The O’Leary Review Podcast
Guest: Hartmuth Pelger
December 1, 2022
Recently, we got a chance to sit down—virtually, of course, because I’m in California and he’s in Austria—with Hartmuth Pelger.
Hartmuth is a multilingual business executive with more than 25 years of experience managing a wide range of financial functions, from analysis to auditing.
Currently, he is a CFO in the e-Mobility sector.
Hartmuth lives in Austria but has also lived in 8 countries across three continents during his well-traveled life.
More importantly, Hartmuth started a parallel career in business coaching for high-performing individuals.
Tom Woods 100
One of the goals of this program is to get at least 100 people within the Tom Woods orbit on the podcast. “Tom’s orbit” is loosely defined, but in our case, Hartmuth is number 8. Ninety-two to go!
#TomWoods100
Book mentioned Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s age of discovery by Marc Faber
Influences
The Peter Schiff Show — where Tom Woods developed some of his radio/podcasting chops as a guest host for Peter.
The Mises Institute — The Mises Institute exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics, and individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Founded in 1982 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe — an Austrian School economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher, is Professor Emeritus of Economics at UNLV, Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, founder and president of The Property and Freedom Society, former editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, and a lifetime member of the Royal Horticultural Society. He is married to economist Dr. A. Gulcin Imre Hoppe and resides with his wife in Istanbul.
Digging through the archives, we found the debut episode of the Tom Woods Show which Hartmuth mentions.
Ethnic Germans in Romania
The Wikipedia entry – Germans of Romania
A New York Times article (behind paywall), “Ethnic Germans in Romania Dwindle”
A fascinating 8+ minute video on The Exodus of Romania’s German-speaking Minority.
More Romanian history
Who was Nicolae Ceaușescu? The Wikipedia on Romania’s brutal and hated dictator.
Romania in World War II. The Wikipedia on the interesting history, from its near alliance with Nazi Germany to its ultimate flip to the Communist side.
The e-Mobility Sector
Hartmuth works in the off-highway sector within e-mobility. Some manufacturers are now focused on not only alternative fuels, but alternative ways to power machinery in general.
The specific application of a fully-electric drive concept is key to knowing if it will make economic sense. For instance, Hartmuth is working on mining and agricultural application, and an important aspect of a firm’s decision on whether to go fully-electric or not is the amount of pollution—or lack thereof—that will be produced on-site. Very interesting.
Armageddon (1998)
How much better would Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) and his roughneck pals have felt if they had Hartmuth’s e-mobility concept working for them on that comet? Assuming they had diesel-powered rigs, they need oxygen to burn the fuel. Does a comet have all that much oxygen available?
Since we love Bruce Willis—and most of his movies—we will eventually get to Die Hard later in the holiday season, but we did stumble upon one potential plot hole in the Christmas thriller…or was there ever one?
The sovereignty of Hong Kong
Wikipedia’s breakdown of what happened when the UK handed it over to the Red Chinese.
Dubai
Wikipedia. Sorry about all the Wikipedia links, but they are pretty good and if you are on your best internet behavior, you’ll learn a lot. However, we tend to go down the proverbial worm-hole of Wikipedia from time to time. That’s also fun on occasion, but tends to grind down available time in the day. Enjoy the links at your own risk.
Portuguese
At one point, I was interested in learning Portuguese, but I don’t know about that now. Somebody on YouTube claims they can teach you in 4 hours. Click at your own risk. I haven’t finished the video yet as I type this…
Hitchhiking
I was blown away when Hartmuth told me he hitchhiked in the western US and Canada in the 1990s. I grew up with the notion that hitchhiking was a serious no-no—both to try and get rides or to give rides to potential riders. The days of Me and Bobby McGee were more romantic and innocent, I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOoMREvsV9E
There’s a guy I found on the web called Nomadic Matt and he tells you 14 Ways to Safely Hitchhike Across the United States. Read at your own speed or interest level. I’m just leaving it here…I have no interest in hitchhiking anywhere—I am still a child of my parents.
Place in Canada mentioned: Prince George, British Columbia
How do you contact Hartmuth?
You can either contact me or go to his LinkedIn: Hartmuth Pelger.
Austria
Final Wikipedia entry of today’s show notes: Austria.
Interesting story of mine somewhat related to Austria—I’ve never been to continental Europe—in my travels…
I was in Japan a few years back and at a coffee shop of sorts for a breakfast. The selection of non-Japanese foods in most places is often quite strange. The desire to imitate Europe or America is strong, but the implementation is often rather weak—save Kentucky Fried Chicken, but that’s a subject for an entire newsletter or podcast series on its own.
So, craving a typical American breakfast sandwich or something similar, I ordered a “Viennese Sausage.” Never had that before. Figured it was something even more exotic than regular sausage.
Wrong. It was a hot dog on a hot dog bun. Served with a packet of ketchup and a packet of mustard.
I was very confused and rather irritated until it dawned on me that I had seen Vienna Sausages in the store, usually canned and next to the SPAM. But also that I was eating a “wiener” and that…duh!...Vienna is the anglicized name for the Austrian capital city of Wien, thus wiener.
See also: frankfurter, hamburger, etc. for other such examples. I don’t think cheeseburger works in this scenario…but I could be mistaken.
Long story short: the coffee was good, the hot dog was nothing special and we had great Japanese food most of the other meals we sat down for. As my good friend once said, “When in Greece…”
Final book mentioned
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne. The aforementioned Tom Woods talks about this book in 2017. Highly recommended speech—about a half-hour.