Category — von Mises, Ludwig

Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: A Treatise on Economics might stand as the single greatest social science book of the 20th century. Written in 1949, with slight revisions in 1961 and 1966, Human Action has been described as economics as it might have been and should be. No economists jokes here! This book is all about using sound assumptions and logically deriving the qualitative truths, the science, of economics.

I spent the summer of my sophomore year in college (1975) teaching tennis and studying Human Action. It was slow reading, and I worked up my own index to help me. I underlined profusely and wrote margin notes.

It was exhilarating. I had just changed my major from business to economics and wanted a solid foundation, a worldview, to understand the business and economic world. This book gave me that–and more.

Part Six of the 900-page treatise is called The Hampered Market Economy. Mises explains government intervention in detail, from taxation to production controls to consumption rules. He also examines the redistributive state and business-government corporativism. Money and credit manipulation by decree is also covered.

This part ends with a section, The Crisis of Intervention. MasterResource this week has explored the current crisis of Big U.S. Government in light of the Misesian concept of the exhaustion of the reserve fund.

The Obama Administration today is at the crossroads of fundamentally less or more government. More federal spending, even greater budget deficits, federalizing and socializing economic sectors, forcefully transforming factors of production (think energy) will no doubt bring on a feared death spiral.

But more Americans than ever have woken up to this fact. The path of significant and continuing government cutbacks–bringing balanced budgets in the short-to-medium-term and tax cuts in the longer term–is part of this libertarian renaissance.

                                The Harvest of Interventionism

                                                   by Ludwig von Mises [Read more →]