16. Summary

16. SUMMARY

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

1. As suggested at the beginning of the syllabus, ask the students to answer once more one or several of the 30 questions posed in Unit 1 (pp. 7-9). Compare their answers now with those they may have given at the start of the course. As a guide to the teacher for the significant points to look for in any definition of “economics,” called for to answer the first of those 30 questions, see pages 215-216 of this Unit.

2. To realize the changes that are always taking place in an economy, it may be helpful for the students to try to look at present economic conditions through the eyes of a “Rip van Winkle,” or of the two Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender after World War II and remained in hiding close to 30 years—Choichi Yokoi, until discovered in January 1972, and Lt. Hiroo Onoda, until March 1974. Some U. S. soldiers felt like “Rip van Winkles” too when released in December 1973 after several years in Vietnam POW camps. What changes might they have noticed upon returning to the modern world? Let the students speculate on the many new consumers’ goods, production methods, means of transportation, fashions, customs, etc.— each produced by countless little changes and decisions in response to purposive individual actions —such “Rip van Winkles” must have encountered after having been isolated for several years. It is always difficult to recall just when and how new ideas come to the fore and when and how changes are made. For help in trying to reconstruct what the world was like several years ago, or in 1945 when the two Japanese soldiers went into hiding, the students might ask relatives or friends who may remember the automobiles, clothing, housing, food, entertainment (radio, TV, movies), jobs, prices, salaries, working conditions, etc., of some time back.

3. From time immemorial, authors have been entranced by the idea of fictitious “utopian” societies. These range from Plato’s Republic to “Galt’s Gulch” in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and beyond. Perhaps the students would like to speculate in a similar vein as to how they might go about setting up a 20th century “utopia,” insofar as that might be possible in this world of imperfect men.

Incidentally, the word “utopia” comes from the name of the imagined “ideal” state and society described in an essay (1516) by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), “The Man for All Seasons,” who was beheaded by Henry VIII because he, More, refused to accept the King’s supremacy over the Pope in matters of religion.

Let the students imagine they are setting out in a rocket ship, with a complement of 500 more or less persons to colonize an unoccupied planet in another solar system. What kinds of specialists would they want to have included in this group? What provisions would they take along? What tools would they need, not only hand tools but also capital goods, produced and semi-produced factors of production? What reference materials or other books would they select to take? For what forms of entertainment would the members of the party want to be prepared? How would they arrange for property to be assigned once they arrived on the new planet? What procedures would they suggest adopting in the new community for transferring property and exchanging goods and services from one person to another? What arrangements would they make for protecting life and property—from potential enemies they may encounter on the new planet, or from members of their own group who violate—intentionally or unintentionally—the rights and property of others? note: The teacher might remind the students that the Pilgrims struggled with essentially this same problem when they came to America in 1620. At the urging of their financial backers in England, the Mayflower Compact, which they adopted aboard ship prior to their landing at Plymouth Rock, provided for communal ownership of property and that arrangement contributed to the suffering and starvation the settlers underwent during their first few years here. See Percy L. Greaves, Jr.’s “American Communism, II” (Reading No. 77).

Hopefully the students will have grasped the message of this syllabus sufficiently well by now so that they will advocate establishing a limited government on the new planet, to protect the rights, property and freedom of all citizens equally. This will then leave the individual settlers free to do as they wish so long as they do not interfere with the equal freedom of others. Only then will it be possible for a free market economy to evolve among the members of the new community.

NOTE: In connection with this discussion, the teacher should stress that no matter how large the new colony’s stocks of provisions, tools, machines and other equipment may be, no matter how much technical knowledge or how many skills may be represented among the new settlers, it will not be possible for them to maintain anything like the living standards to which we are now accustomed, unless and until they can develop a highly specialized intricate trading community with communication and trade among countless producers of raw materials, entrepreneurs and specialists comparable to the present worldwide market economy. For instance, if the production of a simple pencil calls for such a far-reaching integrated network of trades and skills as Leonard Read describes in “I, Pencil” (Reading No. 15), then it should be easy for the students to realize that to maintain, replenish, reproduce and add to the provisions, tools, machines and equipment the party takes with them to the new planet will require an immense productive system calling for substantial savings, investment, specialization, division of labor and trade in terms of a medium of exchange (i.e. monetary transactions not barter) among the suppliers of huge quantities of various raw materials and factors of production.

It should not be difficult to assemble sufficient supplies and provisions to live on a high standard of living for a time—as on a luxury liner or at a comfortable mountain retreat. But to maintain such a living standard for an indefinite period of time, the inhabitants must have a viable economic system to draw on, a system of production and exchange which is continually obtaining new supplies of raw materials and labor, processing and combining them to maintain, replenish and reproduce the tools and machines they need to manufacture new factors of production and so supply consumers with the various things they want and will be wanting in the future. This means that the students should be asked to consider not only the things needed for short-term survival but also some way to assure the means for providing the knowledge, skills, tools, equipment and incentive system to enable production to get started and then in time to become self-reliant, independent of supplies brought from Planet Earth, and thus able to obtain needed raw materials locally.

EXPLANATORY TEXT

Economics is like a Chinese puzzle. Many ideas and influences have their impact simultaneously. At every instant, many decisions are being made, actions being taken and their effects are being felt. Many separate and individual factors are involved, yet all are interdependent, intertwined and intermeshed with one another. To speak of one factor only without at the same time also mentioning all other factors and influences is apt to be misleading. Only when all are considered in context, is it possible to understand any single factor in its relationship to all other factors. Yet, complex market phenomena must be analyzed one by one and economic concepts explained one at a time in some logical sequence in order to make the interrelationships of the market comprehensible. In this Unit we shall attempt to summarize the most important points presented in this syllabus with respect to the actions of individuals and their consequences for the market economy.

1. Economics is a logical science, based on a priori axioms. An a priori axiom is something that is so fundamental, so basic, so characteristic of the world as we know it, that we cannot conceive of its not being true:

a. Regularity

b. Logic

c. Causality

d. Time

e. Change

f. Value

Individuals can think and act as they do only because there is some order, regularity or “plan” in the universe. Everything a person does depends on these a priori categories. And all the economic theories, “laws” or principles the students have been studying are derived from them by using deduction, reason, logic, the “armchair method.”

2. Economics is a study of the conscious purposive actions of individuals, not of groups or collectives. Therefore, it may be called micro-economics. (Note that “macro-economics” is something very different!) Because economics deals with the actions of individuals, any definition of economics should include the idea that it is individuals who are doing the thinking, deciding, choosing, preferring, valuing and acting. Every definition of economics should also include some word meaning “conscious” or “purposive” to describe the actions individuals take. Economics is a study of peaceful (NOT coercive) actions. Here are several sample definitions:

a. Economics is the study of how people try to get what they want with what they have, without the use of force

b. Economics is the science of human action; the study of the conscious choices, actions and preferences of individuals, undertaken in the attempt to attain their various goals with the time and resources available

c. Economics is the study of the peaceful means people use to relieve felt-uneasinesses and to attain their most urgent, as yet unsatisfied, personal (subjective) values on their own personal scales of values

d. Economics is a study of the “spontaneous organization for transmuting what every man has into what he desires wholly irrespective of what his desires may be,” i.e., it is a study of the “instrumentality whereby every man, by doing what he can for some of his fellows, gets what he wants from others.” (Philip H. Wicksteed, The Scope and Method of Political Economy, 1913/1914)

e. Economics is “a science of purposeful human actions. It is a science of means for attaining desired ends. It reveals the human actions that moral and intelligent men may take to attain their self-selected goals with the least use of their available time, energy, and scarce goods.” (Percy L. Greaves, Jr., Understanding the Dollar Crisis, 1973. p. 7)

f. Economics is “the science of every kind of human action. Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference. The modern theory of value widens the scientific horizon and enlarges the field of economic studies.” (Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 3rd ed., 1966. p. 3)

3. Three conditions must be present for a person to act. Individuals act, consciously, purposively, intentionally to relieve their most urgent “felt-uneasinesses.” However, merely feeling dissatisfied with the present situation is not enough. Before acting, a person must have:

a. some dissatisfaction or felt-uneasiness—this is essential. If a person is completely satisfied he would have no reason for action.

b. some idea concerning a situation or circumstance he or she would prefer—otherwise, why bother?

c. some hope that his or her action may bring relief or success—if a person is physically confined or firmly convinced that any action on his part will be completely useless, he won’t make an effort.

4. Individuals act on the basis of their ideas, knowledge and values. What an individual considers a felt-uneasiness depends on his ideas. The ends, goals, and values individuals hold vary from time to time according to their personal ideas, thoughts, knowledge and subjective values. The means a person uses in the attempt to Relieve his or her various felt-uneasinesses, to satisfy needs and wants and his or her many ends and goals will also depend on his or her ideas, thoughts, knowledge and subjective values.

5. Every one of us has available only limited resources (strength, energy, time, abilities, aptitudes, skills, knowledge, tools, wealth, etc.), but everyone wants many things, ends, goals and values. The gap between what a person has and what he wants is the “economic problem.” Because there is this gap—between what we have and what we want—we all try to devote what we have to what we consider most important. We try to use our resources and stretch them out to cover our most urgently desired, as yet unsatisfied needs, wants, ends and goals, according to their relative personal (subjective) value to us.

6. Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us ranks or grades his or her various needs, wants and goals in the order of their importance to him or her at the moment—in the light of conditions as he or she views them. Valuing is a personal process, as the students should realize as a result of contemplating their various wants, discussing them in class and analyzing their purposive actions. A person’s scale of values is distinctive, unique and always changing. A person’s scale of values never remains the same for very long. Yet if we stop to think about it, we always know what we consider most urgent at any moment—that is the particular need or want or goal we are seeking to satisfy at that particular instant.

7. Every voluntary action is an exchange of one situation, good or service for another that the actor considers preferable, more valuable or at least less unsatisfactory in the light of his own subjective (personal) values. Thus it follows that every time a person acts, trades, buys or sells anything voluntarily, he or she is exchanging something he values less for something he values more. This means that both parties to every voluntary transaction expect to gain, to be better off after trading—each from his own personal point of view—than they were before. Therefore, it behooves each of us who wants to buy, sell or trade anything with someone else to try to offer the person or persons with whom we want to deal something they want more urgently than they do the item we want from them in exchange.

NOTE: Call attention to the significance of applying this subjective value theory to everyday transactions. Anyone who wants to buy anything—a MacDonald hamburger, a motorcycle, a pair of blue jeans, a book, a portable radio or what-have-you—must offer the potential seller something the seller values more than the item the would-be buyer is seeking. Similarly, anyone wanting a job must offer the potential employer a quantity and quality of labor that the potential employer will value more than the full cost (including all money wages, fringe benefits, overhead, taxes, etc.) of hiring that particular person.

8. The right to own and control property is essential for people to trade with one another. Private property and exchange are like two sides of the same coin. How can a person offer something to someone else—as a gift or loan or in trade—if it isn’t his private property in the first place? Isn’t a trade itself evidence that the two individuals concerned actually owned and were free to dispose of whatever they offered the other? Doesn’t the consummation of a voluntary transaction mean, therefore, that each trader becomes the legitimate new owner, with the right to control the use, of whatever he or she receives in trade?

9. Specialization and the division of labor depend on trade. Specialization, division of labor and exchange (trade) are like two sides of the same coin also. If we were not free to seek the things we want that other people have (i.e., their private property) by trying peacefully to offer them something we have (i.e., our own private property) which we hope they will want enough to relinquish to us what we want of theirs, we would have to

(a) steal from them or (b) become completely selfsufficient. Without the opportunity to trade, every one of us, or at least every family or tribal group, would have to produce all the various goods and services we needed and wanted to consume. No one would then have time, energy, incentive or opportunity to concentrate or specialize on the things he or she could do best or liked to do most. Only when people may exchange goods and services with one another in peace may each of them specialize and divide the labor among several or many persons according to their respective abilities, aptitudes, skills, interests and preferences.

10. Traders on a complex market economy need a generally-accepted “trading commodity,” medium of exchange or money. Money is an outcome of the division of labor and trade. As a market grows in size and complexity, it is no longer feasible for producers, traders and consumers to obtain the many goods and services they need and want through barter. Interpersonal transactions, involving increased specialization, division of labor and trade, are much too complicated to be carried out by direct exchange. Thus traders need some “common denominator,” in terms of which they may implement trades over large geographical areas and extended periods of time, compare alternatives and calculate. In time, as a result of countless transactions on the market, traders gradually began to make agreements and payments in terms of some third commodity, a good which for some reason enjoyed relatively widespread popularity among the people generally. Gold and silver are such commodities. Being in widespread demand for many centuries, they have been generally acceptable to traders as a temporary makeshift or as a means they can use later to obtain the specific goods and services they ultimately desire. Thus, in time, as a result of countless transactions, traders gradually narrowed down the number of such “trading commodities.” In this way, the precious metal gold has become the generally accepted medium of exchange or money throughout the world. Thus money is simply a commodity which makes trading easier. Because it is in demand by many persons, almost everybody is willing to take it in exchange. Money evolved as a market phenomenon, out of countless market transactions, in response to the need of traders for a suitable, gen-erally-acceptable “trading commodity” or medium of exchange. When individuals need not barter goods and services directly but may arrange transactions in terms of some such generally accepted common denominator, “trading commodity” or money, trading becomes easier and simpler.

11. When deciding whether to act or not to act, a person always considers the value to him or her personally of the particular amount, unit or item he or she expects to gain, or lose, by action. In other words, each of us always compares the relative subjective (personal) values to us of the particular unit of satisfaction or utility we expect to receive and the subjective (personal) value of the particular unit of satisfaction or utility we expect to relinquish in a transaction. Every one of us always breaks things down mentally into “bite-sized pieces” which makes our personal decisions to act, or not to act, relatively easy. The units of satisfaction or utility of the goods or services being compared which tip the balance scales toward action—or inaction—are the marginal units. The theory of subjective (personal) value therefore may be described more precisely as the subjective value, marginal utility, theory of value.

12. Market prices evolve as individuals trade units of their own private property (goods, services, money, etc.) with one another, each in response to his own personal (subjective) values. The more eager a person is to satisfy some particular need or want or goal, and the more he or she will be willing to offer for it relative to his own personal means and other needs and wants, the more he or she will value what it takes to get it. As every one of us tries to get what he or she wants most and/or the money needed to buy it, market prices appear reflecting the relative eagerness of all bidders and non-bidders and the relative strength of their personal (subjective) values. In time, out of the melee of bids and asks, “higgling and haggling,” competition for all goods, services and/or money among countless persons, each offering something he or she has for something he or she prefers, money prices emerge. On a free market economy—when no person or group of persons uses force or threat of force to interfere with the peaceful and moral acts of others—these money prices tend to reflect the relative importance to people of specific units of goods, services and/ or money.

NOTE: The fictitious auction technique—described in Units 6, 9 and 14—should have made it clear that (a) everyone gains as the result of a voluntary trade if he hasn’t made a mistake, and (b) the number of transactions and thus the opportunities for gain are at a maximum when no one interferes with force or threat of force to prevent, limit, regulate or control peaceful trading.

13. When people save some of their production, they may make tools to improve their future production. Only when people are in a position to refrain from consuming everything they have at any time, may they set aside some of the things they have produced to consume later. By saving such consumers’ goods, they show that they have the time preference of the ant in Aesop’s Fable. They are then accumulating “rainy day” savings. The grasshopper had a different time preference, one that led him to prefer consuming everything today. When many people have the time preference of Aesop’s ant, they very likely reduce or discontinue their production-for-consumption efforts temporarily and consume some of their “rainy day” savings while they spend time, energy and raw materials on the development of tools to make future production and consumption easier, quicker and better. In this way, “rainy day” savings become the means for developing tools, machines and other factors of production. Savings in the form of factors of production are called “capitalist savings.”

14. In time, if people are free to produce and save, they will accumulate quite an assortment of “rainy day” savings and capitalist savings. As a result of their actions and choices, there will come into existence a miscellany of raw materials, semiproduced and produced tools, machines (factors of production or capital goods) and consumers’ goods. The complex of goods and services which exist in the world at any instant may be compared with a “half-baked cake.” Like a “half-baked cake,” everything in it—every produced, semi-produced factor of production and every good or service it includes—is inert and without value unless or until it is used by persons with ideas so that it becomes or contributes to the satisfaction of some individual’s want or need. Human nature being what it is, there will always be a gap between the currently available world-wide economic “halfbaked cake” of things that people have and the many things they want. The important question for economics, therefore, becomes how best to channel all these various goods and services into their most urgent uses, while at the same time keeping waste and mal-investment at a minimum. How should the countless components of this economic “smorgasbord” be shifted around, combined, altered, modified, transformed, etc., so as to serve where they are valued most? What is the best way to enhance their usability and value and avoid waste and mal-investment? In economic terminology, the persons who make these decisions, who plan how to use and alter the various items in the world-wide economic “smorgasbord” or “halfbaked cake” are called entrepreneurs. Their goal is to do their best to please consumers. At the same time their decisions, often made with only the immediate future in mind, profoundly affect the economic “smorgasbord” of the more distant future with which future entrepreneurs will have to cope when they, in turn, will be trying to transform the then-existing inert goods and services into the things consumers will be wanting at still later dates.

15. Entrepreneurs try to anticipate what consumers want. Because consumers compete with one another on the basis of their subjective (personal) values, they bid up the prices of the goods and services they want most. This means that to eam a profit, an entrepreneur must recognize the sovereignty of consumers and supply them with things they want. The better he succeeds in pleasing them, the greater his chances for profit. Like the box office receipts of a rock group or movie star, therefore, an entrepreneur’s profit (loss) reflects his popularity (unpopularity) with, and success (failure) in serving customers. Thus, limiting the chances for profit tends to hamper the efforts of entrepreneurs in supplying consumers with the goods and services they need and want.

16. Entrepreneurs try to plan for the future. They try to anticipate today what consumers will be wanting in the future when the projects on which they are working now are completed and the goods and services they will be producing have come off the production line and are ready to offer on the market. Production takes time, sometimes many long years of planning, especially when it involves many different raw materials from widely scattered parts of the world, huge investments in complex and sophisticated plants, equipment, tools and machines, widespread cooperation among countless individuals and trade throughout far-flung geographical areas. Thus interfering with investment, interpersonal transactions and trade today will discourage entrepreneurs from embarking on projects in anticipation of producing goods and services consumers will be wanting in the future. This means that economic restrictions are bound to lead sooner or later to some kind of malinvestment, mal-distribution, economic bottlenecks, imbalances and shortages. These will become increasingly serious as time goes by and the demands of consumers for the goods and services entrepreneurs were discouraged from starting become more and more apparent.

17. Banks originated as (a) warehouses and/or (b) money lenders. Complications arose when some warehousemen-bankers, who had agreed to store gold and silver for safekeeping, began to lend out to borrowers some of these precious metals which had been deposited with them for safekeeping by savers. A bank that adopted this practice then had in its vaults only a fractional reserve for all its outstanding paper notes—“warehouse receipts,” IOUs or promises-to-pay. If its notes were labeled like warehouse receipts—for specific quantities of precious metals in storage—when these quantities of precious metals were not in fact all still warehoused there as the receipts implied, then they misrepresented the true situation. If its notes promised to pay on demand more gold or silver than actually remained in their vaults, the bank was in fact insolvent. The insolvency of the bank would become apparent if, as and when the holders of its demand paper notes all asked for redemption in precious metals.

18. Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money and/or credit. The major inflations of this century have all been permitted, sanctioned and even encouraged by government-protected fractional reserve banking. Over the centuries since the idea of fractional reserve banking was first conceived, the trend has been for more and more banks to pool their resources and issue more and more paper banknotes while retaining lower and lower fractional reserves. Most central banks today, including our Federal Reserve System, have been relieved of the obligation to redeem their paper notes in any real commodity. Thus Federal Reserve Notes are not now promises-to-pay anything, and there is no effective legal limit to the quantity of notes or credit the “Fed” may issue. However, government officials may find some day that there is a limit to the Notes the “Fed” may issue and expect to have used as money. Should the people ever refuse to accept its Notes willingly in trade, that limit will have been passed; Federal Reserve Notes will then no longer be suitable to use as media of exchange, i.e. money.

19. The market and individuals trading on the market need to be protected. Persons who wish to communicate, cooperate and trade with one another in peace should be confident that they can do so without interference from others who would use force or threat of force to harm them and/or their private property. For this a government is necessary. For the sake of their own interests, however, the citizens must see to it that the government’s power is so restricted that government, itself, may not interfere with the market process— any more than does a night watchman or an electrified fence—by using force or threat of force to help some at the disadvantage of others.

20. Here we have all the basic essentials for understanding the principles of economics and explaining modern market phenomena. Today’s market economy is the outcome of the actions of countless individuals, each making decisions on the basis of his or her own personal ideas, ends and values. Today’s complex of tools, machines, plants, equipment, investments, business establishments, large and small, and finished consumers’ goods are products of the actions, choices, savings, production, specialization, division of labor and trade of countless persons. In acting, every one of us must take into consideration the world as it is and the other people in it. Persons consume or save in accordance with their respective time preferences. The more they save and invest, the more refined, sophisticated and efficient tools and machines can be developed. The more customers a producer can attract, the larger his enterprise may become, the more he can produce and sell that consumers want to have and to use, the better are his chances of profit. Market prices and wages are determined on the market by the bidding and asking of owners (potential sellers) and would-be buyers, each in accord with his own personal values at the time. Interregional trade is the outcome of complex division of labor and immense savings and transactions throughout the world.

In the desire for profits, entrepreneurs make decisions in line with their respective interpretations and anticipations of consumer needs, wants and wishes. If they succeed, they cannot avoid helping others.

Free market economics is the only system of the division of labor that advances the general welfare of all the people. It is in accordance with the Golden Rule. We advance ourselves as we help others. The more we help others, the more we receive in return.

Percy L. Greaves, Jr. Understanding the Dollar Crisis (p. 62)

The more freedom people have to produce and to trade with one another in peace, the more transactions they will agree to and be able to carry out, the more goods and services will be produced and available for consumption, and the more successful individuals will be in seeking their own personal ends, goals and values.

CONCLUSION

In a free market economy, protected insofar as possible from disruption by persons who would use force or fraud to violate the rights of others:

All individuals act on the basis of ideas, correct and incorrect The entrepreneur “gets it all together” Entrepreneurs are guided by consumer sovereignty

Consumers determine prices by their purchases and refusals to purchase, depending on the relative subjective values they place on the marginal units concerned Profits may be earned only by successfully arranging, transferring, transforming and/or furnishing consumers with something they value more than they did its component parts in their previous form. Thus, production for profit consists of constantly shifting goods and services from where they are valued less to where they are valued more. Production for profit, therefore, is necessarily also production for use

Money is a commodity which buyers and sellers settle on as a medium of exchange, as a result of their transactions through the market Savings, tools and a market-determined money help to facilitate and expand production, trade and individual well-being A free market is a “democracy” in which every penny has a vote, helping entrepreneurs to know the preferences of its owner Both parties to a free market transaction expect to be better off as a result, each judging from the point of view of his/her own personal (subjective) valuations The greatest possible number of mutually-satis-factory market transactions take place on a free market where individuals are free to bid, offer and compete as they think best for one more, or one less, unit of any good or service up for auction The intervention of force or threat of force disturbs the market process, leads entrepreneurs to miscalculate, malinvest and so causes gaps between supply and demand The essence of a free market economy is the opportunity to experiment; and experimentation requires the ownership and control of private property.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Anyone who has followed this course of study from beginning to end and who wants to read more about free market economics might start with the books, as yet unread, that are listed on the “Bibliography” in Unit 1. Those marked with asterisks should keep almost any reader busy for quite a while. See also the titles on FEE’s current book catalog. However, a few general hints may help readers locate for themselves books in this general subject area that will be worthwhile reading:

(1) Watch for book reviews published from time to time in newspapers, magazines, The Freeman and other journals, announcing the appearance of new books and/or reprints of old books on economics and related fields.

(2) If a book or article is of particular interest to the reader, keep an eye out for other works by that same author.

(3) Pursue references that seem interesting, which are mentioned in books and essays—in footnotes, bibliographies and bibliographical articles. See, for instance, the last chapter in Henry Haz-litt’s Economics in One Lesson, which has been referred to frequently in this syllabus, and the reprint of Hazlitt’s Thinking as a Science (Nash Publishing, 1969). There are several pages of recommended readings in the back of Ludwig von Mises’ The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth (Van Nostrand, 1962) and also in the Libertarian Press editions of Mises’ The Anti-capitalistic Mentality (1972) and Planning for Freedom (1974).

The more a person reads, the more skillful he will become at discovering new material he wants to read. However, a person’s reading should by no means be limited to books with which he agrees. Students of economics should read all kinds of books, raise questions and try to develop a critical mind. They should become familiar with the arguments both pro and con the logic of free market theories. It is hoped that an understanding of the principles explained in this syllabus will help those who study them carefully to read more intelligently and interpret more successfully the economic events of the day.

Free Market Economics: A Syllabus

16. SUMMARY

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES

EXPLANATORY TEXT

CONCLUSION

RECOMMENDED READINGS

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING