“The Place of Economics in Learning” is a chapter from Human Action. It provides an excellent overview of the Misesian worldview concerning economics. It touches on enough points — methodologically, educationally, politically — to invite and inspire further reading. It is a good introduction.
Ludwig von Mises was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian school of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’s writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science that he called praxeology.
The question is not plan or no plan. Everyone plans. The question is whose plan—and what happens to yours when it conflicts with the planner's. Mises traces the path from Marx to Comte to the social engineers, and shows why the destination is always the same.
The right of self-determination is the right of the inhabitants of every territory to decide on the state to which they wish to belong.
Under a system of private ownership, in which the government's only function is to protect property rights, it is immaterial where the frontiers of people's country are drawn.
Mises, Ludwig von, “The Place of Economics in Learning,” in Human Action (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1998), chap. 38, pp. 863–876.
