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.
I am starting my next book tonight, “John Hancock: The Picturesque Patriot” by Lorenzo Sears. When I am done, I might be interested in dictating that one, as I have never read it either.
If nobody has picked it up by then, I will consider it.
Anyway, I will download this one and listen to it. Thank you for posting.
My favorite Rothbard book is the much shorter and easiest of all to read “Power and Market”.
He focuses on how different government interventions harm different sectors of the economy.
My version of this stuff is very straightforward.
The free market is like an untouched rural creek after it rains.
Government intervention is throwing toxic waste into the creek.
You may not be able to track every horrific effect of the toxic waste—but you know nothing good is going to come of it.
‘“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.’
I think I would have learned about Mises in school if I had taken a two-semester elective on the history of economic thought. Instead, I took two semesters of econometrics. I thought it had more cash value in future employment.
I did put econometrics to use at work. However, I regret not taking the other courses with would have provided a rich literature with diverse thinking. Mainstream econ leaves you with marginal this and marginal that. It’s not bad but you can get in a rut.
I think it was Mises who wrote of the frugal wife who deferred every purchase. Inflation set it and she raced out to spend money before prices rose again. Then hyperinflation.
Monetarists would be right to say the wife is not at fault. Blame the government printing presses for printing more money. Yet changing psychology (all the housewives!) across the nation, is both effect and cause.
I’m really interested in learning more about John Hancock.
Me too!
I can give an example of how Mises affected me in the real world.
One of my hobbies is Cuban cigars. They are illegal in the United States. In addition many fakes are sold in Mexico and the Caribbean and to some extent in South America. They are also crazy expensive in Canada.
To order them Americans who know what they are doing order them by mail from large respected Internet retailers based in Europe and Australia with a long track record of quality and legitimacy and excellent customer service.
I stocked up like crazy in the 2019-2020 period—lifetime supply.
The reason—I had an old Cuban price list from 2007 in a regulated market (Spain) and noticed that those prices had not gone up for a dozen years.
That was crazy—obviously there had been some inflation over those years.
So—the price was “cheap” and I went into hoarding mode.
Then—Covid hit hurting manufacturing capacity in Cuba and inflation hit.
Prices since my purchase days are three, four, five times as high as just three years ago.
When prices are cheap we consumers should buy deep.
:-)
“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.”
Agreed. It’s not just regular folks either. Many engineers and scientists are also clueless and just as likely to go along with Marxist thinking as anyone else.
‘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.”
True. I’m naturally optimistic. So, like a Jew in Germany in the 1930s, I feel like everything will turn out right. However, when I think about it, there seems to be little reason for optimism.
I remember a conservative commentator saying, “the left always overplays their hand.” However, this country may be so far gone that they can’t overplay their hand.
I could not be more in agreement with the entirety of your post.
These 99% who don’t know about someone like Mises are not uneducated.
They aren’t stupid.
And it spans the political spectrum.
I speak to a lot of people about things like this, and I always ask before I proceed something like “Have you ever heard of a man named Ludwig Von Mises?”
If they say no, I usually continue in my effort to link him to our current conversation by continuing “Ludwig Von Mises was an Austrian economist who fled Nazi Germany in 1940 to come to America...” and go from there.
I don’t judge people who don’t know about Mises, Hayek, Keynes, Friedman, or Sowell. Not a bit. I understand 100% and am not surprised when someone says they don’t know who any of them are.
But I do take exception with people (like some on this thread) who think the lessons those men taught are so worthless that people don’t need to know about them. I view that attitude as ignorant nearly to the point of intentional ignorance.
There are a lot of reasons for ignorance, but there are no good reasons for intentional ignorance.
Thank you!
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