Mises Search

[This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of Human Action .] In nature there prevail irreconcilable conflicts of interests. The means of subsistence are scarce. Proliferation tends to outrun subsistence. Only the fittest plants and animals survive. The antagonism between an animal starving to death and another that snatches the food away from it

[This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of Human Action . Robert Murphy has written a study guide for this chapter, available in HTML and PDF .]   The entrepreneurs are not omnipresent. They cannot themselves attend to the manifold tasks which are incumbent upon them. Economic calculation as practiced in the market economy, and especially the

[This article is excerpted from Memoirs by Ludwig von Mises.]   “In Austria, one did not feel it was his national duty to ‘overcome’ the ideas of Western Europe.” When I first came to the university, Carl Menger was nearing the end of his teaching career. There was little attention paid the Austrian School of economics at the university, and I had

[This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of Human Action . Robert Murphy has written a study guide for this chapter, available in HTML and PDF .]   “Like all things designed to suit the taste of the masses, advertising is repellent to people of delicate feeling.” The consumer is not omniscient. He does not know where he can obtain at the

[This article’s original title is “Logical Catallactics Versus Mathematical Catallactics.” It is excerpted from chapter 16 of Human Action . Robert Murphy has written a study guide for this chapter, available in HTML and PDF .]   “A very imperfect and superficial metaphor is not a substitute for the services rendered by logical economics.” The

Good Will Monopoly of Demand Consumption as Affected by Monopoly Prices Price Discrimination on the Part of the Seller Price Discrimination on the Part of the Buyer The Connexity of Prices Prices and Income Prices and Production The Chimera of Nonmarket Prices [This article is excerpted from chapter 16 of Human Action . Robert Murphy has written a

[This article is excerpted from Human Action , chapter 16 section 7, “Good Will.”]   It must be emphasized again that the market is peopled by men who are not omniscient and have only a more or less defective knowledge of prevailing conditions. The buyer must always rely upon the trustworthiness of the seller. Even in the purchase of producers’

The essence of the program of German étatisme is social insurance. But people outside the German Empire have also come to look upon social insurance as the highest point to which the insight of the statesman and political wisdom can attain. If some praise the wonderful results of these institutions, others can only reproach them for not going far

[July 13, 1953] Most people take it for granted that the world will never return to the gold standard. The gold standard, they say, is as obsolete as the horse and buggy. The system of government-issued fiat money provides the treasury with the funds required for an open-handed spending policy that benefits everybody; it forces prices and wages up

[This article is excerpted from Human Action chapter XVII, “Indirect Exchange.” An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .]   In the marketability of the various commodities and services there prevail considerable differences. There are goods for which it is not difficult to find applicants ready to