All Posts Tagged With: "Ludwig von Mises"

Happy 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 | | 3 comments | Continued

Human 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 | | 2 comments | Continued

Human 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 | | 5 comments | Continued

Human 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 | | 2 comments | Continued

Human 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 | | 1 comment | Continued

What 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 | | 3 comments | Continued

The 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 | | 3 comments | Continued

What We Believe

The Foundation for Economic Education, publisher of this magazine since 1956, is now in its seventh decade, and I am now in my seventh month as its president. As we expand the outreach of our programs and publications, now is a good time to remind our readers who we are and what we believe in. [...]

2Mar2009 | | 8 comments | Continued

Just a Quote

In light of the increasing drift toward protectionism, this quote is appropriately direct: “There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way” [...]

6Feb2009 | | 0 comments | Continued

“The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution” (Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, p. 28).

I have to confess that I really do want to like the Sarkozy’s.  I find President Sarkozy endlessly entertaining, though sometimes more for gaffes that would be simply unheard of in U.S. politics than for his policy (take, for instance, his recent insult sans apology episode).  And Carla Bruni, though her past may not speak [...]

21Jan2009 | | 0 comments | Continued

Theory and Crisis

What might be even more distressing than the current buildup of the corporate state in response to the supposed economic crisis is the way some self-styled advocates of the free market are willing to cast aside the economic theory they once claimed to embrace. If you are a glutton for cable news-talk shows, you know [...]

20Jan2009 | | 2 comments | Continued

Book Reviews – October 2008

Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism by Jörg Guido Hülsmann Ludwig von Mises Institute • 2007 • 1143 pages • $50.00 Reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves Biographer Guido Hülsmann has written a magnificent book, describing in detail not only the life of Ludwig von Mises, but also his writings, his intellectual development, and his importance. [...]

1Oct2008 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Subsidy of History

A considerable number of libertarian commentators have remarked on the sheer scale of subsidies and protections to big business, on their structural importance to the existing form of corporate capitalism, and on the close intermeshing of corporate and state interests in the present state capitalist economy. We pay less attention, however, to the role of [...]

1Jun2008 | | 19 comments | Continued

The Current Economic Crisis and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

Richard Ebeling is completing his tenure as the president of FEE. This fall he will teach economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The current financial crisis emerged out of an economic boom that began in 2003 and saw rising stock values, increasing home prices, and high levels of employment and production. The upturn followed [...]

1Jun2008 | | 4 comments | Continued

The Free Market versus the Interventionist State

During the first half of 1926, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises visited the United States on a three-month lecture tour. After his return to his native Austria, he delivered a talk on “Changes in American Economic Policy” at a meeting of the Vienna Industrial Club. He explained: The United States has become great and rich [...]

1Jan2008 | | 5 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

David Hume and Reason In the very title of his article in The Freeman of October 2007, Frank van Dun asks, “Can We Be Free If Reason Is the Slave of the Passions?” His article is uncommonly long and gauzy for a Freeman piece; and his citations to David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature are [...]

1Jan2008 | | 0 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

Thanks to Milton Friedman’s brilliance, charisma, and diplomacy he became an ardent spokesman for many free-market reforms in this country. And now Ivan Pongracic, Jr. (“The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman,” September 2007) gives him credit for accomplishing what seems miraculous—convincing Fed officials that the Fed itself was responsible for precipitating the crash and [...]

1Dec2007 | | 0 comments | Continued
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