All Posts Tagged With: "human action"
Ludwig 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 | ContinuedBook Review: Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing, 2nd edition, by David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee
Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing, 2nd edition by David S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee MIT Press • 2005 • 367 pages • $62.00 hardcover; $24.95 paperback Reviewed by J. H. Huebert The market has an amazing ability to induce voluntary cooperation among millions of people around the globe to provide [...]
1May2006 | Jacob H. Huebert | 0 comments | ContinuedFortune-Cookie Economics
It is little wonder that some economists want to be perceived as having fortune-telling abilities. After all, history and literature are full of examples of revered and exalted prophets and oracles. So we can understand why many economists sit up straight, clear their throats, look us right in the eye, and foretell next year’s change [...]
1Jun2004 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | ContinuedEcon 101: An Austrian Economist’s Dream
On the first day in an economics class the instructor tells us that “resources are scarce,” but human “wants are unlimited”—hence the eternal “economic problem.” How do we know resources are scarce? We can observe this fact with our senses; we can see that nothing is available in unlimited quantities everywhere and at all times. [...]
1Jan2004 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | ContinuedUnderstanding "Austrian" Economics, Part 2
This article appeared in the February 1981 issue. It was originally commissioned by the Silver and Gold Report, Newtown, Connecticut. After the passing of its three founders—Carl Menger, Friedrich von Wieser, and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk—Austrian economics fell for a long time into eclipse. It was not so much refuted as neglected. English-speaking economists began devoting [...]
1Nov2003 | Henry Hazlitt | 1 comment | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: A Voice for Freedom and Principle
October 10 marks 30 years since the death of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. (He passed away at age 92.) For more than six decades in the twentieth century Mises was one of the leading voices for individual freedom and the market economy. During a time when socialist and interventionist ideas and policies seemed to [...]
1Oct2003 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Open-Endedness of Knowledge
I intend to explore in this article some aspects of the uniqueness which is FEE, and to express my fervent hope and confidence that such uniqueness will continue to permeate every nook and cranny of FEE’s activities in the years to come. I will begin by noting two related but separate paradoxes that have over [...]
1Jun2003 | Israel M. Kirzner | 0 comments | ContinuedBastiat, Socialism, and the Blank Slate
“It is evident,” the French economist and parliamentarian Frédéric Bastiat wrote a century and a half ago, “that the socialists set out in quest of an artificial social order only because they deemed the natural order to be either bad or inadequate; and they deemed it bad or inadequate only because they felt that men’s [...]
1Jun2003 | James Peron | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat’s Wrong with How We Teach Economics
Brandon Crocker is a real estate executive in San Diego. The decline in the core curricula of universities and the growing “cultural illiteracy” of high school and college graduates have been lamented in many books and articles. As universities have redesigned their curricula to fit the demands of political correctness and the particular interests of [...]
1May2003 | Brandon Crocker | 0 comments | ContinuedUniversity Economics versus Austrian Economics
Arthur Foulkes is a freelance writer in Indiana. Some time ago my wife asked me to define economics for her. “Ah,” I said, sensing an opportunity to sound intelligent. There was long silence. I sat up, cleared my throat, and said “Ah” again. Truth was I wasn’t sure how to answer her. Of course, I [...]
1Feb2003 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | ContinuedBack to Basics
Lately I’ve landed in discussions about whether there is such a thing as human action. I’m not kidding. Some educated people have their doubts. Just to be clear from the outset, human action, as Ludwig von Mises pointed out, is purposeful behavior, as opposed to the reflex that occurs when the patellar tendon is struck. [...]
1Dec2002 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedSensible Assumptions
I’m proud of the contribution that the best economists have made to our understanding of society and to the preservation of freedom. What would our world be like today if F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Adam Smith had not written and lectured as they did? These four great men, and scores [...]
1Dec2002 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedCapitalism and Coercion
A century and more ago, when Marxism was in its ascendancy as a theory, its followers (as well as many others) naturally believed its dogma about workers being the helpless pawns of capitalists–forced to sell their labor at less than its true worth, with no real alternative. But now, despite Marxism’s collapse as both a [...]
1Feb2002 | Allan Levite | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Driving Force of the Market: Essays in Austrian Economics by Israel M. Kirzner
Routledge · 2000 · 320 pages · $100.00 Reviewed by Frederic Sautet A new book by Israel Kirzner is like a new movie by a great director whose work and style are familiar, but who always surprises his viewers with new ways of exploring his lifelong themes. In fact, “exploring” is a word that describes [...]
1Nov2001 | Frederic Sautet | 0 comments | ContinuedHuman Action
Hillsdale College Press · 2000 · 305 pages · $9.95 paperback Reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves For years Hillsdale College has published annual anthologies in honor of Ludwig von Mises. In the beginning these were slim volumes, consisting only of addresses made at the college by visiting dignitaries. Since Richard Ebeling joined Hillsdale’s economics faculty [...]
1Oct2001 | Bettina Bien Greaves | 0 comments | ContinuedDivide and Conquer
If I had to pick my favorite sentence in all of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action (a daunting task in a 900-page book), it would be this one: “The fact that my fellow man wants shoes as I do does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier” (p. 673 of the [...]
1Dec2000 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued-
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