Mises Institute

Pages 114-118 in the text.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 64-69 in the text, as read by Dr. Floy Lilley.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 62-64 in the text, as read by Dr. Floy Lilley.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 3-12 in the text.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 118-129 in the text.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 145-151 in the text.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 70-79 in the text.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

Pages 134-137 in the text.

The most powerful case against the American central bank every written. This audiobook edition is narrated by Floy Lilley.

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 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.