Quotes from Ludwig von Mises

It then dawned on me that all real improvements in the conditions of the working classes were the result of Capitalism. And that social laws frequently brought about the very opposite of what the legislation was intended to achieve.

A importância dos julgamentos de valor consiste precisamente no fato de que são fontes da ação humana. Guiado por suas avaliações, o homem tenta substituir as condições que julga menos satisfatórias por condições que lhe agradem.

Before an economic good begins to function as money it must already possess exchange-value based on some other cause than its monetary function. But money that already functions as such may remain valuable even when the original source of its exchange-value has ceased to exist. Its value then is based entirely on its function as common medium of exchange.1

A new social ideal long ago supplanted the naive fanaticism for equality of the distributors, and now not distribution but common ownership is the slogan of Socialism. To abolish private property in the means of production, to make the means of production the property of the community, that is the whole aim of Socialism.

IT is the aim of Socialism to transfer the means of production from private ownership to the ownership of organized society, to the State.

The socialistic State owns all material factors of production and thus directs it.

In retrospect all fools become wise.

Limitation of the rights of owners as well as formal transference is a means of socialization. If the State takes the power of disposal from the owner piecemeal, by extending its influence over production; if its power to determine what direction production shall take and what kind of production there shall be, is increased, then the owner is left at last with nothing except the empty name of ownership, and property has passed into the hands of the State.

O autor utópico quer organizar as condições futuras de acordo com suas próprias ideias e privar o resto da humanidade, de uma vez por todas, da faculdade de escolher e agir.

Liberalism champions private property in the means of production because it expects a higher standard of living from such an economic organization, not because it wishes to help the owners.

Historically the division of labour originates in two facts of nature: the ?inequality of human abilities and the variety of the external conditions of ?human life on earth. These two facts are really one: the diversity of ?Nature

O valor não é intrínseco. Não está nas coisas e nas condições, mas no sujeito que as avalia.

True, the entrepreneur is free to give full rein to his whims, to dismiss workers off hand, to cling stubbornly to antiquated processes, deliberately to choose unsuitable methods of production and to allow himself to be guided by motives which conflict with the demands of consumers. But when and in so far as he does this he must pay for it, and if he does not restrain himself in time he will be driven, by the loss of his property, into a position where he can inflict no further damage.

Those economists who have recognized that the value of even the best money is variable have recommended that in settling the terms of credit transactions, that is to say, the terms on which present goods are exchanged for future goods, the medium of exchange should not be one good alone, as is usual nowadays, but a 'bundle' of goods; it is possible in theory if not in practice to include all economic goods in such a 'bundle'.

If this proposal were adopted, money would still be used as a medium for the exchange of present goods; but in credit transactions the outstanding obligation would be discharged, not by payment of the nominal sum of money specified in the contract, but by payment of a sum of money with the purchasing power that the original sum had at the time when the contract was made.

Conversation with them turns only upon women, food, and (in the rainy season) the crops.

Prices change slowly because the subjective valuations of human beings change slowly.

The "Keynesian revolution" took place long before Keynes approved of it and fabricated a pseudo-scientific justification for it. What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments.

Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism.

If rapid and erratic variations in prices were usually encountered in the market, the conception of objective exchange-value would not have attained the significance that it is actually accorded both by consumer and producer.

inertia of prices

Keynes did not teach us how to perform the "miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread,"[4] but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.

Coloro che combattono per la libera concorrenza non difendono gli interessi di quelli che sono ricchi. Vogliono che sia lasciata mano libera a uomini sconosciuti, che saranno gli imprenditori di domani e la cui ingegnosità renderà più piacevole la vita delle generazioni future.

As for Socialism, as soon as it has turned fundamentally from Anarchism, it must necessarily try to extend the field controlled by the compulsory order of the State, for its explicit aim is to abolish the 'anarchy of production'. Far from abolishing State and compulsion it seeks to extend governmental action to a field which Liberalism would leave free.