7 Ludwig von Mises Quotes on Economics

Ludwig von Mises quotes on economics

1. If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action. -- Planning for Freedom, p. 44

5. The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.

12. All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which - from the point of view of their authors' and advocates valuations - is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.

13. He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.

14. Every specific tax, as well as the nation's whole tax system, becomes self-defeating above a certain height of the rates.

18. From a correct Marxian point of view [...], all measures designed to restrain, to regulate and to improve capitalism were simply 'petty-bourgeois' nonsense [...]. True socialists should not place any obstacles in the way of capitalist evolution. For only the full maturity of capitalism could bring about socialism. It is not only vain, but harmful to the interests of the proletarians to resort to such measures.

24. Government is the only institution that can take a perfectly good piece of paper, print some noble words on it, and make it perfectly worthless.