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.
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)