It's a shame so few people have been introduced to (and studied) the Austrian School of economics. Not only because Austrian theory is consistently right, but because it simply makes the most sense too. I like to call it Common Sense Economics.
Mainstream economics, in all its forms, relies on mathematical models and formulae like a theoretical physicist, attempting to make the world conform to their calculations.
Austrian theory takes a more realistic approach, seeing economics as a way to understand how real people cooperate and compete in the process of allocating resources.
Austrians see entrepreneurship as a critical force in economic development, private property as an essential and efficient use of resources, and government intervention as destructive to peaceful cooperation and prosperity. Austrian economic theory is grounded in deductive laws discoverable through the methods of the social sciences, not through a calculator.
With the fall of the U.S.S.R., China opening their markets, and every other socialized country on the planet facing financial collapse (including America), one would think the mainstream would have woken from their Keynesian trance, and embraced the Austrian theory.
Sadly, sound economic theory doesn't seem important to anyone anymore ... Today, it's all about Big Government ideology!
The following one paragraph, written by Ludwig von Mises, will give you great insight into the Greatest Depression we're facing today.
"The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about." - Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 1949, p. 575.
Thanks to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, everything you ever wanted to know about economics, freedom and prosperity, is freely available for you to explore. So take advantage of it!
- Read Human Action.
- Listen to Human Action on mp3.
- Learn The Why of Human Action.
The popular Keynesian theory isn't economics at all, it's an ideology. So try real economics for a change!
Also be sure to check out The Road to Serfdom in cartoons!
