Books I haven't read III: Human Action
Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 5:44 pm
A review of the Book Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises.
http://mises.org/resources.aspx?Id=3250&html=1
Abstract
Human Action is a boring book, and I don't believe for a second that anyone on this forum has read it all the way through, including those whose names begin with a "D" and end with a "Y". It's 900 pages, who has time to read a book that long?
Review
Some folks very close to me were raised within a communist regime and have told me stories about milk and bread rotting in the streets and how interesting it was to see the prices of food rocket to the moon the very same day the door hit the collective asses of the communists on their way out. Stories such as these reinforce the victory of Mises, if nothing else, Von Mises properly exists as a footnote within every economics text ever published for his idea that socialism will never work because it can't ascertain how much things cost.
But take the time to read up on the problem of calculation within this book and feel free to admit it when you're completely lost. You are getting lost because while this book is a fine selection for students of economic history to read, it's irrelevant to today's world along with any arguments from the "right" or the "left". When is the last time you've heard a Democrat argue that we should do away with money? Imagine a world with no money, where the state employs an army of mathematicians to utilize differential equations in a fantastic calculus of resource allocation. An absurd vision -- though not that much more absurd than a nation of shopkeepers tipping their hats to one another all day long -- but it leaves one scratching their head because, didn't they have Rubles or something like that in the Soviet Union? Well, it turns out that socialism, interestingly enough, has never really ever been implemented anywhere. When Mises's arguments are taken for what they really are in their proper theoretical context, though still very sharp, the question of question-begging could be raised but more importantly, it's difficult to see any practical links between the "socialism" Mises is debating and the "socialism" of the American "left". I can't speak at length on the economics of socialism from the perspective of socialists, but I can point out that this book is boring, especially if one's motivation to read it is to understand a "modern conservative's" view on economics.
Anyway, I will leave the ambitious reader of this, er, classic, to find specific examples of relevance from Mises's best idea, his set of calculation arguments, to contemporary political and economic problems. To be fair, if you are one who considers yourself to have a firm grasp on economics in its totality, no cheating, no Googling to try to figure out what Mises is talking about because his words should speak plainly to the problems with conditions found in the real world today. After all, this is a "staple" of the Right, one of the ten most important books for understanding the Right-wing position on today's problems.
http://mises.org/resources.aspx?Id=3250&html=1
Abstract
Human Action is a boring book, and I don't believe for a second that anyone on this forum has read it all the way through, including those whose names begin with a "D" and end with a "Y". It's 900 pages, who has time to read a book that long?
Review
Some folks very close to me were raised within a communist regime and have told me stories about milk and bread rotting in the streets and how interesting it was to see the prices of food rocket to the moon the very same day the door hit the collective asses of the communists on their way out. Stories such as these reinforce the victory of Mises, if nothing else, Von Mises properly exists as a footnote within every economics text ever published for his idea that socialism will never work because it can't ascertain how much things cost.
But take the time to read up on the problem of calculation within this book and feel free to admit it when you're completely lost. You are getting lost because while this book is a fine selection for students of economic history to read, it's irrelevant to today's world along with any arguments from the "right" or the "left". When is the last time you've heard a Democrat argue that we should do away with money? Imagine a world with no money, where the state employs an army of mathematicians to utilize differential equations in a fantastic calculus of resource allocation. An absurd vision -- though not that much more absurd than a nation of shopkeepers tipping their hats to one another all day long -- but it leaves one scratching their head because, didn't they have Rubles or something like that in the Soviet Union? Well, it turns out that socialism, interestingly enough, has never really ever been implemented anywhere. When Mises's arguments are taken for what they really are in their proper theoretical context, though still very sharp, the question of question-begging could be raised but more importantly, it's difficult to see any practical links between the "socialism" Mises is debating and the "socialism" of the American "left". I can't speak at length on the economics of socialism from the perspective of socialists, but I can point out that this book is boring, especially if one's motivation to read it is to understand a "modern conservative's" view on economics.
Anyway, I will leave the ambitious reader of this, er, classic, to find specific examples of relevance from Mises's best idea, his set of calculation arguments, to contemporary political and economic problems. To be fair, if you are one who considers yourself to have a firm grasp on economics in its totality, no cheating, no Googling to try to figure out what Mises is talking about because his words should speak plainly to the problems with conditions found in the real world today. After all, this is a "staple" of the Right, one of the ten most important books for understanding the Right-wing position on today's problems.