Posted on 08/10/2024 8:21:45 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Ludwig von Mises is a man who needs no introduction, with ideas that need no introduction.
Today I'm happy to point out that The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science is now ready to go as a freely downloadable open source audio book. If you're a fan of either classical economics or Friedrich Hayek, an author we recently released for, then Mises is right up your alley.
Ping
Thanks for posting.
I have his book Human Action and it is a joy to read. I have an event that I have to go to, so more later.
Funny story...I had already read some of Mises by the time I entered college.
After listening to the insane leftist professor in the Economics I course at college I approached the guy after class one day and asked him the simple question:
“Have you ever heard of Ludwig Von Mises.” He said “no”.
I was stunned—and learned just how ignorant so many of the big named Economics professors were.
European Austrian economics which have no more place or relevancy there as they do in the US. Less than 1% of Americans have ever even heard of this fringe Austrian. Maybe if we are going to discuss Austrians and their theories, how about Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) instead of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)?
I was at the Liberatarian National Convention in Reno in 2022 and there was one lone table promoting Ludwig von Mises, buried among a bunch of other non-sense, like pro-abortion, pro-drugs, etc. He was a fringe even at their event.
Mises is relevant to the lives of individual human beings.
Those who have read and understand his work have a big advantage in the business world.
Those who have not and do not will get burned—over and over and over again.
I believe that some simple ideas are being lost in overly complex analysis, making them inaccessible and irrelevant.
A more accessible version of Mises ideas would be found in Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy and State”.
Most people never read that either.
:-)
But he was well-versed in Smith, Galbraith, Friedman, and Heller.
Yeah—you may not have heard the John Kenneth Galbraith joke about Mises.
It was something like “Ludwig Von Mises was the last gift of the Austria Hungarian Empire to America”.
At least Galbraith read Mises—unlike my dingbat professor.
Lol.
Bttt.
5.56mm
I had a Bachelor’s and Master’s in economics before I saw a recommendation for Human Action from some conservative source. I was taught traditional economics from textbooks. I also took a couple left-wing economics classes (Marx etc.), out of by 20 econ courses.
Then I read Mises. I think he is a great economist, well deserving of a Nobel Prize. His problem was, and is, that he was anti-socialist to the core. After WWII, the world was awash in socialism. Out of step, he could barely keep a job.
His approach is very strongly deductive. This contrasts with Milton Friedman who was very empirical. There is nothing wrong with either approach. They are just different, each with pros and cons. It is interesting to see how far one can go making logical inferences off of stated assumptions. It’s an exercise in logic.
At one meeting of conservative economists, he stormed off saying “you’re all a bunch of socialists.” He might say the same of his conservative critics at FreeRepublic. And he might be right!
The problem is that once there is substantial state intervention the entire economic enterprise turns from rational to chaos theory.
Then the “empirical” types claim “you don’t predict this”.
Yeah—because nothing is predictable in the world of chaos theory.
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Very good! Hopefully this will provide you a new or better or more efficient way to access this material.
Since the audio book is public domain, that means you can also download the PDF for free. It’s linked material, above.
I’ll confess, personally I haven’t read Rothbard’s “Man, Economy and State” either.
But, I did take a look and its open source in the public domain. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001308738
If you were ever interested in transforming it as we did for Mises and Hayek, let me know. I’m always looking for new people to team up with.
Austrian School - bump for later.....
Great post.
I couldn’t believe I saw that post further up the thread, but I guess that person must be one of that 99% he asserts never heard of Mises. Or if he has, doesn’t know why he is important, because, well, he just isn’t famous enough.
In my conversations with people I meet in life, that fabled 99% doesn’t know about Milton Friedman, and they most likely know nothing about Hayek either.
Perhaps that is why we are sliding into tyranny and massive debt, because people in that fabled and important 99% aren’t interested at all (even on this very forum) in LEARNING the lessons of history so we can avoid them.
But hey. They ALL know about Taylor Swift. Why don’t we talk about her instead? (spit)
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