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Economics in One Lesson
Economics in One Lesson [Hardcover]
Henry Hazlitt (Author)
Hardcover: 206 pages
Language: English
ASIN: B001G8NW6Y
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
ISBN 9781933550213
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Here is a publishing event: the new Mises Institute edition of the classic book that has taught many millions sound economic thinking. It is a hardbound volume, priced very low thanks to special benefactors, and now available in quantity discounts for distribution to your friends, family, and anyone you meet who needs to understand what economics implies for the society, government, and civilization. Henry Hazlitt wrote this book following his stint at the New York Times as an editorialist. His hope was to reduce the whole teaching of economics to a few principles and explain them in ways that people would never forget. It worked. He relied on some stories by Bastiat and his own impeccable capacity for logical thinking and crystal-clear prose. He was writing under the influence of Mises himself, of course, but he brought his own special gifts to the project.
As just one example, this is the book that made the idea of the “broken window fallacy” so famous. What thrills us in particular about this new edition is that it is beautiful, it is hardcover, and it is newly typeset for modern readers. It has a full index. It includes a wonderful foreword by Walter Block. It’s the right size, shape, and feel – perfect for making this book central to all educational efforts of the future. This is the book to send to reporters, politicians, pastors, political activists, teachers, or anyone else who needs to know. Professor Block explains that it was this book that turned him on to economics as a science. He believes that it is probably the most important economics book ever written in the sense that it offers the greatest hope to educating everyone about the meaning of the science. Written for the non-academic, it has served as the major antidote to fallacies in the popular press, and has appeared in dozens of languages and printings. It’s still the quickest way to learn how to think like an economist. And this is why it has been used in the best classrooms more than sixty years. Many writers have since attempted to beat this book as an introduction, but have never succeeded. Hazlitt’s book remains the best. Even if you own this book already, or have several past editions, you will want to have this book as your own as a wonderful testament to its place in the world of ideas. In putting this edition together, we chose to work from Hazlitt’s own first edition because it contains the core of what is crucial here without later updates that only date the book. As with Mises and Human Action, the author’s first instincts were the best ones. Part One: The Lesson Part Two: The Lesson Applied The Broken WindowThe Blessings of Destruction
Public Works
Mean Taxes
Taxes Discourage Production
Credit Diverts Production
The Curse of Machinery
Spread-the-Work Schemes
Disbanding Troops and Bureaucrats
The Fetish of Full Employment
Who’s “Protected” by Tariffs?
The Drive for Exports
“Parity” Prices
Saving the X Industry
How the Price System Works
“Stabilizing” Commodities
Government Price-Fixing
Minimum Wage Laws
Do Unions Really Raise Wages?
“Enough to Buy Back the Product”
The Function of Profits
The Mirage of Inflation
The Assault on Savings
The Lesson Restated
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
Ludwig von Mises (Author)
ISBN: 9781610161336
Binding: Paperback
Page Length: 120
Date Published: 1/1/2008
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
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In 1954, after a lifetime of serious theoretical work in economic science, Mises turned his attention to one of the great puzzles of all time: discovering why the intellectuals hate capitalism. The result is this socio-psycho-cultural analysis informed by economic theory. Mises explores answers from a wide variety of angles, and discusses the nature of academic institutions, popular culture, and how vices like jealousy and envy affect theory. All play a role in preventing people from seeing the self-evident benefits of economic freedom relative to controls. His comments on the resentment of the intellectuals cut very deeply. Mises shrewdly teases the anti-capitalist bias out of contemporary fiction and popular culture generally.
In the course of his narrative, he explains aspects of the market that have generally eluded even its defenders. For example, it is true that markets dumb down the culture, exalting trashy novels and movies over higher-brow fare? Mises points out that the tastes of the masses will always and everywhere by lower than those educated and cultivated to love higher culture. But, he says, the glory of capitalism is that it brings to every sector what it wants and needs, and more of it than any other system. So, yes, there will be more trash, but also more great work as well. It is a matter of availability: under socialism, nothing is available. Under capitalism, choice seems nearly infinite. He is quite subtle in his analysis here and throughout. Its remarkable how his narrative applies in our time, even more than when it was written. The style of this volume is more casual than you will find elsewhere, in some sense, it is more thrilling for it. The reader senses that Mises has unleashed a lifetime of frustration here, and shined a very bright light on some dark corners of opinion. The contents of this volume include: I. The Social Characteristics of Capitalism and the Psychological Causes of Its Vilification1. The Sovereign Consumer
2. The Urge for Economic Betterment
3. Status Society and Capitalism
4. The Resentment of Frustrated Ambition
5. The Resentment of the Intellectuals
6. The Anti-capitalistic Bias of American Intellectuals
7. The Resentment of the White-Collar Workers
8. The Resentment of “Cousins”
9. The Communism of Broadway and Hollywood
10. The Non-Economic Objections to Capitalism
11. Ant-Communism vs. Capitalism
II. The Ordinary Man’s Social Philosophy
1. Capitalism as it is and as it is Seen by the Common Man
2. The Anti-capitalistic Front
III. Literature Under Capitalism
1. The Market for Literary Products
2. Success on the Book Market
3. Remarks about the Detective Stories
4. Freedom of the Press
5. The Bigotry of the Literati
6. The “Social” Novels and Plays
Planned Chaos
Planned Chaos
Ludwig Von Mises (Author)
Paperback: 90 pages
Publisher: Foundation for Economic Education (June 1981)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0910614008
ISBN-13: 978-0910614009
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
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The title comes from Mises’s description of the reality of central planning and socialism, whether of the national variety (Nazism) or the international variety (communism). Rather than create an orderly society, the attempt to central plan has precisely the opposite effect. By short-circuiting the price mechanism and forcing people into economic lives contrary to their own chosing, central planning destroys the capital base and creates economic randomness that eventually ends in killing prosperity. This important work was written decades after Mises’s original essay on economic calculation and includes the broadest and boldest attack on all forms of state control.
The contents of this volume include: Introductory Remarks:1. The Failure of Interventionism
2. The Dictatorial, Anti-democratic and Socialist Character of Interventionism
3. Socialism and Communism
4. Russia’s Aggressiveness
5. Trotsky’s Heresy
6. The Liberation of the Demons
7. Fascism
8. Nazism
9. The Teachings of the Soviet Experience
10. The Alleged Inevitability of Socialism
Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War
Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War
Ludwig von Mises (Author)
Paperback: 291 pages
Publisher: Libertarian Pr (August 1985)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0910884153
ISBN-13: 978-0910884150
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
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At the close of the Second World War, Mises saw the destruction of the old world and the beginnings of a new one that did not look promising, especially for European politics. Socialism appeared to sweep all before it, and the social democratic variety in the West was not much of an improvement. Mises set out to explain and bitterly denounce the trends toward the total state, and demonstrate that Communism and Nazism were both species of interventionism.
Though Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom was more widely promoted, and achieved a far greater fame, this Mises work, which appeared in the same year, offers a more consistent critique of industrial central planning, warfare, and the welfare state. There are no concessions to the prevailing social democratic consensus, and Mises is no less harsh on interventionism of the democratic form. The last chapter is a prescient critique of the idea of world government, including world trade agreements. This volume includes: Part I. The Collapse of German Liberalism I. German Liberalism The Ancien Rgime and Liberalism The Weakness of German Liberalism The Prussian Army The Constitutional Conflict in Prussia The “Little German” Program The Lassalle Episode II. The Triumph of Militarism The Prussian Army in the New German Empire German Militarism The Liberals and Militarism The Current Explanation of the Success of Militarism Part II. Nationalism III. Etatism The New Mentality The State The Political and Social Doctrines of Liberalism Socialism Socialism in Russia and in Germany Interventionism Etatism and Protectionism Economic Nationalism and Domestic Monopoly Prices Autarky German Protectionism IV. Etatism and Nationalism The Principle of Nationality The Linguistic Group Liberalism and the Principle of Nationality Aggressive Nationalism Colonial Imperialism Foreign Investment and Foreign Loans Total War Socialism and War V. Refutation of Some Fallacious Explanations The Shortcomings of Current Explanations The Alleged Irrationality of Nationalism The Aristocratic Doctrine Misapprehended Darwinism The Role of Chauvinism The Role of Myths Part III. German Nazism VI. The Peculiar Characteristics of German Nationalism The Awakening The Ascendency of Pan-Germanism German Nationalism Within an Etatist World A Critique of German Nationalism Nazism and German Philosophy Polylogism Pan-Germanism and Nazism VII. The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany The Legend Marxism and the Labor Movement The German Workers and the German State The Social Democrats Within the German Caste System The Social Democrats and War VIII. Anti-Semitism and Racism The Role of Racism The Struggle Against the Jewish Mind Interventionism and Legal Discrimination Against Jews The “Stab in the Back” Anti-Semitism as a Factor in International Politics IX. The Weimar Republic and Its Collapse The Weimar Constitution The Abortive Socialization The Armed Parties The Treaty of Versailles The Economic Depression Nazism and German Labor The Foreign Critics of Nazism X. Nazism as a World Problem The Scope and Limitations of History The Fallacy of the Concept of “National Character” Germany’s Rubicon The Alternative Part IV. The Future of Western Civilization XI. The Delusions of World Planning The Term “Planning” The Dictatorship Complex A World Government Planned Production Foreign Trade Agreements Monetary Planning Planning International Capital Transactions XII. Peace Schemes Armament Control A Critique of Some Other Schemes Proposed The Union of the Western Democracies Peace in Eastern Europe The Problems of Asia The Role of the League of NationsHuman Action (Scholar’s Edition)
Human Action (Scholar’s Edition)
Ludwig von Mises (Author)
Hardcover: 912 pages
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute; 3rd edition (February 1, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933550317
ISBN-13: 978-1933550312
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 2.2 inches
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Human Action is the most important book on political economy you will ever own. It was (and remains) the most comprehensive, systematic, forthright, and powerful defense of the economics of liberty ever written. This is the Scholars Edition: accept no substitute. You will treasure this volume.
The Scholars Edition is the original, unaltered treatise (originally published in 1949) that shaped a generation of Austrians and made possible the intellectual movement that is leading the global charge for free markets. Made available exclusively through the Ludwig von Mises Institute, this edition, Mises’s original, is the one to own. This edition is a case-bound hardback with a beautiful cover that is also meant for extreme use and durability; No hardbound edition compares in price; The pagination of the original 1949 edition is preserved, but it also includes invaluable additions. Includes the 1954 index prepared under Mises’s supervision, the most complete ever published, united here with the book for the first time. The introduction, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey Herbener, and Joseph Salerno–based on newly discovered archives–tells of the tragic and glorious history of this seminal work, and of its bright future as the manifesto of liberty. This edition is keyed to the world’s first and only Study Guide to Human Action, by Robert Murphy, which opens up this book as never before. All told, The Scholars Edition looks exactly like the classic work it is, ready for a lifetime (or two) of use. Mises himself wrote the following by way of explanation of why he wrote the book: Economics does not allow any breaking up into special branches. It invariably deals with the interconnectedness of all phenomena of acting and economizing. All economic facts mutually condition one another. Each of the various economic problems must be dealt with in the frame of a comprehensive system assigning its due place and weight to every aspect of human wants and desires. All monographs remain fragmentary if not integrated into a systematic treatment of the whole body of social and economic relations. To provide such a comprehensive analysis is the task of my book Human Action , a Treatise on Economics. It is the consummation of lifelong studies and investigations, the precipitate of half a century of experience. I saw the forces operating which could not but annihilate the high civilization and prosperity of Europe. In writing my book, I was hoping to contribute to the endeavors of our most eminent contemporaries to prevent this country from following the path which leads to the abyss. The Scholars Edition of Human Action is the definitive edition of this great work and foundation of every library of freedom.Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
Ludwig von Mises (Author)
Paperback: 120 pages
Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc. (February 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0865976643
ISBN-13: 978-0865976641
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
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Mises said it right here. In these pages we find the crushing critique of nearly all modern reform movements, summed up in his sweeping conclusion: “The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!”
Mises explains that the core choice we face is between rational economic organization by market prices or the arbitrary dictates of government bureaucrats. There is no third way. And here he explains how it is that bureaucracies can’t manage anything well or with an eye to economic at all. It is a devastating and fundamental criticism he makes, an extension of his critique of socialism. It has never been answered. Written long before Public Choice economists began to take up the subject, Mises describes bureaucracies as both self-interested and economically irrational (thereby improving on the modern Public Choice critique). There is no reinventing government: if we are to have government do things for us, bureaucracies, which cannot behave efficiently, will have to do the work. This small book has grown in stature as Western economies have become more and more bureaucratized. PREFACE TO THE 1944 EDITION PREFACE TO THE 1962 EDITION INTRODUCTION The opprobrious connotation of the term bureaucracy.The American citizen’s indictment of bureaucratism.
The “Progressives” view of bureaucratism.
Bureaucratism and totalitarianism.
The alternative: profit management or bureaucratic management.
I. PROFIT MANAGEMENT
The operation of the market mechanism.
Economic calculation.
Management under the profit system.
Personnel management under an unhampered labor market.
II. BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT
Bureaucracy under despotic government.
Bureaucracy within a democracy.
The essential features of bureaucratic management.
The crux of bureaucratic management.
Bureaucratic personnel management.
III. BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF PUBLICLY OWNED ENTERPRISES
The impracticability of government all-round control.
Public enterprise within a market economy.
IV. BUREAUCRATIC MANAGEMENT OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISES
How government interference and the impairment of the profit motive drive business toward bureaucratization.
Interference with the height of profit.
Interference with the choice of personnel.
Unlimited dependence on the discretion of government bureaus.
V. THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF BUREAUCRATIZATION
The philosophy of bureaucratism.
Bureaucratic complacency.
The bureaucrat as a voter.
The bureaucratization of the mind.
Who should be the master?
VI. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF BUREAUCRATIZATION
The German youth movement.
The fate of the rising generation within a bureaucratic environment.
Authoritarian guardianship and progress.
The selection of the dictator.
The vanishing of the critical sense.
VII. IS THERE ANY REMEDY AVAILABLE?
Past failures.
Economics versus planning and totalitarianism.
The plain citizen versus the professional propagandist of bureaucratization.
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