Kudzu's lesson: government created it, goats are fixing it

Mark Thornton took a break from his series on American government to tell a story with a punchline that lands hard in 2026.

Kudzu. The vine that ate the South. Japanese gardeners brought it to the 1876 Centennial Exposition as an ornamental. For decades, private interest in the plant stayed modest. Then FDR's Soil Conservation Service paid farmers to blanket millions of acres with it. The goal was to fix erosion and dust bowl conditions – problems that earlier government policies had helped create.

Kudzu grew a foot a day. It swallowed trees, houses, power lines. It became an environmental menace across the Southeast. Government herbicides couldn't kill it.

What is working is a market solution nobody planned. Entrepreneurs lease goat herds to graze kudzu patches. The goats drain the rootstock over a few years. The side product is goat meat for the working class. No federal program, no subsidy, no herbicide.

Side B of the podcast features a Tasty Live interview where Thornton explains all three Austrian business cycle indicators firing simultaneously: the stock bubble, price inflation, and the K-shaped economy. He traces the historical pattern connecting tariffs, strategic stockpiling, and industrial policy to the wars that follow.

2026 is the Year of Rothbard – Murray's 100th birthday. The Mises Institute is giving away free copies of "The Origins of the Federal Reserve" through July 31 at mises.org/issuesfree.

A 20% listener offer is available on the insulated Minor Issues tumbler and three of Thornton's books at mises.org/MinorIssuesTumbler with coupon code Thornton.

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