This new edition of Planned Chaos features a new introduction by Chris Westley of Jacksonville State University. The introduction brings this classic up to date — not that it has ever fallen out of date or ever will.
The title comes from Mises’s description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the national variety (Nazism) or the international variety (communism). Rather than create an orderly society, the attempt to central plan has precisely the opposite effect. By short-circuiting the price mechanism and forcing people into economic lives contrary to their own chosing, central planning destroys the capital base and creates economic randomness that eventually ends in killing prosperity.
This important work was written decades after Mises’s original essay on economic calculation and includes the broadest and boldest attack on all forms of state control.
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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.
If one does not stop in time the pernicious policy of increasing the quantity of money and fiduciary media, the nation's currency system collapses entirely.
"Politically there is nothing more advantageous for a government than an attack on property rights, for it is always an easy matter to incite the masses against the owners of land and capital."
If one looks at the catastrophic consequences of the great paper-money inflations, one must admit that the cost of making and holding gold is the minor evil. It would be futile to retort that these catastrophes were brought about because the regime merely used fiat money improperly.
