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The Bastiat Collection ˇ FREE PDF ˇ FREE EPUB ˇ PAPER Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)
- "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
-- The Law (p. 54)- "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
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https://twitter.com/moicanoufc/statu...30458742047106
https://twitter.com/SteadyxDecline/s...37425099792716
Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (aka the "Six Lessons")
https://mises.org/library/book/econo...y-and-tomorrow
{Mises Institute | undated}
This might be Mises's best-selling book. It is a very clear explanation of the basics of economic policy: private property, free trade, exchange, prices, interest, money and inflation, socialism, fascism, investment, and much more. As Mises discusses each topic, he addresses the many merits of market institutions and the dangers of intervention.
These chapters were originally delivered as lectures in Argentina in 1959, at the University of Buenos Aires, and later written up in prose. Mises had urged Argentina to turn from dictatorship and socialism toward full liberty, so there is a special urgency behind the cool logic employed here. The book's continued popularity is due to its clarity of exposition on the ways in which economic policy affects everyone.
It is a very good text for undergraduates studying economic policy, and for anyone who wants to gain a fundamental understanding of the interaction between market forces and government intervention.
HTML (web): https://mises.org/online-book/econom...y-and-tomorrow
PDF: https://cdn.mises.org/Economic%20Pol...Tomorrow_3.pdf
EPUB: https://cdn.mises.org/Economic%20Pol...omorrow_3.epub
PAPER: https://store.mises.org/Economic-Pol...rrow-P207.aspx
Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-15-2024 at 02:59 AM.
Renato Moicano: "If You Care About Your...Country, Read Ludwig von Mises."
https://mises.org/mises-wire/renato-...dwig-von-mises
{Tho Bishop | 14 April 2024}
Last night, Brazilian fighter Renato Moicano went viral after his victory over Jalin Turner at UFC 300, giving a shout-out to Ludwig von Mises himself.
'I love America, I love the Constitution...I want to carry...guns. I love private property. Let [me tell] you something. If you care about your...country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school.
The full clip is available here, with some colorful adult language included [1].
Moicano's endorsement of Mises is a credit to the growing Austrian economics movement in Brazil, which has not only enjoyed success within universities and the political system but also culturally. Despite the imposition of socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the extreme crackdown on free speech being imposed on the nation through the court system, as highlighted by Elon Musk and journalists on X [see this thread - OB], the Menos Marx, Mais Mises ["Less Marx, More Mises"] movement that captivated Brazilian politics in 2016 continues to bear fruits.
Increasingly, MMA has become an arena for free thinkers to push back against progressive ideology across the globe. The UFC was among the first major brands to push against covid tyranny, and a number of its fighters have utilized their podiums for political messages that go against corporate-approved narratives. None, however, are as subversive as promoting the wisdom unique to Mises and the Austrian school.
Moicano doubled down on his message on X after the fight.
The "Six Lessons" Moicano references is the book Economic Policy by Mises, which was one of his most successful popular books. Republished in Brazil as Six Lessons, Economic Policy covers important topics such as capitalism, socialism, inflation, and more.
You can read the book that inspired Moicano for free at this link [see this post - OB].
[1] https://twitter.com/ChristianMalaza/...12869198467447
Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-14-2024 at 01:01 PM.
Just finished reading it. As Moicano said, everyone should read this. A casual reader can finish it in a couple of afternoons. If you're a fast reader or this is familiar ground, you can finish it in an afternoon. Excerpt from the last chapter:
And now you understand why the globalists are pushing so hard for censorship. They cannot win the debate, and they have built the entire modern political order on the promise that they won't knee-cap people merely for disagreeing with them. Thus, their only option that doesn't involve removing the mask and showing themselves for the criminal network of thugs they truly are, is to censor all logical arguments that expose their lies. Chief among these are the Gospel, and Austrian economic theory...It is certainly true that in the second century A.D., the Roman Empire nur-
tured a very flourishing civilization, that in those parts of Europe, Asia, and
Africa in which the Roman Empire ruled, there was a very high civilization.
There was also a very high economic civilization, based on a certain degree
of division of labor. Although it appears quite primitive when compared with
our conditions today, it certainly was remarkable. It reached the highest
degree of the division of labor ever attained before modern capitalism. It is
no less true that this civilization disintegrated, especially in the third
century. This disintegration within the Roman Empire made it impossible for
the Romans to resist aggression from without. Although the aggression was no
worse than that which the Romans had resisted again and again in the preceding
centuries, they could withstand it no longer after what had taken place within
the Roman Empire.
What had taken place? What was the problem? What was it that caused the
disintegration of an empire which, in every regard, had attained the highest
civilization ever achieved before the eighteenth century? The truth is that
what destroyed this ancient civilization was something similar, almost
identical to the dangers that threaten our civilization today: on the one hand
it was interventionism, and on the other hand, inflation. The interventionism
of the Roman Empire consisted in the fact that the Roman Empire, following the
preceding Greek policy, did not abstain from price control. This price con-
trol was mild, practically without any consequences, because for centuries it
did not try to reduce prices below the market level.
But when inflation began in the third century, the poor Romans did not yet have
our technical means for inflation. They could not print money; they had to de-
base the coinage, and this was a much inferior system of inflation compared to
the present system, which— through the use of the modern printing press—can so
easily destroy the value of money. But it was efficient enough, and it brought
about the same result as price control, for the prices which the authorities
tolerated were now below the potential price to which inflation had brought the
prices of the various commodities.
The result, of course, was that the supply of foodstuffs in the cities
declined. The people in the cities were forced to go back to the country and to
return to agricultural life. The Romans never realized what was happening.
They did not understand it. They had not developed the mental tools to
interpret the problems of the division of labor and the consequences of
inflation upon market prices. That this currency inflation, currency debase-
ment, was bad, this they knew of course very well.
Consequently, the emperors made laws against this movement. There were laws
preventing the city dweller from moving to the country, but such laws were
ineffective. As the people did not have anything to eat in the city, as they
were starving, no law could keep them from leaving the city and going back into
agriculture. The city dweller could no longer work in the processing indus-
tries of the cities as an artisan. And, with the loss of the markets in the
cities, no one could buy anything there anymore.
Thus we see that, from the third century on, the cities of the Roman Empire
were declining and that the division of labor became less intensive than it
had been before. Finally, the medieval system of the self-sufficient
household, of the "villa," as it was called in later laws, emerged.
Therefore, if people compare our conditions with those of the Roman Empire and
say: "We will go the same way," they have some reasons for saying so. They can
find some facts which are similar. But there are also enormous differences.
These differences are not in the political structure which prevailed in the
second part of the third century. Then, on the average of every three years, an
emperor was assassinated, and the man who killed him or had caused his death
became his successor. After three years, on the average, the same happened to
the new emperor. When Diocletian, in the year 284, became emperor, he tried
for some time to oppose the decay, but without success.
There are enormous differences between present-day conditions and those that
prevailed in Rome, in that the measures that caused the disintegration of the
Roman Empire were not premeditated. They were not, I would say, the result of
reprehensible formalized doctrines.
In contrast, however, the interventionist ideas, the socialist ideas, the
inflationist ideas of our time, have been concocted and formalized by writers
and professors. And they are taught at colleges and universities., You may
say: "Today's situation is much worse." I will answer: "No, it is not worse."
It is better, in my opinion, because ideas can be defeated by other ideas.
Nobody doubted, in the age of the Roman emperors, that the government had the
right and that it was a good policy to determine maximum prices. Nobody
disputed this.
But now that we have schools and professors and books that recommend this, we
know very well that this is a problem for discussion. All these bad ideas from
which we suffer today, which have made our policies so harmful, were developed
by academic theorists.
Last edited by ClaytonB; 04-14-2024 at 09:01 PM.
Jer. 11:18-20. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." -- Matthew 12:28
I don't pay much attention to the UFC but it's nice to know there's some in the business that are pretty based.
"Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."
Calvin Coolidge
Renato Moicano Cares About His Country More Than Sohrab Ahmari
https://odysee.com/@mises:1/renato-m...-his-country:b
{Mises Media | 18 April 2024}
On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discuss Renato Moicano's viral Mises moment and the backlash it received from pundit Sohrab Ahmari.
Discussed on the Show:
"Six Graphs Showing Just How Much the Government Has Grown" by Ryan McMaken: https://Mises.org/RR_182_A
"Why You Should Read Ludwig von Mises" by Tho Bishop: https://Mises.org/RR_182_B
"Mises Against the Neoliberals" by Ryan McMaken: https://Mises.org/RR_182_C
THREAD: What Are Misess Six Lessons?
UFC's Renato Moicano and Mises' Six Lessons
The Tom Woods Show: Episode 2483
https://odysee.com/@TomWoodsTV:e/ufc...ses'-six:6
{TomWoodsTV | 26 April 2024}
UFC fighter Renato "Money" Moicano recently told a national audience that if they want to save their country they should read Ludwig von Mises and the "six lessons" of the Austrian School. Jonathan Newman joins us to discuss those lessons.
Article Discussed: https://mises.org/power-market/what-...ss-six-lessons [see this post - OB]
"Forgive me for being deeply uninterested in what "CNN" has to say about Austrian school economics." -- Jeff Deist
For those who are at least mildly curious (it's actually not that bad, CNN-wise - my biggest gripe is that the piece doesn't hyperlink to any of the sources it cites):
Renato Moicano: Why a Brazilian UFC star is championing a dead Austrian economist
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/28/a...tam/index.html
{David Shortell | 28 April 2024}
Brazilian UFC fighter Renato Moicano had just rallied back from an early-round beating to win a lightweight bout this month when he grabbed a mic to shout out his favorite economist.
“I love private property and let me tell you something, if you care about your country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school,” Moicano, his cheekbone bloodied, roared, along with a pair of profanities.
Footage of the mixed martial artist’s tribute soon went viral on social media, where many in the United States were quick to comment on the seemingly bizarre incongruity of the scene.
But for those with their fingers on the pulse of Latin American politics, it likely appeared far less surprising. Because in South and Central America, the Austrian-American laissez-faire champion Mises, who died in 1973, is having something of a moment.
In recent years, the free-market economist and the contrarian Austrian school he led midcentury have been turned into a hashtag deployed by tax-wary workers. A rash of think tanks and media influencers who champion his ideas have consolidated his influence. And in El Salvador and Argentina, Mises’ ideas have made their way into the speeches and policies of presidents.
“Ludwig von Mises is Latin America’s leading economist,” declared the headline of a Bloomberg opinion piece earlier this month by economist Tyler Cowen.
The one-time principal economic adviser to the Austrian government, Mises fled his homeland in 1934 to escape the growing Nazi reach, eventually settling in the US, where he became a professor at New York University. His free-market policy prescriptions, framed by an economic thinking centered on human behavior and individual choice, were widely considered out of fashion at the time.
But his strident rejection of socialism has found a foothold in places like Brazil, where a “Less Marx, More Mises” movement has swelled over the past 15 years in a backlash to the ruling center left party, propelled by the growth of social media and a series of corruption scandals, according to Camila Rocha, a political scientist and researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning.
The movement is especially popular among young male students and low-income workers such as Uber drivers and street vendors “who started feeling and thinking like entrepreneurs” and “don’t want to pay taxes anymore,” she said. Moicano has said he began studying economics after facing taxes on his first UFC winnings.
In 2015, the “Less Marx, More Mises” slogan [see this thread - OB] made its way onto the posters brandished by protesters in Brazil’s massive right-wing demonstrations, which foreshadowed the rise of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who would later embrace the libertarian flank.
From Mises to Milei
Today, many experts believe the Austrian school may have no greater sway than in Buenos Aires, where President Javier Milei, himself a libertarian economist, retweeted a viral clip of Moicano’s rant.
After reading Mises for the first time, Milei felt “superlative conceptual clarity,” he recalled in a 2017 interview. “Milei considers Mises to be among the greatest economists in history,” said Daniel Raisbeck, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.
Since taking office in December, the wild-haired leader has pushed for wide deregulation. While many of his proposals have been blocked by the country’s congress, his government achieved fiscal parity this year with a robust and controversial set of cuts, including shutting down the Argentina national press agency and reducing aid to soup kitchens.
Milei’s elimination of rent controls and price controls could be interpreted as harking back to Mises, Raisbeck said, pointing to the Austrian’s thinking that “freely determined prices provide the vital information without which economic calculation becomes impossible.”
But the idea has also been espoused by free market economists outside the Austrian school, like Milton Friedman, (after whom one of Milei’s dogs is named), Raisbeck said.
Instead, Raisbeck said, Mises’s fingerprints might be clearest in Milei’s anti-socialist rhetoric, like his January speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he argued the West had to be wrested back from leaders “co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.”
Mises-watchers also see strands of the economist’s thinking in the policies pushed by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, another buzzy right-winger upending the Latin American political scene.
Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-29-2024 at 08:40 AM.
Gee, thanks so much for that, CNN. Now shall we delve into why you're championing a dead German malcontent named Marx?Renato Moicano: Why a Brazilian UFC star is championing a dead Austrian economist
Last edited by Occam's Banana; 04-29-2024 at 07:32 PM.
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