Ludwig von Mises was the greatest economist of the twentieth century, but often readers are reluctant to tackle his major works. They fear that they will be unable to follow that abstract and relentless theoretical progression of, e.g., Human Action and The Theory of Money and Credit. For readers like this, and for anyone else who admires Mises, The Quotable Mises is ideal.
It transpires that Mises had a rare gift. His economic analysis was often abstract, true enough; but he was able to express his ideas in clear and striking ways, often with epigrammatic force. The gift is all the more remarkable because English was not Mises’s native language.
The distinguished Austrian economist Mark Thornton has collected a large number of Mises’s comments, arranging them according to topics that range through the alphabet from “Action” to “Youth.”
As readers will discover, Mises again and again penetrates to the heart of an issue with a few words. He says, e.g., “What is lacking in the underdeveloped nations is not knowledge, but capital.” More generally, “There are no means by which the general standard of living can be raised other than by accelerating the increase of capital as compared with population.”
Mises’s insights often extend beyond the strictly economic. He says, “Plato was anxious to find a tyrant who would use his power for the realization of the Platonic ideal state. The question whether other people would like what he himself had in store for them never occurred to Plato. ” Mises remarks of Lenin that he was “as great a stranger to the work of the bourgeoisie as a Hottentot to the work of an explorer taking geographical measurements.”
Readers of The Quotable Mises will gain a grasp of the essential elements of Mises’s outlook on the world.
Mark Thornton is the Peterson-Luddy Chair in Austrian Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. He is the book review editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and has authored seven books and is a frequent guest on national radio shows.
Mark Thornton argues the AI data-center bond boom is the latest techno bubble—cheap-money malinvestment dressed up as a new era.
Dr. Mark Thornton called the housing bubble in 2004. For four years, he was told he was wrong. He now says every paper-dollar asset you own is facing a very difficult future, and the AI buildout is the clearest warning sign he has seen since. In this interview with Jeremy Szafron, the Mises Institute senior fellow and author of The Skyscraper Curse explains why AI data centers are this cycle's record-breaking tower, why the bonds financing them run decades longer than the hardware, who gets stuck with the cost when a tenant stops paying, and why central banks no longer trusting each other is the best sign he has seen for gold.
Thornton also reacts to the Federal Reserve's report on Silicon Valley Bank published this week, Chairman Kevin Warsh's first rate hike in three years, and the drone attack on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline that cut Aramco supply to European buyers.
Stijn Schmitz welcomes back Economist and Senior Fellow from the Mises Institute, Dr. Mark Thornton. Dr. Thornton paints a dire picture of the global economy, arguing that widespread socialist policies are driving governments to extreme borrowing, money printing, and protectionism. He points to the trade war and real conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as direct consequences, which have disrupted diesel, crude oil, and fertilizer production. This creates a global pinch on agriculture and mining, threatening food supplies and crop yields, while strategic energy reserves are depleted, leaving economies vulnerable. The resulting higher fuel and food prices are squeezing consumers worldwide, whose wages are failing to keep pace with inflation, leading to a systematic harm of the working class while asset bubbles benefit the wealthy.
Auburn, Al: Mises Institute, 2005
