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[Excerpted from Notes and Recollections: With the Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics ​ .] When I first arrived at the University, Carl Menger was close to the termination of his teaching career. The idea that there was an Austrian School of economics was itself hardly recognized at the University, and I myself was not at all

This article is excerpted from Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism The government believes that the price of a definite commodity, e.g., milk, is too high. It wants to make it possible for the poor to give their children more milk. Thus it resorts to a price ceiling and fixes the price of milk at a lower rate than that prevailing on the

[An excerpt from  Human Action ​] In eighteenth-century France the saying laissez faire, laissez passer was the formula into which some of the champions of the cause of liberty compressed their program. Their aim was the establishment of the unhampered market society. In order to attain this end they advocated the abolition of all laws preventing

[Excerpt from  Human Action ] A critical examination of the philosophical systems constructed by mankind’s great thinkers has very often revealed fissures and flaws in the impressive structure of those seemingly consistent and coherent bodies of comprehensive thought. Even the genius in drafting a world view sometimes fails to avoid contradictions

This article is excerpted from Human Action . Judicious rationalists do not pretend that human reason can ever make man omniscient. They are fully aware of the fact that, however knowledge may increase, there will always remain things ultimately given and not liable to any further elucidation. But, they say, as far as man is able to attain

[This article is excerpted from Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis ] It is a mistake to think that the lack of success of experiments in Socialism that have been made can help to overcome Socialism. Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the

[This is the last formal talk of Ludwig von Mises [1881–1973], delivered May 2, 1970 at an economic seminar sponsored by The Society of Praxeology in Seattle, Washington. It was attended by 600 students, teachers, and others. This text was transcribed from audiotape by Bettina Bien Greaves and edited, primarily for syntax and punctuation, by Percy

[ Adapted from  Planning for Freedom   by Ludwig von Mises. ] The consumers by their buying and abstention from buying elect the entrepreneurs in a daily repeated plebiscite as it were. They determine who should own and who not, and how much each owner should own. As is the case with all acts of choosing a person — choosing holders of public

What is interventionism? Interventionism means that the government does not restrict its activity to the preservation of order, or—as people used to say a hundred years ago—to “the production of security.” Interventionism means that the government wants to do more. It wants to interfere with market phenomena. If one objects and says the government

The many to whom capitalism gave a comfortable income and leisure are yearning for entertainment. Crowds throng to the theatres. There is money in show business. Popular actors and playwrights enjoy a six-figure income. They live in palatial houses with butlers and swimming pools. They certainly are not “prisoners of starvation.” Yet Hollywood and