Human Action \ stacker news ~BooksAndArticles

5192 sats \ 9 comments \ @Undisciplined 24 Jan BooksAndArticles

I was just talking about how great Human Action by Lugwig von Mises is with @elvismercury and since today's Mises Institute news letter linked to an old speech about the book I thought it was a perfect time to recommend it to the whole Stacker News community.

In my mind, this is the treatise on economics. Nowhere else will you find the underlying philosophical framework laid out so thoroughly. Some people really don't care about the philosophy (including most economists), but I find it fascinating.

I started reading Human Action in undergrad. That was inspired by the first Ron Paul campaign. I didn't have a copy of the book though, nor an e-reader, so I read it on the Kindle app on my iPhone 3. It's a monster of a book and probably took me about three months to get through.

The Promise of Human Action By Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Indeed, if we look at the failure of the welfare state, the persistence of the business cycle, runaway inflation, and out-of-control debt, we'll see that each is addressed and predicted in Human Action.

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404 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr 24 Jan

good motivation for me to read it, have been meaning to get around to it for a while

394 sats \ 1 reply \ @SpaceHodler 25 Jan

Inspired by the post the other day, I started listening to the audiobook, available for free on mises.org.

But I'm juggling listening to a number of audiobooks in parallel (with a lot of context switching, depending on mood and willingness to focus) so it may take me some time to finish.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 25 Jan

Whatever trophy I earned reading it on my phone, I would gladly hand over to someone who made it through the audio book.

34 sats \ 5 replies \ @BTCLNAT 31 Aug

It is interesting how every time the word socialism and communism appear in a sentence, the word DEMOCRACY does not fit, but when the word in the sentence is capitalism, this word is present, as if the capitalist system were the democratic system par excellence. I must admit that I am neither a philosopher nor an economist, I am a simple mortal on foot who, thanks to Bitcoin, has had my eyes opened.

In my comments there will always be at least one popular saying, and because I believe that popular wisdom is not wrong. On this occasion there is one that seems to me to have to do with the subject:

"a tree that is born crooked, never straightens its trunk"

No financial system that is based on capital, that is, money, and in this case I am referring to fiat money, can have a future, because it is crooked from its origin, and that is why hypotheses, theories, systems have been raised and in the end none have solved the problems.

Communism as a system never came into existence because its conception and foundation were never fulfilled, so the furthest they went along that line was socialism, centralized, interventionist, controlling, where supposedly everything belonged to everyone but in the end nothing belonged to anyone, everything belongs to the totalitarian state and if analyzed in depth it was nothing more than a repetition of feudalism where the feudal lord in this case is the state, owner of everything and who supposedly pays you for the work you do with an inflationary asset that has value because it tells you it has value, but it is not the same value always or in all scenarios

On the other hand, capitalism, the supposed solution through the supply/demand relationship of the market economy. Supposedly democratic but where normal, natural people have no voice or vote. Here the feudal lords are the transnationals that dominate everything and in this case have the state and the banks as foremen, because when there are problems they just tell the governments "sign so that more money is printed" the government signs and a banking entity, if it can be called that, prints money and the unfortunate citizens pay the consequences of inflation.

The only solution is a decentralized economy with a decentralized asset, where there is consensus in its community of workers that improvements could be made or included, a deflationary asset because its emission is limited from its genesis. And it seems to me that the only solution then is BITCOIN and its ecosystem.

A tree that has Bitcoin as its beginning, its trunk will always be straight and truly democratic.

21 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 31 Aug

On the other hand, capitalism, the supposed solution through the supply/demand relationship of the market economy. Supposedly democratic but where normal, natural people have no voice or vote.

I feel you should investigate the concept of "consumer sovereignty". That will address your confusions on these points.

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @BTCLNAT 31 Aug

The concept of consumer sovereignty has been frequently used to refer to the determining role played by consumer preferences in the allocation of resources in an economy.

The concept has also been used by various authors, such as Von Mises (1949, p. 271), based on the democracy-market analogy, to affirm that, just as in the case of an elector who chooses his governors in an electoral process, the consumer, based on his consumption decisions, defines which company or service will prevail in the market.

Neither the common citizen chooses his governors nor does the consumer decide which company or service prevails in the market. Let's be honest, political and economic history shows that governors are put in place by those who have economic power and they also decide which companies or services prevail in the market.

In any case, if someone decides that he has sovereignty in a slave system such as the current centralized world, it is his right to think so. I will not be the one to make him change his point of view.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 31 Aug

This is overly cynical and just plain false. There was no cabal of powerful people who decided to make Kit-Kat bars popular. The products you see and the features they have are overwhelmingly a response to consumer demand. When people stop buying stuff it disappears from the market. "Normal, natural people" have a lot of say and a lot of power.

There are plenty of the problems you describe, but we live in a world that is quite sensitive to people's preferences.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTCLNAT 31 Aug

Cynicism: Shamelessness in lying or in defending and practicing reprehensible actions or doctrines.

First I apologize if I have in any way offended you in your knowledge, I recognize that you are a person with prestige within the platform, which for me is very good, and I am neither an economist nor a philosopher, but I did not think that expressing my point of view was in any way censurable or offensive to you. I reiterate my apologies.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 31 Aug

You're definitely not offending me and you don't have to worry about doing so. "Cynical" has several meanings and I didn't mean to impugn your motives. My use of the term was more to say that you're ascribing malevolent motives to mundane things.

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