What kind of man was Ludwig von Mises?

[MatthewLM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpATNp5DjYI

I thought I'd share this video.

[The Script]

I've seen this before.  It's pretty good.  Do you read much Mises?

[cryptobard]

On a more personal level, he was belligerently intolerant of ideas he did not agree with. To the point of childishness.

Still one of the most brilliant minds we've had.

[becoin]

Still one of the most brilliant minds we've had.

It is actually very simple. As Marx put it your position in the society defines your convictions and beliefs.

If you have a lot of money, all you need is more freedom or liberty to spend them for everything you wish to suit your individual needs. The more things your money can buy the better for you. Unfortunately, this means more people with less money that are desperately ready to sell whatever they can sell - including their body, blood and organs!

If you have no money, all you need in the first place is food and basic necessities for you and your family. This, however, suggests limited scope for products and services money can buy - that is less freedom and liberty for the rich.

I don't see where is the genius of this 'brilliant' mind?

[The Script]

Still one of the most brilliant minds we've had.

It is actually very simple. As Marx put it your position in the society defines your convictions and beliefs.

If you have a lot of money, all you need is more freedom or liberty to spend them for everything you wish to suit your individual needs. The more things your money can buy the better for you. Unfortunately, this means more people with less money that are desperately ready to sell whatever they can sell - including their body, blood and organs!

If you have no money, all you need in the first place is food and basic necessities for you and your family. This, however, suggests limited scope for products and services money can buy - that is less freedom and liberty for the rich.

I don't see where is the genius of this 'brilliant' mind?

Which of his works have you read?

[becoin]

Which of his works have you read?

I have not. Have I missed something? I thought I've read every 'laissez-faire' theory that deserves reading.

[cryptobard]

Still one of the most brilliant minds we've had.

It is actually very simple. As Marx put it your position in the society defines your convictions and beliefs.

If you have a lot of money, all you need is more freedom or liberty to spend them for everything you wish to suit your individual needs. The more things your money can buy the better for you. Unfortunately, this means more people with less money that are desperately ready to sell whatever they can sell - including their body, blood and organs!

If you have no money, all you need in the first place is food and basic necessities for you and your family. This, however, suggests limited scope for products and services money can buy - that is less freedom and liberty for the rich.

I don't see where is the genius of this 'brilliant' mind?

You don't see it because you're woefully unfamiliar with his works. He contributed greatly to modern economic thought throughout his lifetime:

http://mises.org/resources/3250

Might not be best to start there but Human Action is definitely his most accomplished work.


Or you can keep spouting off Marxist interpretations of whatever you feel like for the duration of the thread. Whatever stimulates your intellect more.


Please note: I don't agree with much of Marx's analyses but I can still admit he had a brilliant mind. It's a shame when people let their ideologies blind themselves to the qualities of those they don't agree with.

And, finally: rofl @ your claim that you've read every laissez faire work worth reading but you haven't read von Mises. Yeah, I'm sure...

[becoin]

And, finally: rofl @ your claim that you've read every laissez faire work worth reading but you haven't read von Mises. Yeah, I'm sure...

The work you're mentioning is published right after the WWII. Its goal is to prove the 'superiority' of free-market economy to government planned systems like those of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia... Yeah, I don't read 'politically correct' theories... They are designed to serve the ruling class. If the ruling elite of the dominant economy (the US) manages to promote an author of a suitable theory from a neutral country so much the better. Lets not forget that right after WWII Austria was still a neutral country!

[cryptobard]

And, finally: rofl @ your claim that you've read every laissez faire work worth reading but you haven't read von Mises. Yeah, I'm sure...

The work you're mentioning is published right after the WWII. Its goal is to prove the 'superiority' of free-market economy to government planned systems like those of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia... Yeah, I don't read 'politically correct' theories... They are designed to serve the ruling class. If the ruling elite of the dominant economy (the US) manages to promote an author of a suitable theory from a neutral country so much the better. Lets not forget that right after WWII Austria was still a neutral country!

Yep, attack the man - in this case, the time and place in which he lived - rather than his ideas. Circumstantial evidence is a good standard for determining truth. Always.

But fuck it, you're right, praxeology has no application outside of advancing elitist values... 


The internet is used - and was developed - by the dreaded dominant class, better get off it

[becoin]

The internet is used - and was developed - by the dreaded dominant class, better get off it

Nope, brainwashed again... What you are using is the World Wide Web! The Web was invented in CERN, Switzerland by the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had defined the Web’s basic concepts, the URL, http and html, and he had written the first browser and server software.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/History90-en.html

[cryptobard]

The internet is used - and was developed - by the dreaded dominant class, better get off it

Nope, brainwashed again... What you are using is the World Wide Web! The Web was invented in CERN, Switzerland by the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had defined the Web’s basic concepts, the URL, http and html, and he had written the first browser and server software.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/History90-en.html

 


What "politically incorrect" theories do/have you read, btw? Always looking for new things.

[becoin]

What "politically incorrect" theories do/have you read, btw? Always looking for new things.

One such example is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a 'politically incorrect' invention. This is why I'm reading this forum. 

Forget the free-market theories and the 'classical' capitalism. They are dead. Capitalism was very ill during last decades and finally died in 2008. Now we have a neo-feudal society and the respective economy. During 2008 a coup-d'etat took place. The racketeers demanded 700 billion and threatened that 4 trillion will be evaporated from the economy in a single night if they don't get what they wanted. The US Government surrendered. After couple of years they demanded another 600 billion. They got what they wanted again. Now they want more... Some people prefer to name those rackets QE1, QE2, QE3...

[hugolp]

Still one of the most brilliant minds we've had.

It is actually very simple. As Marx put it your position in the society defines your convictions and beliefs.

If you have a lot of money, all you need is more freedom or liberty to spend them for everything you wish to suit your individual needs. The more things your money can buy the better for you. Unfortunately, this means more people with less money that are desperately ready to sell whatever they can sell - including their body, blood and organs!

If you have no money, all you need in the first place is food and basic necessities for you and your family. This, however, suggests limited scope for products and services money can buy - that is less freedom and liberty for the rich.

I don't see where is the genius of this 'brilliant' mind?

Marx himself is a contradiction for this. Marx was a bourgeois with money that never worked until he was old (and all he did was publishing some articles) and travelled in first class all over Europe. And all of this while at the same time claiming to know what the workers felt and needed. And some people, usually government payed intellectuals, consider this bourgeois a valid representative of the working class.

[cryptobard]

What "politically incorrect" theories do/have you read, btw? Always looking for new things.

One such example is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a 'politically incorrect' invention. This is why I'm reading this forum. 

Forget the free-market theories and the 'classical' capitalism. They are dead. Capitalism was very ill during last decades and finally died in 2008. Now we have a neo-feudal society and the respective economy. During 2008 a coup-d'etat took place. The racketeers demanded 700 billion and threatened that 4 trillion will be evaporated from the economy in a single night if they don't get what they wanted. The US Government surrendered. After couple of years they demanded another 600 billion. They got what they wanted again. Now they want more... Some people prefer to name those rackets QE1, QE2, QE3...

I ask for reading recommendations and I get a brief manifesto... you sure are scatterbrained, aren'tcha? Maybe von Mises isn't a good place for you to start

Not that I don't agree with a significant portion of your analysis, BUT...

[MatthewLM]

I've seen this before.  It's pretty good.  Do you read much Mises?

I've been reading Human Action but haven't finished yet. I read quite a lot on mises.org and other places which of-course refer to Mises's work.

On a more personal level, he was belligerently intolerant of ideas he did not agree with. To the point of childishness.

I think the man was intolerant for a good reason. He escapes the Nazis to find more socialists elsewhere, surely he would not be happy with them?

[cryptobard]

I think the man was intolerant for a good reason. He escapes the Nazis to find more socialists elsewhere, surely he would not be happy with them?

Milton Friedman agreed:

"Fritz Machlup was a student of Mises's, one of his most faithful disciples. At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Fritz gave a talk in which I think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of floating exchange rates. Mises was so mad he wouldn't speak to him for three years. Some people had to come around and bring them together again. It's hard to understand; you can get some understanding of it by taking into account how people like Mises were persecuted in their lives."

[MatthewLM]

I'm sure the same would apply to Ayn Rand. After experiencing the terrors of the bolshevik revolution, I'm sure it would have had an effect on her attitudes. It would have spurred disgust and anger.

[cryptobard]

You don't have to try to excuse Rand's cuntiness, everyone knows she was absurdly dogmatic and inflexible in her (simplistic) thinking.

 

[The Script]

Which of his works have you read?

I have not. Have I missed something? I thought I've read every 'laissez-faire' theory that deserves reading.

This would be like me claiming to have read every government interventionist economics text worth reading and yet not reading Keynes' General Theory. 

[The Script]

The internet is used - and was developed - by the dreaded dominant class, better get off it

Nope, brainwashed again... What you are using is the World Wide Web! The Web was invented in CERN, Switzerland by the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had defined the Web’s basic concepts, the URL, http and html, and he had written the first browser and server software.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/History90-en.html

You mean Sir Tim Berners-Lee?  The MIT professor?  So exactly what makes someone part of the dominant class and what makes them part of the "proletariat"?

It's ironic that you dismiss Mises because his writing simply serves the purpose of the capitalist class, which prevents you from actually reading his logical destruction of Marxian class analysis itself.  Marx was more clever than I give him credit for.  He couldn't attack the ideas of the liberal economists themselves, so he had to attack the very idea of logic itself.  His class analysis says that human logic is different for every class in society and therefore it's pointless to read works by the "capitalist class" because their logic can only serve their needs.  That way proponents of Marxian class analysis never have to actually defend their point of view or read any critiques of it.  It's invalid by the very definition.  Which, by-the-way, shares a trait with most of the fundamental Religions....