Henry Hazlitt is discussed across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case through his book Economics in One Lesson rather than through biographical detail. The excerpts present the book as a short tract setting out a rule of economics and as a primer used to teach free-market ideas.
Economics in One Lesson and the “seen and the unseen”
In the 2019-02-14 episode, Bob Zadek describes Economics in One Lesson as a little tract by Henry Hazlitt in which Hazlitt puts forward what Zadek calls an ironclad rule of economics, “the seen and the unseen.” As Zadek states the rule, every policy and every action has the most visible costs and benefits, and then there are the unintended consequences and the hidden costs. He says Hazlitt goes through every area of the economy looking at how what might sound good on paper actually has undesirable unintended consequences. Not Enough Bricks (2019)
Zadek applies the rule to the Green New Deal, which he calls the perfect illustration of Economics in One Lesson. He argues that attempting to pick winners and losers at the central level carries the wrong incentives and would produce dozens of Solyndras, referring to the solar company that received what he recalls as a $500 million loan from the federal government that it could not pay back. In Zadek’s account the company went bankrupt because its cylindrical solar panels were too expensive to maintain and did not generate as much electricity as a standard flat panel. He contrasts something that looks great on paper with officials who, in his description, have no background in technology or engineering and do not do the full accounting. Not Enough Bricks (2019)
The episode’s guest, Mark Joffe, then a senior analyst at Reason who writes about public sector credit and transportation issues, adds a related point: one reason Solyndra and some other companies had trouble was low-cost solar panels coming from China, and the Trump administration had recently increased tariffs on those. Joffe argues that if solar energy is thought to be a solution and China wants to subsidize it, the panels should be taken. Not Enough Bricks (2019)
Hazlitt in the GE “propaganda mill”
The 2019-12-29 episode, a conversation with Amity Shlaes, places Hazlitt in a different setting: the reading material circulated by General Electric executive Lemuel Boulware. Shlaes describes Boulware as a guru at GE who made what she calls an intellectual policy and philanthropic bet — that he needed to train people in the merits of free-market capitalism and the history of GE, reminding them where growth comes from. She says he created a little propaganda mill at GE to teach the company’s workers, more than 100,000 people, about the benefits of capitalism. Close Enough to Socialism: Amity Schlaes on The Great Society (2019)
According to Shlaes, Boulware mimeographed little pamphlets about Hayek, the free-marketeer, and about the work of Henry Hazlitt, who she says popularized Bastiat and Hayek, and taught the workers about how ideas come about. She notes that the effort seemed silly to many. She also describes Boulware hiring an aging actor who was not very popular and was at that time a rock-ribbed Democrat, Ronald Reagan, to be the spokesman for these capitalist ideas. In her account Reagan went around on the rubber chicken circuit giving lectures to workers and in town halls about the merits of capitalism and the problems of unions, and gradually became convinced of the ideas. Close Enough to Socialism: Amity Schlaes on The Great Society (2019)
Shlaes recounts that GE became caught up in its own divided soul when executives were found to have been colluding illegally in violation of American antitrust law with Westinghouse and other companies to fix prices and charge too much to the Tennessee Valley Authority. She says there was a bloody court case, that actual GE executives went to jail, which she calls unusual in antitrust, that the unions crowed at the slip-up, and that the stock went into the toilet. Boulware’s department fell apart, Boulware retired, Reagan was fired, and his television show, GE Theater, part of the propaganda effort, was canceled. Shlaes concludes that Reagan remembered all of this, began to give speeches about markets and about what was wrong with the socialization of medicine, and that the long-shot propaganda effort by Boulware paid off — sometimes, she says, a project of political or philosophical education does not pay off for 10 or 20 years, or until after your death, but that does not mean the undertaking was not worth it. Close Enough to Socialism: Amity Schlaes on The Great Society (2019)
The Mises Institute and the book as an introduction
In the 2021-03-07 episode, Bob Zadek speaks with Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute. Deist recommends that people go to Mises.org, which he describes as holding a lifetime’s worth of reading in the form of free books, free ebooks and free downloads. He says that if visitors to the website type in Economics in One Lesson, they can sign up to receive for free a box of books of Henry Hazlitt’s primer of economics. Deist calls it perhaps the single best introductory book ever written, describing it as very short, very easy to read, and made up of very discrete little chapters. He recommends it to someone who does not know a lot about economics but would like to begin to develop or shore up their knowledge without being overwhelmed or bored. Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021)
Deist also tells listeners they can follow the institute on Twitter or find it on Facebook and consume as much or as little as they want, and that if they find the economics they learned was not right, or need to unlearn it and go deeper, the institute has books, videos and articles that would last a lifetime. Zadek closes the segment by telling listeners that all of it is readable. Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021)
Earlier in the same conversation, Zadek had pushed back on progressive discomfort with the word “wealth,” arguing that wealth means having drugs to make you better if you are ill, living comfortably, not being too cold or too hot, and having healthy, inexpensive food and goods and services at prices people can generally afford. He says the economic concept of increasing wealth is not ostentation or self-indulgence but simply describes making the world a better place. Austrian Economics Triumphs (2021)
Across episodes
Hazlitt appears in three episodes spanning 2019 to 2021, and the excerpts show no development in how he is treated: in each case he is cited as the author of Economics in One Lesson, once as the source of the “seen and the unseen” rule applied to the Green New Deal by Bob Zadek, once as one of the writers whose work Lemuel Boulware circulated to GE workers in Amity Shlaes’s account, and once as the author whose primer Jeff Deist recommends and distributes free through the Mises Institute.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no biographical information about Hazlitt — no dates, no places, no account of his career or his other writings. They do not describe the contents of Economics in One Lesson beyond the “seen and the unseen” rule as Zadek states it, and they do not say when the book was published or by whom. The claim that Hazlitt popularized Bastiat and Hayek is Shlaes’s characterization, and the excerpts give no further detail on what that popularization consisted of. Nothing in the sources indicates whether Hazlitt ever appeared as a guest on the program.