Steve Horwitz — What Drives Progress?

In honour of Steve Horwitz (1964-2021), we are re-releasing his conversation with Alex Aragona on what drives progress — a topic near and dear to Steve's heart.

References from The Curious Task Special Episode 1 with Steve Horwitz 

• Steve Horwitz is the author of Austrian Economics: An Introduction; Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective; Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order; and Hayek’s Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions which are available for purchase on Amazon Canada (titles hyperlinked).
• This article entitled Persistent Fallacies by Vuk Vukovic recounts the misconceptions surrounding growth and is a response to the book, Why Nations Fail, featuring an anecdote on Paul Samuelson’s forecast of the USSR overtaking the US economy that was referenced by Steve in the episode.   
• In case you missed Virginia Postrel’s episode on The Curious Task and wish to catch up with her research, her book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World, can be purchased on Amazon Canada at this link.
• The Cato Institute published an article by Adam D. Thierer on permissionless innovation, which also provides an overview of Deidre McCloskey’s contributions to the theory. It can be read here.  
• You can read Steve’s article, Privilege and the Liberal Tradition, on libertarianism.org.
• Here is an excerpt on Ludwig’s von Mises’ concept of peaceful transference from his book, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition. 
• You can learn more about Robert Higgs’ concept of regime uncertainty through this downloadable PDF published by the Independent Institute. 
• This article by Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr. is an introduction to “sound money” that Steve also talks about during the podcast. 
• You can watch Hans Rosling’s TED video on The Magic Washing Machine at this link. 
• The joint research on inequality published by Steve and Vincent Geloso is available for reading here. 
• Here is the article written by Steve on Tyler Cowen’s joint article on The Great Stagnation, which is also available for reading online at this link.
• Here is some more background on precision medicine that Steve mentions briefly on the podcast.
• Here is the link to the 2007 panel discussion with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates that Alex mentions in the podcast.  
• The Back to the Future trilogy and Demolition Man can be purchased and/or streamed from Amazon Canada.  You can read more about John Stuart Mill’s “experiments of living” at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s website (Chapter 4.6).