All Posts Tagged With: "human action"
Destroying Value
In Cleveland and other American cities homes are being demolished because five years after the housing bust there is nothing better to do with them. Therein lies a lesson in Austrian business cycle theory. In a world of uncertainty, waste—the destruction of value—is inevitable. Human action, which aims to replace inferior circumstances with superior circumstances, [...]
4Jan2012 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedSocial Cooperation, Part 2
Last month I wrote about Ludwig von Mises’s emphasis on social cooperation as the basis of his economic philosophy, particularly in his magnum opus, Human Action. I thought I’d follow up with more thoughts on this subject. Mises was no maverick in this regard. Interest in social cooperation pervades the best classical-liberal and libertarian thought. [...]
30Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedBack to Basics
If mind is brain, there is no “psychological” freedom or responsibility — no humanity. And if those don’t exist, there can be no political freedom or self-responsibility. What does not exist cannot be violated.
11Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 58 comments | ContinuedSocial Cooperation
At FEE’s Advanced Austrian Economics Seminar last summer, more than one speaker mentioned that Ludwig von Mises considered a different title for the book we know as Human Action. The other title? Social Cooperation. I’ve heard that story before, but this time it got me thinking: Would the free-market movement have been perceived differently by [...]
26Oct2011 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: Economist, Philosopher, Prophet
Editor’s Note: September 29 is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist, defender of classical liberalism, and adviser to FEE. Below is a selection of Mises’s writings published in The Freeman over the years. The Market It is customary to speak metaphorically of the automatic and anonymous forces [...]
24Aug2011 | Ludwig von Mises | 0 comments | ContinuedSocial Cooperation
We should realize that the terms “individualism,” “self-reliance,” and “independence” can lend themselves to undesirable caricatures.
12Aug2011 | Sheldon Richman | 38 comments | ContinuedStaying Out of the Corner
In a world of pervasive scarcity, every choice has a cost. Recognizing this fact about the human condition should lead us to see the world in terms of marginal benefits and costs.
24Mar2011 | Steven Horwitz | 9 comments | ContinuedHappy Anniversary, Human Action!
September 14, 1949, was the official publication date of Ludwig von Mises’s immortal treatise, Human Action. While the book is long and apparently daunting, it is amazingly accessible for interested readers. It is well written and well organized, so don’t let the length keep you away from the most important book in economics.And don’t forget [...]
14Sep2009 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedHuman Action Turns 60!
Featuring: Kirzner, Greaves, Boettke, Leeson, Hazlitt, and more! TheFreemanOnline.org
20Aug2009 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedHuman Action as a Work of Art
What can one say briefly about Human Action? When it was being written and people would ask what it was to be about, the answer given among Mises’s students was: Everything. Indeed. From the setting forth of praxeology as the a priori science of human action, to the description of the market’s operation, to the [...]
19Aug2009 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedHuman Action, 1949: A Dramatic Episode in Intellectual History
A great book, it has been remarked, is like a great castle. It can be viewed from many different angles, each offering a unique perspective. Viewing Ludwig von Mises’s monumental work from the vantage of 2009 permits one to see with great clarity one fascinating aspect of the book–the sheer drama of its emergence at [...]
19Aug2009 | Israel M. Kirzner | 5 comments | ContinuedHuman Action: The 60th Anniversary
We are celebrating the 60th anniversary of a great book, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, by a learned man and a clear thinker: the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. It presents Mises’s understanding–after long years of study and thought–of how the market economy functions. It is a major contribution to human knowledge. Interventionist ideas [...]
19Aug2009 | Bettina Bien Greaves | 2 comments | ContinuedHuman Action: The Treatise in Economics
“Next week we will discuss the master’s work.” So stated Dr. Hans Sennholz to close his graduate seminar during my junior year at Grove City College. I had owned a copy of Human Action since my freshman year, but the book was too daunting for me to really study it. I preferred to read Henry [...]
19Aug2009 | Peter J. Boettke | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat Human Action Has Meant to Me: Reflections of a Young Economist
I remember well when I discovered Human Action. I remember because it has had the profoundest influence on my development as an economist not only up to that point, but also since then. I first read Human Action when I was in high school. At the time I was very much interested in, and influenced by, [...]
19Aug2009 | Peter T. Leeson | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Case for Capitalism
This article is from Henry Hazlitt’s September 19, 1949 Newsweek column. There has just been published by the Yale University Press a book that is destined to become a landmark in the progress of economies. Its title is Human Action, and its author is Ludwig von Mises. It is the consummation of half a century [...]
19Aug2009 | Henry Hazlitt | 1 comment | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: Political Realist
Here’s Ludwig von Mises, in Human Action (4th rev. ed., 793), writing about what governments–and individuals–can and cannot do during economic crises: We may admit that for the British and American governments in the ‘thirties no way was left other than that of currency devaluation, inflation and credit expansion, unbalanced budgets, and deficit spending. Governments [...]
21Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedPoker and the Free Market
Good poker players are like entrepreneurs: You need greater skill than average to anticipate the future. As Mises so cogently puts it in Human Action, “What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do; but he judges the future in a different way.”
20Jan2009 | Robert Stewart | 2 comments | Continued-
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