Ep. 125 Mateusz Machaj on the Structure of Production in Economic Theory, and the Political Philosophy of the Star Wars Prequels
Austrian economist and Mises Institute Fellow Mateusz Machaj discusses two of his books. The first is a technical work explaining how the Austrian structure of production concept can help resolve puzzles in economics. Machaj’s second book analyzes the political philosophy behind the Star Wars prequels. This episode contains deep insights that will inform even advanced students of both economic theory and the Star Wars universe.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this interview: Part 1 on structure of production and Part 2 on Star Wars.
- Matt’s book on capital theory and his book on Star Wars. #CommissionsEarned (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
- Bob’s referee reports from Paul Samuelson.
- Bob’s article explaining “reswitching.”
- Krugman on potential GDP flip-flop.
- Mace Windu, vigilante.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
The audio production for this episode was provided by Podsworth Media.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
Great episode Bob! Over the years I’ve seen many analysis video’s on star wars, but few focus on the political aspect. Machaj’s perspective on Palpatine and the prequels is very interesting. If you want more political analysis videos on Star Wars I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKII7lNsVIE by Academic Agent. Perhaps you don’t agree with everything in the video, but I think it’s an interesting watch at least.
Hey Murphy, I completely coincidently was reading your 2006 paper on economic computation using Cantors diagonal argument and the response given by Machaj which I found very interesting. I was wondering If you had any comment on this issue. Does the Lange-Lerner model not contain the equation solving method itself? Does your argument still apply but only to the pure mathematical/complete central planning arguments of the 1920’s and early 1930’s by Taylor and early Dickinson? Any sort of advice for direction on the issue would be very helpful given I’ve spent a lot of time on this issue, going as deep as to read Per to get to really get to the bottom of calculation debate. This topic has a huge amount of literature on it with so many annoyingly different arguments in such subtle ways causing confusion, maybe you can make things more clear?
I need to re-read it I never really studied their critique (too busy).