Human Action (4-Volume Set)

4 books in slipcase. Mises attributes the tremendous technological progress and the consequent increase in wealth and general welfare in the last two centuries to the introduction of liberal government policies based on free-market economic teachings, creating an economic and political environment which permits individuals to pursue their respective goals in freedom and peace. Mises also explains the futility and counter-productiveness of government attempts to regulate, control, and equalise all people's circumstances: "Men are born unequal and...it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilisation."

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics is a good representation of the Austrian School of Economics that had a great influence in the development of economic liberalism after the Cold War. The great paradox of this movement is similar to that found in other representations of this time like Popper or Hayek himself, to know/find out: Up to what point do these type of economic theories they elaborate upon try to give some answer to the collective economies of Communism, to those put into place post Cold War or are they simply suggested in a social and political context of successive economic crises of liberal experiments at the beginning of the century, especially after the convulsions of the 1920s. . . .In effect Human Action may have discovered some anthropological universals that would permit justification for the behavior of 'homo oeconomicus' situated at either a local or global level. It would change the context upon which their theories are projected these days, not the problems they try to resolve.

Carlos Ortiz de Landazuri
2007

Ludwig von Mises (18811973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century.

In Human Action, Mises starts from the ideas set forth in his Theory and History that all actions and decisions are based on human needs, wants, and desires and continues deeper and further to explain how studying this human action is not only a legitimate science (praxeology) but how that science is based on the foundation of free-market economics. Mises presents and discusses all existing economic theories and then proceeds to explain how the only sensible, realistic, and feasible theory of economics is one based on how the needs and desires of human beings dictate trends, affect profits and losses, adjust supply and demand, set prices, and otherwise maintain, regulate, and control economic forces. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century. Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.

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