Bureaucracy
Mises explains that the core choice we face is between rational economic organization by market prices and the arbitrary dictates of government bureaucrats. There is no third way.
This audio book is made available through the generosity of Mr. Tyler Folger. Narrated by Millian Quinteros.
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The introduction to Mises's 1944 Bureaucracy. Nobody doubts that bureaucracy is thoroughly bad and that it should not exist in a perfect world.
The capitalists, the enterprisers, and the farmers are instrumental in the conduct of economic affairs, but the captain is the consumer.
The impracticability of all schemes of socialism and central planning is to be seen in the impossibility of any kind of economic calculation under these conditions.
The profit motive drives entrepreneurs to serve the consumers.
The price of labor is a market phenomenon determined by the consumers' demands for goods and services.
The first virtue of a government administrator is to abide by the codes and decrees. He becomes a bureaucrat.
Government interference with American business and with citizens' affairs results in bureaucratic management, instead of profit management.
In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.
A government bureau is not a profit-seeking enterprise.
A bureaucrat differs from a non-bureaucrat precisely because he is working in a field in which it is impossible to appraise the result of a man's effort in terms of money.
The very idea of central planning by the state is self-contradictory.
As soon as an undertaking is no longer operated under the profit motive, other principles must be adopted for the conduct of its affairs.
No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.
The virtue of the profit system is that it puts on improvements a premium high enough to act as an incentive to take high risks.
Government meddling with private enterprise paralyzes initiative and breeds bureaucratism.
In the bureaucratic environment the entrepreneur must resort to two means: diplomacy and bribery.
The State is the only institution entitled to apply coercion and compulsion and to inflict harm upon individuals.
It was a purposeful confusion on the part of the German metaphysicians of statolatry that they clothed all men in the government service with the gloriole of altruistic self-sacrifice.
The bureaucrat is not only a government employee. He is also his own employer.
It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous.
Profit motive or regimentation. There is no third possibility left.
Capitalism is a system under which everybody has the chance of acquiring wealth. All roads are open to the smart youngster. But not under the rising tide of bureaucratization.
The German youth movement was doomed, because it did not attack the seed of the evil: the trend toward socialization.
In social life, rigidity amounts to petrification and death.
The alternative to the democratic principle of selection through popular election is the seizure of power by ruthless adventurers.
The capitalist variety of competition is to outdo other people on the market through offering better and cheaper goods. The bureaucratic variety consists in intrigues at the "courts" of those in power.
Bureaucratization is only a particular feature of socialization. The main matter is: Capitalism or Socialism?
The main issues of present-day politics are purely economic and cannot be understood without a grasp of economic theory.
The conflict between capitalism and totalitarianism—on the outcome of which the fate of civilization depends—is a war of ideas.
Common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords.
