Philosophy and Methodology

"He loved liberty as other men love power," was the judgment passed on Benjamin Constant by a contemporary. His lifelong concern, both as a writer and politician, was the growth of human freedom. 

Austrian economics diverges in several important ways from that followed by our colleagues in the mainstream of the profession.

John Locke was ridiculed for suggesting that people "consent" to their government by not emigrating. Hume suggested this theory could be used to claim consent for even the most outrageous tyrants.

The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action.

People criticized economics and said “well, there’s something wrong with Austrian economics because it doesn’t depend on verifying things empirically,” Mises wanted to come up with a reply to that, so that was what really got him into philosophy.

Because enforced contract law and full property rights are the foundations of freedom, governance systems should be based on enforceable contracts that defend property rights.

The true aim of these “scholar activists,” as many academics have begun calling themselves, is to propagate socialism by redefining capitalism to encompass every evil of human history. Which means they're mostly attacking straw men.

It becomes evident from Richard von Mises's fundamental work that mathematical probability theory can never be applicable to economics, or to any other study of human action.

Economic theory must have only one purpose — to explain economic activity. However, statistical methods are of no help in this regard.

Dr. Joe Salerno and Jeff Deist explore the method of economics.