Introduction

In 1997 Ralph Raico published an article titled “Keynes and the Reds.” Raico’s article highlighted John Maynard Keynes’s review of a 1936 book by the British socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb called Soviet Communism. In his review, Keynes discusses Joseph Stalin’s USSR and concludes: “The result is impressive.” For Raico, a historian in the classical liberal tradition, this statement contradicts the conventional idea that Keynes was a model liberal.

“All of my work has revolved around the central question of human liberty.”

In a January 2020 Forbes Magazine article titled “Why Doing Good Is Good For Business” clearly left out critical information: who is the good or bad entrepreneur? According to the author, good entrepreneurs are doing good if their primary objective is not to make a profit. And bad entrepreneurs are doing bad if their primary objective is to make a profit.

With many of our readers having more time on their hands while practicing social distancing, the Mises Institute is exploring our online archives and offering topic-specific collections of curated content. This series, we are calling it the “Quarantine Chronicles: A Shelter-at-Home-Series,” will highlight essays, articles, and clips that may not be as widely known, but will provide a deep understanding of important concepts and history.

On the topic of praxeology, we recommend some of the following selections:

Although there is a proliferation of goods and services brought to markets by entrepreneurially minded producers and investors, this production was preceded by someone or some firm harnessing the power of human capital in order to produce those goods and services. 

Despite the more optimistic claims of political pundits and Federal Reserve officials (Jerome Powell, specifically), things are far from being under control. Notwithstanding archetypal Austrian objections to “loose” monetary and fiscal policies on the grounds that they create production structures that ultimately deplete the pool of real savings, the operational failures of central banks cross-globally are largely nested in faulty axioms.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

When politicians and pundits tackle international trade matters, discussions inevitably end up focusing on whether Americans get the short end of the stick when they trade with foreigners. The consensus among these folks is that they do. The evidence: Americans buy more goods and services from foreigners than they sell to them.