A rate of interest is established in the loan market which corresponds to a longer period of production; and so, although it is inadmissible and impracticable from an overall point of view, a lengthening of the period of production becomes at first profitable. But there cannot be the slightest doubt as to where this will lead.
What is, then, the best monetary policy? Mises argues that “A metallic money, the augmentation or diminution of the quantity of metal available for which is independent of deliberate human intervention, is becoming
the modern monetary ideal.” He adds: “The significance of adherence to a metallic-money system lies in the freedom of the
value of money from state influence that such a system guarantees.”
The publication of Ludwig von Mises’s Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel in 1912 marks a turning point in the history of economics, and of the Austrian School in particular. Mises contributed a great many original and penetrating arguments, each of which he articulated at its proper place within the edifice of an encompassing monetary treatise.
The people of Kansas are better than the people of Freedonia, both at producing toothpaste <em>and</em> zebras. What to do?
People everywhere are giving much more serious thought to foundational questions about the economy.
If you are asked, "What, then, is to be done?" reply, "Be just to everybody."
Tax gatherer: "You have secured twenty tuns of wine? Have the goodness to deliver up to me six of the best." Vintner: "Good Heaven! you are going to ruin me."
Will anyone undertake to affirm that fire has become a greater evil since the introduction of insurance?
A magnificent canal united two large towns in China. The emperor thought fit to order enormous blocks of stone to be thrown in to render it useless.
Marx desperately sought a materialistic dialectic of history that would account for all historical change and lead inevitably to communist revolution.
