The Influence and Significance of Human Action After 75 Years

Preface to The Influence and Significance of Human Action After 75 Years

Joseph T. Salerno — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:25:03 -0500

Human Action is more than a book about economics broadly construed. It is a guide to civilized social life which elucidates the laws of reality that apply if human persons are to engage in peaceful and prosperous social cooperation under the division of labor. For Mises, unlike most economists, economics is not merely an "analytical toolbox" for grading alternative economic policies or economic systems as more or less practical or efficient. Rather, economics is a body of substantive truths about the institutional foundations of human society. Thus, what is at stake in formulating a well-founded and coherent structure of economic theory is not an incremental change in GDP or 'social welfare' but the fate of humanity.

The Law of Association: Foundation of Human Society

Paul F. Cwik — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:27:02 -0500

In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises transforms the law of comparative advantage from a tool used to analyze international trade questions to a tool used at every level of trade. He renames it the "law of association." By applying the law of association to trade at every level (from individuals to general markets to international markets), Mises shows the necessity of free markets for human flourishing. The law of association may be the most difficult economic law to understand because sometimes it leads to counterintuitive conclusions. For example, if a person wants bread, it might be economically better for him to specialize in something else and trade for bread even if he is better at making bread than everyone else.

How Human Action Shaped My Teaching and Research Career

Thomas J. DiLorenzo — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:29:10 -0500

This, of course, is great news for the Austrian School, where anyone in the world can do what Gordon Tullock did and become his own economist by reading Human Action! The University of Michigan students who spontaneously began chanting when Ron Paul showed up there in 2012 to campaign for the Republican nomination were not chanting "Game theory! Game theory!" They were chanting "End the Fed! End the Fed!" because they had read some of the works of Austrian economists.

Ludwig von Mises's Epicurean Ethics

David Gordon — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:31:09 -0500

To understand Mises's position on ethics, it is essential to bear in mind that he is a psychological hedonist. He thinks everyone is always motivated by pleasure and pain, a view that comes straight from Epicurus. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. You might object that this is obviously false. Don't we do things very frequently like go on restrictive diets, exercise, study subjects that aren't fun, and so on? Mises's answer is that even though we are motivated by pleasure and pain, it doesn't follow that we are motivated by what will give us the most pleasure, or the least pain, at a given moment. We can be motivated by our wish for the most pleasure, or the least pain, over a long period of time.

Human Action, the Way Forward

Jeffrey M. Herbener — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:33:25 -0500

The Misesian approach starts with the universal, realistic facts of human persons from which the logic of human action can be deduced. In moving from the logic of personal action to the logic of social interaction, praxeology inserts into economic theory the realistic empirical fact of the heterogeneity among (1) human persons; (2) natural resources, including land sites; and (3) capital goods. In contrast, mainstream economists employ a modeling approach. In the name of science, reliance on human judgment is to be expunged from economic analysis. This means formulating theory mathematically to avoid the ambiguities of verbal language, and statistical techniques supplant the human judgments of economists in assessing the relevance of causal factors.

Human Action: Foundations for the Modern Austrian School

Randall G. Holcombe — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:35:30 -0500

Keynesian macroeconomics had displaced Austrian business cycle theory and solidly established itself as mainstream macroeconomics. Meanwhile, most of the economics profession sided against the Austrian School in the socialist calculation debate. By the 1940s, the Austrian School was left behind as economic theory developed. Those who were identified as associated with the Austrian School passed away or drifted toward the mainstream. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that by 1950, Mises was the only remaining active member of the old Austrian School.

My Discovery of Human Action and of Mises as a Philosopher

Hans-Hermann Hoppe — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:37:36 -0500

While he was never mentioned in West German economic textbooks, his name figured prominently in Commie East Germany. In one of these textbooks, you could also find some detailed criticisms of Western, so-called bourgeois economics and economists, among them Friedman and Hayek, but in particular also Mises, who was singled out as the most wrongheaded, dangerous, and detestable of them all.

The Challenge of Praxeological Realism

Jörg Guido Hülsmann — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:39:39 -0500

I thought that before turning to the present-day literature, it would be helpful to take a look at the state of monetary thought at the outset of World War I, in order to appreciate the progress that had been achieved since then. I opened the book at Christmas of 1992 and was in for a great surprise. This old master excelled in clarity of expression, and he had dealt with a subject of immense importance—the nature, causes, and consequences of the subjective value of money. From my previous studies I knew that this topic had not made it into the standard texts in money and banking. Mises demonstrated that this omission had been a grave error.

Property Rights and Entrepreneurial Judgment

Peter G. Klein — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:41:03 -0500

Alchian began his seminar by reading a paragraph. It was a paragraph about property, and he asked if anyone in the group could identify it. I was the only one; I recognized immediately that that was from Mises' Human Action. As he developed that first lecture—which became I think one of the most important economic articles of the twentieth century, "Economics of Property Rights"—it was like a light bulb went off in my head, it was incredible. All of a sudden, everything that I had done intellectually for thirteen years came together, with this one idea of Alchian's about the real nature of property rights and the Misesian notion of people making choices.

Dualism and Calculation: What Mises Taught Me about Economics and Capitalism

Robert P. Murphy — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:43:16 -0500

All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference. Out of the political economy of the classical school emerges the general theory of human action, praxeology.

There's Many a Slip 'twixt Cup and Lip

Jonathan Newman — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:45:20 -0500

Mises says, "Life itself is exposed to many risks. At any moment it is endangered by disastrous accidents which cannot be controlled, or at least not sufficiently. Every man banks on good luck. He counts upon not being struck by lightning and not being bitten by a viper." The social engineer attempts to bring about a desired outcome by forcing people to behave in a certain way. Mises sees the engineer and the social engineer as having parallel tasks: one manipulates lumber and iron, the other attempts to manipulate human beings.

Mises and Rothbard on Credit Contraction during a Downturn

Patrick Newman — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:47:11 -0500

Individuals' time preferences determine the societal rate of interest, which Mises calls the "originary interest" rate. The rate of interest found in the loanable funds market is commonly believed to be the fundamental interest rate. But the loanable funds market only "adjusts the rate of interest on loans to the rate of originary interest." Lower time preferences are expressed through a decrease in consumption spending, an increase in savings and investment, and a decline in the originary interest rate, while higher time preferences cause the opposite.

Human Action and the Foundations of Economic Prosperity

Shawn Ritenour — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:49:50 -0500

Hoxie visited New York, and asked Johnson to come to his hotel for the evening. Hoxie "was frightening in his appearance." He told Johnson that he was finished. "I can see now, all my work has been bunk. All my writing, every lecture I have ever given, has been bunk." When asked for the reason, Hoxie continued, "I've come to see through Veblen. How could a man be so great a scientist and such a damn fool?" Hoxie concluded that "Veblen knew his equations didn't solve, but he used them just the same." Johnson closes his narrative by writing "I left him, promising to visit him in Chicago and renew the discussion. But before I could get around to a Chicago trip Hoxie killed himself."

Human Action: The Antidote to Progressivism

Joseph T. Salerno — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:51:07 -0500

Chapter 13 from The Influence and Significance of Human Action After 75 Years.

Human Action is indispensable for comprehending the operation and consequences of interventionism, which is the least understood economic system. The treatise is the culmination of Mises's long-standing research program, which was to analyze and compare the three possible economic systems—capitalism, socialism, and interventionism—from the viewpoint of which best promotes social cooperation under the division of labor. Almost all contemporary progressives have embraced interventionism as the true path to socialist bliss.

Calculation and Environmental Policy: Lessons from Human Action

Timothy D. Terrell — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:53:42 -0500

Mises's response, addressing subsidies more generally, is instructive: "A project P is unprofitable when and because consumers prefer the satisfaction expected from the realization of some other projects to the satisfaction expected from the realization of P. The realization of P would withdraw capital and labor from the realization of some other projects for which the demand of the consumers is more urgent. The layman and the pseudo-economist fail to recognize this fact. They stubbornly refuse to notice the scarcity of the factors of production."

Is Human Action the Hidden Impact Crater of Modern Economics?

Mark Thornton — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:55:18 -0500

The hypothesis of this essay is that Human Action—particularly the first few hundred pages—was instrumental to the new way of economic thinking that emerged with the new Chicago School, the Public Choice School, price theory, economic imperialism, general equilibrium analysis, and, ironically, the rise of economic formalism. Because the reader is "forced" to "test" and accept all the steps in Mises's argument introspectively, a basis of agreement is established. This unconscious agreement might not be recognized by the reader or might be recognized as nothing more than mere common sense. However, this acceptance by the reader is a form of learning by osmosis.