Praxeology

From Man, Economy, and State, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

From Man, Economy, and State. Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

This is your one-article guide to understanding a core idea of economics.The law of diminishing marginal utility plays a crucial role in showing that socialism is economically and ethically inferior to capitalism. It also has surprising implications for every area of policy, including money, interest rates, and property rights.

[This speech was delivered at the offices of the Mises Institute, September 14, 1999, the date on which

Weighing in on the side of John Locke, not only on interest rates but also in a general and comprehensive vision of economic laissez-faire that even surpassed Locke, were two brothers, Dudley and Roger North.

It is a hopeless task to interpret a symphony, a painting, or a novel. The interpreter at best tries to tell us something about his reaction to the work. He cannot tell us with certainty what the creator's meaning was or what other people may see in it.

The collectivist doctrines look upon the individual merely as a refractory rebel. This sinful wretch has the impudence to give preference to his petty selfish interests as against the sublime interests of the great god society.

He understood economic relationships, and he saw that such economic concepts as scarcity, price, profit, and investment have implications that go far beyond the scope of economic behavior as ordinarily represented in works of "economic" or "social" fiction.

How often do you hear the minarchist say, "Well, I don't like government, but we at least need things like traffic laws. We need a government to keep us safe"? What  if we actually began to publicly advocate the abolition of traffic regulations?

Were it not for the state's incessant need to homogenize and its inability to cope with diversity, the languages of the world would not be in the dire situation they are today.