Home » Ludwig von Mises has some things to tell us (Part I)

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Ludwig von Mises has some things to tell us (Part I) — 20 Comments

  1. Okay. But now, show some of what you don’t agree with. If the man, to a greater degree, seems precise to you, then it behooves you to also chew the fat that you find distasteful. Triangulation would allow a more accurate picture, but the points of agreement and disagreement are necessary.

    I am not much into idealism. In most times, more so lately even in America, reality is deemed an idealism and set aside, replaced by already disproven idealism(s). It seems Mises saw this himself. Not much to do, without levers to manipulate, but to point and note.

  2. People respond to incentives. Unintended consequences result from ill-considered or insuffiently considered incentives.

  3. A Great Economic Thinker.

    Today we see—en masse—that IF a person can suck more from Gov’t Handouts than he can make from work/honest labor….He will choose the former. Welcome to The Age of Obama, Homies.

  4. Mises demonstrated (mathematically) “that socialism cannot function as a rational economic system”.

    Churchill spoke out against socialism with concise acuity.

    Western civilization ignored both.

    “Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe…” Ludwig von Mises

    “Virtually every Western Democratic Government is insolvent.”

    “Spiraling to Bankruptcy”

    “Promises Beyond Reality: The Federal Government admits to over $12 Trillion dollars in debt. In reality, its obligations are multiples of that figure. The unfunded promises from Social Security and Medicare total around $100 trillion. That is, to properly fund the forecasted future deficits in Social Security and Medicare, $100 trillion would have to be put in the fund today. This liability is growing at the rate of about $5 trillion per year! The Government has (knowingly) promised benefits that they cannot honor.

    These programs are Ponzi schemes that make Bernie Madoff look like Mother Teresa. As evidence, the total net worth of the country (the country’s total assets less liabilities) is slightly above $50 trillion. If the Government confiscated everything, the programs would still be $50 trillion short and the Government would still be bankrupt. Furthermore, no company or individual would be left with anything.”

    Not surprisingly, Monty Pelerin, the author of the above two articles is a great admirer of Ludwig von Mises. Pelerin makes economic matters understandable for the layman.

  5. In a perfect society government has one role and one role only in the economy, persecuting fraud in the market place. Our government is a corrupting influence in the economy because politicians are easily corrupted by those who seek to use government to tilt the playing field. This is a result of human nature as those who gravitate to positions of power are often those who are willing to succumb to the influence of corruption.

    The only weapon to combat the human tendancy to embrace corruption is to severely limit the power of government. Wishful thinking in these days.

  6. @ Parker

    Von Mises’ and Hayek’s economic and politic theories are so valuable precisely because they recognize that there is no such thing as a “perfect society”. Life is dynamic, everything is in flux. While preventing fraud is certainly an important role of government in the economy, there is much good the government can do in the market place, e.g., protect private property, enforce the rule of law, etc.

  7. Mises’ “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science” is a very good short introduction to his thought. I very much enjoyed the first two parts of the “Human Action” as well, but never got to finish it. I found it interesting how all of the Mises’ economic reasoning stems from a general abstraction of human action, and in those observations one sees some of the best anti-socialist argumentation that was written. I read “Socialism” too, but I found it overall less interesting. There is also a small work, a transcribed series of lectures, in which he refutes much of Marxian thought – I actually *understood* some of the Marxist claims in the first place after reading them de-jargonized and stated clearly by Mises.

    Overall, I found that reading Mises (and then later Hayek) was quite instrumental in getting me to really think through some contemporary issues. I found him very accessible, beautiful clear writing, not daunting for somebody who is not a professional in the field.

  8. Irene,

    Of course there is no such thing! The closest we can achieve is a society that exists with limited government; a society where government officials – elected, appointed, or hired – are held accountable with the penalty of death for corruption. Put a few irs employees or a single member of congress or a cabinet member before a firing squad with live footage from the msm and suddenly all the politicos and bureaucrats realize they might someday twist in the wind.

    Once a generation there must be blood. The tricky part is to avoid a blood bath.

  9. parker: “And, I am willing and able to protect my property. I don’t need no stinking Eric Holder. 😉 ”

    The right to own private property protected by laws and courts is fundamental to free enterprise and liberty.

    In Zimbabwe, the government can give your farm to anyone they chose. And send the army to enforce the change of owners. Yeah, I know this isn’t Zimbabwe yet, but Zimbabwe is a real-time classic example of how important a system of private property ownership backed by courts is.

    Once known as the breadbasket of Africa, Zimbabwe cannot grow enough food to feed its population. Primarily due to the Communist policies of its long-time President, Robert Mugabe.

    The Von Mises quote – “A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.” – explains what the people in Zimbabwe, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, and many other “People’s Republics” are subject to.

  10. Mises and the Socialist Calculation Debate-27Dec14-Orson recommends to neo neocon

    http://neoneocon.com/2014/12/27/ludwig-von-mises-has-some-things-to-tell-us-part-i/

    How wonderful to make this discovery, neo!
    Ludwig Von Mises and the debate over “economic calculation under socialism” (ie, state ownership of the means of production), is the central debate in grasping the course of the 20th century, defined by the rise and fall of communism and the ending of the Cold War.

    I remember attending a cocktail party in 1995 hosted by the libertarian publishers Liberty Press/Liberty Fund (largely funded by the B. F Goodrich Foundation) at a history conference. I told them that nether the Republican Revolution of 1994 nor the Fall of Communism were secure unless and until the truth about the socialist calculation debate made it into the history textbooks for the young, innocent to understand, or else doomed will believe lies.

    It didn’t happened – the young go to school and graduate High School – and enough go to college and do not have any idea why communism failed. Thus, they proved essential to electing the first Marxist President – twice (cf, Paul Kengor’s “The Communist,” his biography of Obama’s mentor and CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis).

    This truth is simple: without prices, markets cannot coordinated exchange between producers and consumers. The problem of socialism lies in abolishing (or crippling) private property rights. Mises “market test” is also simple and direct: if ownership of company shares can be traded on a public exchange, then the economy is still fundamentally capitalist. If it can’t, it is socialist.

    Those who do not know the mistakes of their past are condemned to repeat them – indeed.

    I have searched arduously to find the best and most up-to-date account of the history of this debate and Mises insights. Here are the best, I think:
    Before the socialist economist Robert Heilbroner died, he wrote this short reference entry on socialism, acknowledging that ‘Mises was right’ (a line that originally appeared in “The New Yorker” in 1990). SEE “Socialism” here http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Socialism.html This econlib piece also appears in “The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics,” 1993.)

    But for a pretty penny per page, the very best account is found in an early chapter from “The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of The Last Hundred Years,” by monetary and economic historian, Lawrence H. White, (2012, CUP). over 30-some pages, White skillfully weaves political history into economic debates through over three decades, beginning with “The Bolshevik Revolution and The Socialist Calculation Debate.”

    The single most important documentary for all students to see on this subject, whether in High School or College, is based on Daniel Yergin’s too turgid tome, “The Commanding Heights” (a title ripped off from line by Lenin), of 1998. It became a three part PBS series, the first of which covers the most essential intellectual groundwork originally problematized by Mises: “The Commanding Heights: The Battle for Ideas, Part 1” 2002.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ms2WOZi74

    The companion PBS website
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/tr_show01.html

    The only deficit in this documentary is its serious neglect Mises in the debate over socialist calculation. But Yergkin’s turgid excess is remedied and refocused in a spritely book I believe to be inspired by it, “Keynes/Hayek: The Conflict That Defined Modern Economics,” by Nicholas Wapshot.

    Ludwig Von Mises, brief biography
    http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Mises.html
    (This web sight is run by Liberty Fund)

    Mises “Socialism:And Economic and Sociaological Analysis,” a lengthy albeit lucid book,
    is available free, online here
    http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msS.html

  11. “…Mises’s greatest contribution [was] his demonstration that socialism cannot function as a rational economic system ”

    That is enough for me.

  12. Not that it matters much, but the quote of Mises regarding the Boom and Bust refers to a big disagreement Mises had with Milton Friedman. Friedman used to talk about how he would go to Mises economic events and be accused of being a socialist.

    The disagreement has to do with the somewhat obscure topic of fractional reserve banking (taking in a deposit and then loaning a portion of it back out at a different time scale than the deposit). Mises thought fractional reserve banking needed to be abolished. Friedman thought it could work with an active central bank that produced new currency when needed – now called “Quantitative Easing”.

    Mises thought such a system would lead to catastrophe. His thoughts on this topic are most aggressively now promoted on a financial site called “Zero Hedge”. I’m with Friedman on this topic – but as Mises himself pointed out, its pretty much baked into the cake, so we will find out what happens eventually.

  13. the website that has his stuff on it used to be good… then at some point, like so many things, it was co-opted… then interest in it died the way interest in sciam died, and everything they co-opt…

  14. Economics is fascinating to me. You can understand the world so much better when you have an understanding of how markets work.

    You might also like to access some classical liberals on the subject. There is of course Milton Friedman and his “Free to Choose” is excellent. Of course you can go to youtube and search for him there. No one frames an argument in quite the manner as does Friedman.

    Also Donald Boudreaux has a web site called Cafe Hayek. Loads of insights on a daily basis are there. Some consider him a modern day Frederic Bastiat who framed the basic arguments against socialism in the mid 1800’s. Google Bastiat’s “The Law”. You will be all the smarter for it.

  15. I think the Western world would do better to prioritize individual independence and self defense, rather than political power or this concept of “freedom” people go on about.

    Freedom also means the ability to allow evil to be free. And that’s not a good thing in a war.

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