Birth: By the late 1940s, Mises was recognized in libertarian centers, but overnight in 1949 he became a central intellectual figure by his publication of Human Action. Leonard Read and FEE became devoted Misesians, along with Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard. In 1953 a new edition of The Theory of Money and Credit dealt with monetary reform inclu…

Arriving in New York in 1940, Mises found many friends from Geneva there, but no income or assets at the age of 59. Mises began writing in English. During this time, Leonard Read created FEE – the Foundation for Economic Education- which later on turned into a forum for Austrian economics. Lecture 9 of 10 from The Life, Times, and Work of Ludwig vo…

This work of six years of labor appeared in 1940. It was the predecessor to Human Action published nine years later. Epistemology and value theory were the two central problems. Action includes more than behavior. Value is really preference. Choice matters more than need. The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility has nothing to do with satiation. The…

Mises left Vienna for six years in Geneva, 1934 – 1940, to write his treatise and leave behind the Austrian branch of the Nazi Party. In Geneva, Mises held the Chair for International Relations. Mises and the Rockefeller Foundation had some financial connections. His salary was the 2007 equivalent of about $160,000 per year. Mises taught in English…

Mises was in his prime from 1920-1934 while he was 39-53 years old. Three main areas in these years were certain people, his intellectual contributions, and other work. Hayek, Machlup, Robbins, and Margit were chief among the people. Intellectually, he found socialism and interventionism to be inefficient. Mises refines his business cycle theory. H…

Mises’ socialist calculation argument reshaped the debate about socialism. It was not true that socialism could work and could use the same techniques as capitalism. The book Socialism had a decisive impact on Hayek and other rising economists. Mises made four main claims in his book Socialism. They were: 1) the promises of socialism are empty beca…

Mises was not surprised by WWI, 1914-1920. He was posted on the Northern Front of the Austro-Hungarian towns as a Lieutenant in an artillery unit. He often used his private initiative and competitive advantages during dangerous and hard battles in that first year. He became involved in the economic side of the war. He saw inflation lead to increase…

This 1912 book is Mises’ first great theory. Mises agreed with Menger about the spontaneous emergence of money. No government is needed. Mises used a logical proof called the regression theory. It explained why money is demanded in its own right. Five major contributions Mises made were: 1) the nature of money, 2) a theory of the value of money, 3)…

Carl Menger (b. 1840) dared to create something he called the Austrian School of Economics. His was a new way of doing economic analysis. He sided with Aristotle’s realism. Menger studied human needs and saw discreet units of need – the essence of his marginal approach. Value is subjective dependent upon individuals. His theory of marginal utility …

Why did Mises do certain things in response to certain events? This first full biography of Mises seeks to answer those many questions. In the first four chapters, Hulsmann covers Mises’ roots: his birth in September 1881 as a nobleman, his family including his brother Richard, the role of family in the region of Galicia in the late eighteen hundre…