them uh those things. What one other I know I'm sort of like jumping ahead or or not really answer the question that you asked, but another great thing about homeschooling I found is how efficient it is, like how like you don't have to spend, you know, six hours, eight hours going through lessons, uh like you can you can knock things out very quickly. And a lot of learning just happens incidentally, like you don't have to plan something ahead of time, it just sort of happens on its own. Like where I people people talk about the adulting crisis, that there's a bunch of you know kids coming out of college who can't do like normal adult things. But if if a child is around their parents more often doing adulting things like paying bills, going to the post office, you know, changing attire, those sorts of things, then they they see that. So they see how it's done and they learn along the way. But if they're you know off at school, at a public school somewhere, uh then they don't see those essential skills and you know, you know, basic things that we take for granted.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. And funny story about the teacher child to read in a hundred easy lessons. I had done that with like so many people on my podcast recommended that one. So I'm like, this is it, this is the curriculum, like everybody loves it. But it was like everybody who loved it talked about it on the podcast, right? Like, not the people that didn't like so so I did it. Lessons one through 50 with my son went well. That 50, lesson 50 was like him trying to climb Mount Anne. I was like, you know what? Maybe we just need to take a break. So we did that. We took a few months off, maybe six months off of like actual formal reading, and then we went back to it starting at lesson one. And I was like, let's just go through it all again, like really solidify what we learned, relearn it. He got to lesson 50, and it was like, my God, he hates it. He can't he can't do these big paragraphs that they were asking him to do. And I'm like, man, maybe it's just not the way he learns to read. So, you know, I tried a few different things, but it just goes to show you that there is no one curriculum because it's gonna be different for every child and even every child in your household, like you were explaining, you know, for your daughter versus for your son. Maybe it's a timing thing because boys do tend to like their synapses in their brain connect a little bit later. Um you know, it makes more sense to them later on, so don't push it early on. But sometimes it's just the way, you know, like I'd rather learn by, you know, inputting it into, I don't know, if you're trying to search for something on YouTube, well, how do I spell this? Hmm, sounds like, and you know, of physically doing it. So that's funny. And yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly on the I when you said the adulting thing. I was thinking of my nephew who when he, you know, was in college, I think he got a ticket and he went to he didn't know how to like write the envelope to to mail the ticket back. And he just mailed cash, like he was going to just mail them cash. And it wasn't even saying he owed anything at that point. It was like, what do you plea you may owe up to? And he just put that amount of money in cash. And he asked my sister, how do I write out the envelope? And she's like, Oh my goodness, there's so many things going on. He's just like, it's you don't mail money ever. This is not saying that you need to mail the money, and you would mail a check. And why don't you know how to write out an envelope? And like, as parents, when you send your kids off to these institutions from the time they're three or four till they're 18 and they're there for like 40 hours a week, you think that they're covering everything. Like they're not saying to the parents in the beginning of the year, like, I'm gonna go over algebra, you go over envelope writing, you know? Like it's just we assume they're doing it all, but lo and behold, they are not.

Speaker:

Yeah. So you you were talking about the uh differences in boys and girls, and it just thinking back to when Lily was but we were uh doing the reading lessons with Lily, and like she was just grasping it, it was going well. You know, it wasn't perfect, like obviously there were some lessons that were more difficult than others, but but she seemed she seemed to enjoy it. But then when when our son, when we're trying to do the same thing with our sons, like there's he's more easily distracted. He definitely seems more interested in like running outside, playing in the dirt, throwing a ball around, you know, tackling somebody, that sort of thing. So yeah, there's there's big differences between uh boys and girls, but also just between all children. So, you know, everybody's an individual. So that's that's one of the great great things about homeschooling is you can meet them where they're at. And also if they're if they're with you while you're doing these day-to-day things, then they're ready once it is time for them to go out into the world on their own. They're they've seen these things before. They can write out an envelope, they can change a tire, they can fix things around the house, all that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And what made you guys decide to homeschool in the first place?

Speaker:

Well, it was it was a bunch of different things. It wasn't uh just there wasn't like one main thing. So we I'm I'm a libertarian, so I'm very skeptical of of the government. I don't think that the government ought to be in charge of of education. So I mean that was one reason. I I know for a fact that what children are presented in public schools is gonna be the government narrative. They're gonna they're gonna be taught that what the government does is is great, uh, that the free market has problems that need to be fixed. They're gonna get the the government narrative on US history as well.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker:

And so I didn't want my kids to obviously I want them to be taught multiple perspectives, but I don't want them to be taught one perspective. I don't want them to be taught primarily that that one perspective. It's not like uh uh the reason I'm homeschooling is so I can indoctrinate my kids on this one particular perspective. I just think that it's more appropriate to display a menu. It's like, here's what these people think, here's what these people think, here's what I think is your parent as somebody who's raising you. I think that's you know totally uh legitimate. And I think that that role uh should be borne by parents and not by you know some somebody who is uh a part of the government. So that's one thing. Also, uh we're uh we're uh Christian, so we want to instill Christian values in our in our children. Uh we want to teach them that the the Bible is true, that uh Jesus is king, those sorts of things, that they're not going to be taught in in a normal a regular school. But also on a practical level, like I was saying before, it's just more efficient. Like I don't want my kids to to waste away these wonderful years of their life, uh, you know, waiting on other kids, standing in line, you know, sitting in a desk with nothing to do. So I remember that. So I I I went to public school. I obviously I I like the school that I went to. I like my teachers, I like my friends there, but it's just that's not something that I wanted uh for my kids. I wanted them to be able to run and play and learn and and do all these things without having to do all the waiting that happens in in a public school.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yes. So and and I think it's different too now than when we were in school, right? It was there was the waiting and all that, but it's like, I mean, now you can't even mention God in school or Jesus, you know. It's just I think even for Christmas time, it's Christmas time right now, they only let you talk about songs that are like generic about snowmen or this and that. It's it's just gotten wild. But yet every other religion seems to be okay. Like we have to be inclusive, you know, be okay with every religion except with you. How do you do that? Because I mean, as a conspiracy theorist, I guess, or somebody that just thinks like maybe what they're telling us isn't the only way. Like I've always wondered, you know, like what if what if Germany has a different perspective about World War II? Like, are they learning what's in our American textbooks for that? You know, I probably not. So, and then and to think about like, wow, every war, everything that we've gotten into probably has not only two sides, but multiple from no matter what uh where it's coming from. So, how do you do that? Like, do you pick a curriculum for history, for economics, or do you just kind of pick some different things or real world things?

Speaker:

So this is something that I have a lot of experience with. Uh so I I teach college level courses. And so I um I'm here at the Mises Institute, we're the global headquarters, so to speak, of of Austrian economics. And so that's one particular school of thought in economics. And when I'm teaching my college courses, I don't just give them the Austrian view on things. Like I don't just, you know, straight up teach them like what's in Ludwig von Mises' human action or Bertie Rothbard's Man Economy and State. I I present them and I try to be very objective when I do this. Like, here's what the Keynesians say, here's what the monetarists say, here's what the supply siders, the public choicers, here's what all these different schools of thought say about this particular topic that we're looking at. And by the way, here's also what the Austrians say. And oftentimes I'll do it in third person. I don't say, here's what we think, or here's what I think, here's what the Austrians say. And so I think, I mean, that's just how you have to approach it. Uh, yeah, I mean, you have to use your best judgment because you can't, it's it would be impossible to teach every perspective on every single event or every single topic, but you've got to use your judgment, what what what views are most commonly held and where where is the tension, like what what is the difference between what this school of thought is saying and what this school of thought is saying? And what I found is that this is actually uh a great way to teach because if you think about it, one thing that motivates us to learn more about something uh is uh is knowing that there is a debate, knowing that there is some difference of opinion, because uh like we we we're inherently valenced. Like we we have we have to figure out what do I think about this particular topic, as opposed to just being told here's uh here's the here's what you need to believe. Um because if you're just told here's what you need to believe or here's what you need to think about this, then it's like it just turns into like this rote memorization, just spit back what the teacher just uh told you. But once you know that there's a debate that and like you get a chance to think critically about it and decide these people are making good points here, these people are making good points there, and you make your make up your own mind in that, then you've got that interest, you've got that motivation on the part of the student to learn it. So, I mean, I can't say, like you were asking about particular curricula to use. I can't, I don't really have any resources there to give you except to say that you just got to use your judgment. Like what views are you going to present? And know that when you do present multiple views, then you're actually giving your child this chance to become more motivated in that particular subject.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. It it kind of brings up what I was like going through this whole episode in my head last night because you know, I I, you know, I run my Instagram page for the podcast, so I'm always kind of like it and because we are in the Christmas season, you have, you know, people that are doing the the Santa thing and on all that good stuff. And then you have the people that are saying, Well, I'm not going to tell my children that there is a Santa because I don't want them to think I lied to them about that, but then they should trust me about Jesus. And I, you know, I'm like, I I totally understand that like a thousand percent. And then there's the other part of me that I'm like, it's a satanic holiday anyway. So that's like the third compartment there. But I'm like, well, you know, we do do the Santa thing. And I'm I'm thinking about it in my head, and I'm like, you know what? I don't really want my kids to trust me on anything. I want them to do the research. I want them to like set up a camera if you want to see if Santa comes on Christmas Eve night, you know? Like, be be curious about it. Ask the questions. What's logical? And then research Jesus. And, you know, and I was kind of looking that stuff up last night too. Like, okay, well, how much is proven? And I was the movie The Case for Christ, which I guess is really a book, but I watched the movie, The Case for Christ, you know, came to mind. And I'm like, I mean, that guy, he went out to, he was an atheist that went to disprove that the resurrection never happened and ended up becoming a pastor in the Christian faith because the information that was there was so overwhelming to Jesus and and and the resurrection that he was like, Well, I all right, I give in. And so, like, that's what I want from my kids. I don't want them to just be like, Well, mom says it, so it's true, or like, mom said Santa was real and she lied. So she lies about everything. Like, I want them to dig for all of it. And I don't think there's any right answer, but it's just how how you parent. And as long as you're doing it with some sort of intention, not just, well, because everybody else does it, then I think you're okay. If you can talk to your kids about that and have that conversation one day, like, yeah, let's let's dig after this together. Let's find, let's go through some documents.

Speaker:

I agree 100%. Uh one thing that I often do with my kids is I is I'll play like a sarcastic sort of devil's advocate. So somebody, uh some question might come up. I I don't even, I can't even come up with an example. And I'll I'll just sort of like blurt out an obviously wrong answer. And of course, that's really fun for kids too, because they get to say, Daddy, no, it's like that's not right, daddy, or something like that. So I I like I like to so it's it's not like it's not lying to them. It's getting them to I'm just trying to get them to practice critical thinking. So don't accept everything I say, don't accept everything that you read, don't accept everything that you watch on the TV. Think critically about it. And and that's that's all we really want for our kids is for them to be prepared so that when new things come up, when they're adults, they have that skill set. They're their brains are are primed to not immediately accept what they're being told. And that's in my mind, that's the probably the best possible outcome for a well rounded education.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. So where was the Mises Institute born from? Like what is it? Explain it to us.

Speaker:

So the Mises Institute is an educational organization. Sometimes people call us a think tank, but we're not really a think tank. We exist to teach and do research in Austrian economics. And so Austrian economics, as I said earlier, is a particular school of thought in economics. It's it's the one that's the most radically laissez-faire, radically free market. The the ideas that are sort of foundational for us are those of Ludwig von Mises and his great student Murray Rothbard. So we we look to them as like what they wrote is sort of our foundation. Of course, they didn't, it's not like Austrian economics is done with them because we're continually trying to build on them, you know, write new things, apply what they what they wrote to new events and you know, allow it to reach a broader audience. So the the way that we do that is we have you know student programs. Our our flagship program is Mises University, which is a week-long crash course in economics that we host here in Auburn, Alabama in the summer. But we have graduate programs as well. So graduate students can come to a week-long seminar called Rothbard Graduate Seminar. We have academic conferences, we have events all around the country, we have publications of like publications for scholarly audiences. So we have uh a lot of articles on online for popular audiences. We are, like I said, our goal is to teach Austrian economics and put it in front of as many people as possible. So I mentioned that the conclusions of Austrian economics are like radically laissez-faire, like very, very free market. I mean, so that means that a lot of there's a lot of overlap between us and libertarians. We're not a political organization, but you can find a lot of our scholars write about a libertarian uh political philosophy. So what does what what what are uh natural rights? Uh what should what is the role of government in this area or that area, that that sort of thing. And so that's another thing that we're known for as well. But we're based here in Auburn, Alabama. The reason we're based here is because back in the mid-1980s, uh there were a few professors at Auburn University that were associated with Austrian economics. And so that's it got started actually on Auburn's campus, but now we're adjacent to campus and and separate from Auburn University. And so we have a beautiful campus where we have events here and scholars writing all sorts of things, students coming for events, and it's wonderful.

Speaker 1:

So is it in person or online?

Speaker:

So uh most uh our events are in person. So at Mises University, we have students come from all over the world here. Uh anywhere from in the past we had as many as like 300, I think, but we I think we realized that we couldn't handle that many all at one time. And so it's now it's closer to 100, 100. But yeah, they come here in person. Same with our academic conferences. We do have online programs available. So recently we we started doing book clubs, online book clubs, uh, for undergraduate students who are interested in learning more about Austrian economics. So I've I've led a couple of those. Um some other scholars have led ones, um, but those are those are virtual, and that's because they happen during the the school semester, so it's harder to get people to travel for for that sort of thing. But we try to do as as much in-person as possible. That was actually true even during the the whole COVID fiasco. So like we were one of the very few organizations on the planet that were that were still holding like in-person events, just to sort of give you a flavor of the the sorts of people in the in the culture here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm surprised they let you. They didn't stand out there with tear gas or something.

Speaker:

So so there was there was a law passed in in Alabama that uh like public events couldn't be held, location or buildings that were open to the public couldn't be any longer. And so we just put up signs out front saying not open to the public. So we just put a sign on the front door, it's not open to the to the public, but we just you know kept doing everything normally.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is for like college level age?

Speaker:

So it's different. So we but we have online courses. Uh so I recently made one for like high schoolers. It's called Lessons for the Young Economist, and the target audience was homeschool families. So I was trying to provide a an economics curriculum that homeschool families could adopt, uh, and that's mainly for high schoolers who want an econ course. But I mean, I also uh have uh some children's books for like very young kids. So like here's here's one that's for the probably for the youngest age, it's like a rhyming version of this parable in economics about about uh destroyed resources. But we also have academic conferences for you know faculty around the world. So it we really the whole age range.

Speaker 1:

And when you say Austrian economics, are you talking about like the is that just where Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises were from? They were from Austria.

Speaker:

Ludwig von Mises was from Austria. Uh Murray Rothbard was uh from the United States, uh, but the school of thought got its start in Austria, and that's why it's called Austrian economics. It actually got started with a guy named Carl Menger in the late 1800s, and then he had a student, Eugen von Bombaarwerk. His student was Ludwig von Mises, and then with the uh World War II, a lot of these economists, including Mises, immigrated over to the United States, and that's really how Austrian economics got a foothold in the United States.

Speaker 1:

Thinking about homeschooling, but don't know where to start? Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic, actually 120 interviews at this point with homeschooling families from across the country and the world. And what I've done is I've packed everything I've learned into an ebook called The Homeschool How to Complete Starter Guide. From navigating your state's laws to finding your homeschooling style, from working while homeschooling to supporting kids with special needs. This guide covers it all with real stories from real families who've walked this path. I've taken the best insights, the best resources, and put them all into this guide. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Get your copy of the Homeschool How-To Complete Starter Guide today and discover that homeschooling isn't just about education. It's about getting what you want out of each day, not what somebody else wants out of you. You can grab the link to this ebook in the show's description or head on over to the homeschoolhow to.com.

Speaker:

And so Mises would hold seminars at NYU where people like Murray Rothbard would attend. But there's also, you know, many great American Austrian economists. It sort of sounds like an oxymoron or something, but Austrian economists, the school of thought, who reside in the United States.

Speaker 1:

Is this how the economy in Austria was?

Speaker:

Not particularly. So I mentioned Eugen von Bombawork, which is sort of a mouthful, is it's a big name there. He was uh a finance minister, uh, I think at one point. No, uh, Karl Menger actually didn't have any formal training in economics, and he's sort of like the founder of the school of thought. He was he was a journalist. He tutored some of the of the monarch's children in economics, and he wrote this book, Principles of Economics. Um, and so that's really where it got its start.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I I find it interesting because I mean I'm more of the libertarian aspect as well. But we were back this summer, we were at in Mystic, Connecticut, and we were like going through the C pour in the museum there, and there was a huge mural on the wall of a whale. And my husband would know better what they actually painted it with because he understood it. But um, it was the whole thing was basically anti-capitalism. I mean, someone like me, like, I didn't know that. I went to public school, I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh yeah, this is pretty cool. This is a life-size whale. And then the curator was like, Well, this is actually, you know, they're showing because it was a whaling exhibit, and they're showing how capitalism was the reason for all of these horrible things that happened to the whales and why the whales are going extinct, and how corrupt it was um, you know, to just allow these people to go off onto these ships for three to five years and kill, you know, 60 whales and eventually certain kinds went extinct and or close to it. And, you know, I'm listening to her and I'm like, yeah, okay. And I was like, but I don't know, is the alternative better? Are the people in government going to protect the whales? Some sometimes, yes. But sometimes if they benefit from it, or if their golf body is a whaler, they might put in laws to make whaling okay. You know, like so I thought it was super interesting. Like, okay, yes, every I guess I came to the conclusion that every form of government is going to have its setbacks, its, it's, you know, weaknesses. But what is the best one out of what we're given? I mean, we can look at the I mean, I I the opposite of capitalism, I would assume, would be communism, right?

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah. So I mean definitely Yeah, the opposite of capitalism would be socialism. So that's one thing that uh Ludwig Mamisis wrote about a lot is like what actually defines socialism, what defines capitalism. And for him, it boils down to private property. So if if we have private property, then it's capitalism. But if if the private ownership of the means of production is abolished, then it's socialism. And that's actually not something that socialists would deny. They would say, yeah, that's that's what we're arguing for. We want collective ownership of the means of production. On this point, one of Mises' uh great contributions to economic thought was his critique of socialism, where he he showed that if we don't have private ownership of the means of production, then we don't have market prices for them. And if we don't have market prices for those factors of production, it means that we can't calculate profit and loss. And if we can't calculate profit and loss, then we're we can't rationally arrange product. We can't we don't know that what we're producing, how we're producing it, how long it's taking for us to produce it is what's actually in the best service of what consumers want. Whereas in the capitalist system, if we have profit and loss that's regulating entrepreneurs' production plans, then we know that factors of production are being put in their best possible place. So that's why in socialist experiments, wherever they've been tried, whenever they've been tried, they run out of food. They they make the wrong kinds of shoes, they they don't make enough of this, they don't make enough of that. And it's because they don't, they literally don't have the information, they don't have prices to help them figure out where should resources be used in production to provide for what consumers want. So the interesting thing about this critique is that it sidesteps the usual critique. The usual critique of socialism is the incentive problem. So like under socialism, if we're all making the same amount of money, then why would anybody choose the dirty jobs or the dangerous jobs? Why would anybody, you know, you know, spend a long time learning how to do brain surgery? So like why, why, why would anybody do that? Like, if we're gonna all be paid the same, I'm gonna be a food critic. That's gonna be my job in the socialist commonwealth. But but the socialist response to that, which is very dubious, the socialist response is, well, human nature itself is going to change. Once we implement socialism, everybody's gonna be okay with you know providing for their comrades. Everybody would be okay with denying themselves, you know, making whatever sacrifice they need to, as long as it's good for the community. And so Mises was like, okay, fine. I I don't think that that's true. I don't think human nature is gonna change, but we'll grant you that assumption, you still don't know how to produce what you need to produce. So, like, even if the central planning board is made up of the greatest people, that you know, great experts, and everybody is willing to contribute for contribute towards the production of what people want, they're still not gonna know how to produce what people want and need.

Speaker 1:

Well, okay, how come they don't know how to produce it? Or is it more that you did a favor for me, so I'm going to do this favor for you? I don't really care about the outcome if there's enough food or shoes that people like because I don't care about making money because they're stuck buying this anyway.

Speaker:

I don't think I understand the question.

Speaker 1:

Like, okay, so like why can't they just say, let's take a um, let's take a poll. What kind of shoes do people like? Or how much food is out there? Who's hungry, who's not? Like, what is the difference between, and I'm not arguing with you because I worked for the government for 16 years, and I definitely agree, but I'm wondering why our government, which is socialist, like if you're a government worker, I was basically I was a glorified welfare recipient, is what I like to say for 16 years. And why did we mess up where the money went so often? Like, why can't we just pull? What do people want?

Speaker:

Yeah, yeah. So why not why not just issue surveys? So, like, we'll give everybody a survey, they'll tell us what they want. So there's there's quite a few problems with that. But like one issue is very practical. So if you think about what the US Census is, like we send out the survey to everyone, and we can't even get you know good collections on that. We can't get accurate information, we can't pull everybody. So, like, there's just a practical problem with that. But also another practical issue is that it takes a long time to administer these surveys and collect the information and then figure out what to do with it. Like, how do we deal with this information? In the meantime, technology is changing, people's preferences are changing, the supplies of natural resources are changing. So everything is constantly changing in our economy. And those changes are accommodated in when we have profit and loss, you know, guiding entrepreneurial decision making, but all of that is absent in a social disorder framework. So by the time you actually get the information, it's it's outdated. But also, people don't really know what they want until they're actually faced with a choice. So one example that I often talk about is sometimes I walk into the grocery store with a list of things that I need to buy. Usually my wife gives it to me, but then I walk out with something completely different. So I so maybe they didn't have a certain item, and so I had to pick something else, or maybe I just changed my mind, or maybe you know, something caught my eye that, oh yeah, that'd be nice to have in the pantry, and so I'll grab that uh something extra, something that wasn't on the list, right? So we make these decisions on the spot. Surveys are net the information that's in a survey, it's if it's honest, if it's accurate, it's necessarily given in advance, all the while our our preferences might change, and also like what we actually want is demonstrated in action, right? So that's that's another issue. One final thing that I'll mention here with the with the survey is that so suppose we actually do collect all of this information, suppose it's timely. So so we will just assume away the the time issue there. The one issue that the the central planning board that's collecting all this information from the surveys is they have to turn those survey responses into numbers to use in production. So, what sort of information would we get from a survey? I would rather have a red pair of shoes than a blue pair of shoes. I would rather have bananas than apples, right? So it's all of these rankings. Like what goods do I want compared to other goods? It's just a ranking of goods. But so they get that for you know millions of people. How do they turn that into we need to produce this many tons of bananas, we need to produce this many tons of of or excuse me, this many pairs of red shoes in this size, this many pairs of blue shoes in that size, and so on and so forth for all these things. There's not a mathematical way because you've got rankings over here, but you need cardinal numbers. You need to assign a certain number of workers to this factory, you need to say, this acre of land is going to be used to make this particular agricultural product, this acre of land is going to be used for housing, this acre of land is going to be used for that. So you have to make those sorts of specific judgments, specific decisions, which you can't do just based on a ranking of what somebody prefers to what.

Speaker 1:

That that makes a lot of sense when you think about it in terms of food. You know, why do these socialist countries end up with no food on the shelves? And it's like, okay, well, yes, if you are producing just all bananas and maybe there ends up being um a banana allergy or something goes wrong with the batch. It's like, okay, we we didn't have the demand to like make the the cost go up so that when the costs go up, you can say, hey, we need another factory to or you know, another farm to start making bananas for us. Because you you don't have the money there now because you've collected all of the tax money, but it's probably already been divvied out. So there really is no that basically you're taking away supply and demand, right? You're just saying, this is what I am supplying you with. I don't care if you demand it or not.

Speaker:

Yeah, exactly. There are some forms of socialism that don't even have money. So they just take money out entirely. So all of the decisions are just made by central planning boards. Like, where do I work? Well, wherever the planning board tells me to. What am I going to consume? What goods am I going to bring back to my household? It's whatever rations I get from the uh central planning board. But you're but you're right, there are other forms of socialism that do try to retain some role for money. Usually it's in consumer goods. So people get like these tickets, these tokens that they get for for working for a certain number of hours. And so they get these tickets and then they can take that to the grocery store and spend them on different uh food items that they want. But the what Mises showed is that even if you have a market for consumer goods, if you don't have private ownership of the means of production, then you can't calculate the cost of production and compare it to the revenues and say, yes, this is a productive, profitable use of resources, or no, that is not a productive and profitable use of resources. We should we should expand the profitable ones and diminish or take away the unprofitable ones so that we're producing what exactly what consumers want and need.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is super interesting. They don't teach us about that in school a whole lot. What to finish up, how do you see, like, what is their reason for favoring socialism in school? Because I know I even had that school of thought that's like, well, why would there need to be billionaires if they're homeless people? They should redistribute it all. And you know, that's until I had kids and I was like, wait, and kind of worked for the government for 16 years looking around, like, all right, everybody here just watches YouTube all day. Like there's like, there's like two people working. This cannot be the best use of our time and money in our tax dollars. But why do you think they're pushing that in in schools? There's obviously an agenda at play.

Speaker:

Yeah, um, yeah, there's definitely an agenda. I think it's there's a lot of heterogeneity. So it probably just depends on the school or the teacher that you have, and it depends on their own values. So obviously, some areas there's going to be more teachers who are biased towards socialist ideas, and so students in their classes are gonna be introduced to like a or be introduced to a favorable opinion of of socialism more than other schools and other areas. But yeah, so I mean that's that's the thing. Like you can't, there's there's no way to teach things in a completely neutral way. It's just because at the very basic level, you have to choose what to teach. And by choosing what to teach, you're saying stating your preference for teaching dad as opposed to teaching something else. But of course, it seeps in further than that because like the way that you present something is is necessarily going to be a biased. And if you think about it, there's a selection issue here. So, who what ideas and what biases and values are people who sign up to teach in public schools? What what ideas are they gonna have? And they're gonna be favorable towards the government, they're gonna think that the government can solve problems more often than not. They're they're gonna be, you know, in line with what the government is saying. Um, and so I think that that might be another reason. But also we just get, you know, plain old top-down, the government says we're gonna be teaching this, and so that's what everybody's teaching. And obviously, the government's gonna choose, you know, a curriculum that aligns with with what they want, whether that's you know, this this war was actually a good idea, or it's okay for the government to intervene in this part of the economy, or whatever the government wants to to indoctrinate, then they're gonna they're gonna do it. I just use the word indoctrinate. A lot of people use that as like a bad word, but I don't think it's a bad word. I think it depends on what doctrines you're teaching, right? So I I'm I am 100% okay with indoctrinating my kids, right? So I want to teach them that God is real, that you know, free markets work, that I want to teach them certain things about history. Of course. With the caveat of what I said earlier, it's like I want them to be able to think critically about it. But I mean, there's certain principles and values that I want to instill in my children. So everybody, like anybody who's involved in teaching, is doing some level of indoctrination. The homeschooling choice is saying, I want to be the one who's in charge of that, not somebody else.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And the government is not going to teach your kids that the government can be wrong or dangerous. They're not going to tell you that they're dangerous sometimes. Absolutely. So where can we find out more information about the Mises Institute for anybody that wants to check it out? And I'll put it in the show's description as well. But why don't I have you lay it all out here?

Speaker:

Sure. So our website is Mises.org. That's N-I-S-E-S dot or G. And there on that main page, you can find lots of articles. At the top, there's a tab that says Academy, and that's where you can find the econ course that I mentioned earlier. If you go over to the library or to our bookstore, then you can see the children's books that I've written. And these children's books are about Austrian economic principles, like the broken window fallacy, Austrian business cycle theory, money and banking, like where did money come from? It's a great little kid story about that. And so you can find all of that at our website. We have podcasts, we have articles, we have uh student programs, so so come check us out.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, I'll definitely get that book out. That is so fun. And it's never too early to start talking to our kids about that stuff. So thank you so much, Jonathan, for being here today. This has been so fun to talk about.

Speaker:

Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the Homeschool How To. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.