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Can You Believe this Guy!
[Disclosure Alert: The Dismal Political Economist had read von Mises as a graduate student, and as is obvious from this Forum has expunged almost all of it from his mind.]
The revelation in the WSJ Interview with Michelle Bachmann that she took Ludwig von Mises to the beach with her led The Dismal Political Economist to re-acquaint himself with the man. As a public service here are items from a history of his life as posted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
he presented a new business-cycle theory in the light of which economic crises appeared as resulting from inflation-induced misallocations of resources. He also showed that money could not possibly be neutral, and that increases of the quantity of money always had redistribution effects.
In the last year of the war, he received a prestigious but unpaid appointment as professor extraordinarius at the University of Vienna
Some scholars attribute to him a quote at the time, “keep your prestige, I’ll take the money”.
He developed an entire new theory of interventionism showing that government intervention is inherently counterproductive. Practically this ruled out all variants of third-way policies and left laissez-faire capitalism as the only meaningful option on the political menu
Thus we answer the question of his appeal to modern Conservatism.
In the late 1920s he started publishing papers on the epistemological character of economics. Von Mises argued that economic science could not be verified or refuted through the analysis of observable data
Now we really understand his appeal to Conservatives who refuse to allow observable data to interfere with their conclusions.
and eventually became a visiting professor at New York University
And they always thanked him for stopping by.
In the 1950s, his NYU seminar produced many important intellectual leaders of postwar libertarianism, such as Murray Rothbard, Hans Sennholz, George Reisman, Ralph Raico, Leonard Liggio, and Israel Kirzner
Household names all. Take them to the beach any time Ms. Bachmann
Bashing dead Austrian Economists isn't really my thing. I'm Austrian (by passport and not persuasion)! These guys must be read in historical context. I have my sincere doubts whether Michelle Bachmann has the intellectual capacity to do so?
ReplyDeleteThat said it is worth noting that the modern day US followers of Austrian economics are playing in a complete different league. For instance I had the dubious pleasure to listen to Hans-Hermann Hopppe — a student of Murray Rothbard. He thinks democracy isn't such a good idea and modern monarchs are the real thing. Following this great idea Michelle Bachmann would be out of business and can spend the rest of her life on some beach reading other anarcho-economics science-fiction.