Time and Praxeology

Action is always directed toward the future; it is essentially and necessarily always a planning and acting for a better future, writes Ludwig von Mises. Its aim is always to render future conditions more satisfactory than they would be without the interference of action. The uneasiness that impels a man to act is caused by a dissatisfaction with expected future conditions as they would probably develop if nothing were done to alter them. In any case action can influence only the future, never the present that with every infinitesimal fraction of a second sinks down into the past. Man becomes conscious of time when he plans to convert a less satisfactory present state into a more satisfactory future state.

As the future is uncertain it always remains undecided and vague how much of it we can consider as now and present. If a man had said in 1913: At present — now —in Europe freedom of thought is undisputed, he would have not foreseen that this present would very soon be a past. FULL ARTICLE