The National Security Complex: Contemporary Statism on Steroids

David Stockman at the Human Action Conference, 2024

05/17/2024 David Stockman

“The empire can and should be dismantled. 1949 was a crucial mistake—a pivot point that has led to this massive fiscal and political crisis that we have in America today. This is pretty evident to a lot of us, but it was evident to Mises in 1949, and I think we should have followed his advice.”

Presented at the 2024 Human Action Conference on Friday, 17 May 2024, at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.