Calculation and Socialism

Timothy Terrell revisits Mises's 1920 bombshell: under socialism, rational economic calculation isn't just hard—it's impossible. Without market prices for the means of production, a central planner is blind, unable to tell whether he's creating wealth or destroying it. Terrell traces the argument from Soviet railroads and steel-bodied fighter jets to a strikingly modern target: the U.S. government's central planning of the American West.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 21, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.