Foreword by Ludwig von Mises

 

 

 

 

Foreword

The seven lectures that Professor Percy L. Greaves, Jr., delivered in June 1969 before the Centro de Estudios sobre la Libertad in Buenos Aires deal with the fundamental economic problems; they are about “human life,” about “the ideas that motivate human beings,” about “the most important and interesting drama of all — human action.”

Author’s Preface

 

 

 

Author’s
Preface

The author of these lectures, born in 1906, reached his formative years in the Nineteen-Twenties. This was the decade of the great euphoria that ended in an economic collapse the like of which had never before been experienced by civilized men.

Part One

Part I

I. What Is Economics?

Lecture I What Is
Economics?

It is indeed a great honor to be brought so many miles to speak to you here this week and next. I owe my thanks to Sr. Alberto Benegas Lynch and to the Centro de Estudios sobre la Libertad.

As he has said, I am a student of Ludwig von Mises. I consider him the greatest man of our century. If our civilization, the whole of Western Civilization, is to be saved, it will only be because his ideas come to be more generally accepted than they are today.

II. The Role of Value in Human Action

Lecture II The Role Of Value In Human Action

In this lecture we address ourselves to the role of value in economics.

III. How Prices Are Determined

Lecture III How Prices

IV. The Effect Of Wage Rate Interventions

Lecture IV The Effect
Of Wage Rate
Interventions

This lecture is primarily on the subject of labor, wages, and employment. A good deal of what was said about prices in the last lecture applies also to the subject of wage rates. Unfortunately, there is more emotion in this area, because it is a bit more personal. Here, too, of course, we also find evidence of the great sin of economic ignorance. In seeking solutions, economic science is largely neglected. As a result, many governments attempt to solve these problems by means that will not accomplish the desired ends.

Part Two

Part II

V. The Theory Of Money

Lecture V The Theory
Of Money

The subject of this fifth lecture is the theory of money and its value.

VI. The Cause Of The 1929 Depression

Lecture VI The Cause
Of The
1929 Depression

This lecture is long and a little complicated. However, it is very important, because millions of people, who once had great faith in the free market economy, have been led to believe that it was the failure of the free market that produced the depression of 1929. As a result, they have accepted government intervention as necessary to save free enterprise from itself.

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