If you haven’t discovered it already, the Mises Institute website is a great source for knowledge on the Austrian School of Economics and it founder, Ludwig Von Mises. The site has a collection of Mises publications available as downloads - one I have featured below. See the entire list HERE.
The irrational anti-capitalist attitudes of intelligent, educated people continue to confound me, even though I understand why they exist. Human nature makes it easy for propaganda against capitalism to succeed. Envy, resentment, humiliation, greed, hatred… directed by the many toward the few at the top. The popular memes of greedy business owners and landlords who take advantage of the working class and deserving poor are ground into our culture and supported by religious admonitions of sacrifice, humility and charity. Conveniently ignored are the benefits of personal ambition, creativity, effort and making tough decisions about personal conduct that will yield success. Mises explains it all, but America has lost its will to learn.
For the following publication, Click HERE.
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
In 1954, after a lifetime of serious theoretical work in economic science, Mises turned his attention to one of the great puzzles of all time: discovering why the intellectuals hate capitalism. The result is this socio-psycho-cultural analysis informed by economic theory.
Mises explores answers from a wide variety of angles, and discusses the nature of academic institutions, popular culture, and how vices like jealousy and envy affect theory. All play a role in preventing people from seeing the self-evident benefits of economic freedom relative to controls. His comments on the resentment of the intellectuals cut very deeply. Mises shrewdly teases the anti-capitalist bias out of contemporary fiction and popular culture generally.
In the course of his narrative, he explains aspects of the market that have generally eluded even its defenders. For example, is it true that markets dumb down the culture, exalting trashy novels and movies over higher-brow fare? Mises points out that the tastes of the masses will always and everywhere be lower than those educated and cultivated to love higher culture. But, he says, the glory of capitalism is that it brings to every sector what it wants and needs, and more of it than any other system. So, yes, there will be more trash, but also more great work as well. It is a matter of availability: Under socialism, nothing is available. Under capitalism, choice seems nearly infinite.
No comments:
Post a Comment