Human action is usually driven by the desire to obtain more for less, and, ideally something
for nothing. This has sometimes been called the economic principle. The wish to “get free
stuff” pervades all times and places, all sectors of the economy, all ages, and all social
backgrounds. The very selfishness for which the market economy is often chided is, at
bottom, a universal quest to obtain goods for free. Jörg Guido Hülsmann sets out to explore
the boundaries of this endeavor. He investigates the nature, forms, causes, and consequences
of gratuitous goods and concludes that they thrive within a free economy. But generosity and
gratuitous abundance tend to be undermined and reversed by central banking and the welfare
state.
Jörg Guido Hülsmann is senior fellow of the Mises Institute where he holds the 2018 Peterson-Luddy Chair and was director of research for Mises Fellows in residence 1999-2004. He is author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism and The Ethics of Money Production. He teaches in France, at Université d’Angers. His full CV is here.
Aristotle called interest unnatural. Aquinas called it unjust. For centuries, the Church banned it. Guido Hülsmann argues they were wrong about the free market—but accidentally right about the fiat system.
Let's look at the nature and the different causes of the interest rate, from the point of view of economics, and with a concise moral analysis of incomes from money loans.
Hülsmann opened Mises's 1912 Theory of Money and Credit expecting a historical curiosity. He found a work that surpassed everything published since.
ISBN: 978-1-61016-766-6
Author retains all non-English rights to this title.
