The Economic Crash that Cured Itself: A Conversation with James Grant
From the Library of Law and Liberty:
Introduction by Richard Ebeling
I
In the 1920s and the 1930s, Ludwig von Mises was recognized as one of the leading economic theorists on the European Continent.1 F. A. Hayek has said that Mises’s critique of the possibilities for economic calculation under socialism had “the most profound impression on my generation. ... To none of us ...
Foreword by Margit von Mises
When my husband died in 1973 I had to go through his papers. Some of them were still in manuscript form and had never before been published. I selected several of these, plus a number of other articles that had appeared in periodicals but were no longer in print. This book is the result.
At my request Richard Ebeling wrote an introduction which he has done in great detail. The depth of Ebeling’s understanding of my husband’s work is certainly apparent in his writing.
I am pleased to have the Ludwig von Mises Institute present this volume to the public.
Comparative Economic Systems
13. Capitalism versus Socialism
Most of our contemporaries are highly critical of what they call “the unequal distribution of wealth.” As they see it, justice would require a state of affairs under which nobody enjoys what are to be considered superfluous luxuries as long as other people lack things necessary for the preservation of life, health, and cheerfulness. The ideal condition of mankind, they pretend, would be an equal distribution of all consumers’ goods available.
Has the Trade ‘Bubble’ Burst?
The Economist ran a piece today deploring the sluggish growth of international trade over the past two years. According to WTO data, since the 1980s and up until the financial crisis, global trade grew by an average of 7% every year—often double the growth in world GDP—but by only 2-3% in 2012 and 2013.
V.
It is a fact that the living philosophy of our age is a philosophy of irreconcilable conflict and dissociation. People value their party, class, linguistic group, or nation as supreme, believe that their own group cannot thrive but at the expense of other groups, and are not prepared to tolerate any measures which in their opinion would have to be considered as an abandonment of vital group interests. Thus a peaceful arrangement with other groups is out of the question.
Mises Daily Weekend: Thinkers Who Challenged the State
Mises Daily Weekend by David Gordon: Thinkers Who Challenged the State
Ideas
II. Not the Cooperatives, but Private Profit-Seeking Business is the Harbinger of Economic Improvement
The capitalistic market economy, the system of private profit-seeking enterprise, is essentially social cooperation under the division of labor. The various specialized enterprises and branches of industry cooperate with one another. The objective of each of them is collaboration for the production of all those goods and services which the consumers want to use. Within each enterprise, the various divisions and subdivisions cooperatively turn out products which are delivered to other enterprises which again use them for the production of more elaborate products.
