WEBVTT NOTE 'Human Action' in the Life of a Student 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.600 At the beginning of the last semester in August, I participated in my first-ever interview 2 00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:09.480 by our school newspaper, SBU's Omnibus. 3 00:00:09.480 --> 00:00:14.720 And after a number of the usual questions like, do you like it in Bolivar? 4 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:16.520 What courses do you teach? 5 00:00:16.520 --> 00:00:18.520 How many students did you have in Auburn? 6 00:00:18.520 --> 00:00:19.520 Did you like Auburn? 7 00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:20.520 Where did you come from? 8 00:00:20.520 --> 00:00:27.600 The reporter got down and asked me, why did you decide to become an economist? 9 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:32.480 as if she wanted to get at the mystery of why not just me, but perhaps why anyone would 10 00:00:32.480 --> 00:00:35.480 want to be in that profession. 11 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:40.160 And without a moment of hesitation, I spun my chair around, reached up to the second 12 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:46.520 shelf of my bookcase, and pulled down my now slightly worn copy of Human Action. 13 00:00:46.520 --> 00:00:52.400 This book, I can say without any reservations, had a greater effect on the course of my life 14 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:56.120 than any other book besides the Bible. 15 00:00:56.120 --> 00:01:00.640 It was reading Human Action that convinced me to major in economics. 16 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:04.360 To want to teach economics, it convinced me to go to graduate school and it convinced 17 00:01:04.360 --> 00:01:06.040 me to become a scholar. 18 00:01:06.040 --> 00:01:12.320 It was this book that showed me what economics is, why it's important, what liberty is and 19 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:17.760 why liberty is important and what true scholarship is all about. 20 00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:23.520 As I was beginning as an undergraduate to kind of stretch my sophomore mind, as opposed 21 00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:36.520 I joined Neil McCaffrey's conservative book club. I did that primarily because I could get Francis Schaeffer's complete works for $10.95. 22 00:01:36.520 --> 00:01:42.520 It was one of those deals where he had to buy three books over the course of the next two or three years or something like that. 23 00:01:42.520 --> 00:01:50.520 Within the next few weeks I received their bulletin advertising what they called the magnum opus of some Austrian economist named Ludwig von Mises. 24 00:01:50.520 --> 00:01:54.520 And the book looked big and was called Human Action. 25 00:01:54.520 --> 00:02:01.520 The advertisement featured high praise for both the author and the book, but I had heard of neither. 26 00:02:01.520 --> 00:02:08.520 It cost in the neighborhood of $35, which was a lot of money for a college student in 1986, 27 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:15.520 and it counted for two of my required selections. 28 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:22.520 So I thought, well this is 35 bucks, but it counts for two, so I'm like, you know, two, come on, come on, bad deal. 29 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:29.520 And so what I want to guide you is, I've never heard of this person before, and I want to talk to my economics professor at Northwestern College, 30 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:36.520 and I will be forever grateful to Dr. Elder for encouraging me to actually purchase the book if I had the money. 31 00:02:36.520 --> 00:02:46.520 I did purchase a book and it was one of the most profitable investments I ever made as a student or as for my entire life. 32 00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:55.520 When a rocket is launched, if its trajectory is just off-target a little bit, just one degree or two, it can miss its destination by miles. 33 00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:58.520 And the same holds true with scholarship. 34 00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:03.360 Scholarship. When one sets out on the path of the academic, it is important that he is 35 00:03:03.360 --> 00:03:09.440 starting from a firm foundation and that his course is true. Human Action was such a foundation 36 00:03:09.440 --> 00:03:14.520 for me in many ways and continues to be an intellectual cornerstone for the many students 37 00:03:14.520 --> 00:03:19.720 who have discovered its contents. The chief virtue that Human Action possesses for the 38 00:03:19.720 --> 00:03:27.080 student is that it is strongly, yet matter-of-factly, sets forth economics as a pursuit of truth, 39 00:03:27.080 --> 00:03:31.840 Not the truth of the passing fantasy, not the yet-to-be-refuted-with-statistics mini-truths, 40 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.280 but economic truth that will stand for all ages. 41 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:39.120 Upon beginning the first chapter, the student is immediately set forth on the right road, 42 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:43.560 as Mises begins where economics must begin, human action. 43 00:03:43.560 --> 00:03:48.040 Mises defines human action as purposeful behavior, and all of his economic theorems and corollaries 44 00:03:48.040 --> 00:03:51.360 are deduced from this non-controversial axiom. 45 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:55.740 This immediately rests economics on intellectual bedrock. 46 00:03:55.740 --> 00:04:05.740 As I read the opening chapters of Human Action during my sophomore year, I had sort of an epiphany as all of the conclusions that I've learned in my principles classes suddenly fell into a logical place. 47 00:04:05.740 --> 00:04:12.240 The laws of supply and demand were not really plausible sounding notions that were true only in an unrealizable ideal world. 48 00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:18.740 They were not the necessarily implications or merely the necessary implications of assumptions of the neoclassical model. 49 00:04:18.740 --> 00:04:43.740 But along came Mises, who showed me that economics is logically whole. Supply and demand are rooted in the law of marginal utility, which is itself induced from the axioms that human beings act a purposefully. 50 00:04:43.740 --> 00:04:56.740 Mises' defense of the law of demand, for example, is much superior to the Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler's. 51 00:04:56.740 --> 00:05:08.740 Stigler, in his price theory text, says that there is no rigorous proof that as the price of goods goes up, the quantity of that good that is demanded goes down thanks to him. 52 00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:31.740 He merely says we can be pretty sure this is the case, quote, if an economist says this is the case, he's pretty sure about it, he's not quite sure, pretty sure, because, quote, if an economist were to demonstrate his failure in a particular market at a particular time, he would be assured of immortality, professionally speaking, and rapid promotion. 53 00:05:31.740 --> 00:05:40.740 Since most economists would not dislike either reward, we may assume that the total absence of exceptions is not from lack of trying to find them, end of quote. 54 00:05:40.740 --> 00:05:42.740 That's it. That's its proof. 55 00:05:42.740 --> 00:05:47.740 In other words, we think this is the case. This is the way it's always been. 56 00:05:47.740 --> 00:05:50.740 We think this is the case because this is the way it's always been. 57 00:05:50.740 --> 00:05:56.740 However, you know, there's always a possibility that it might not be the case to move around. 58 00:05:56.740 --> 00:06:01.660 It could be that tomorrow people will begin to demand more as the price goes up, other 59 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:02.660 things equal. 60 00:06:02.660 --> 00:06:07.900 I mean, we can never really be sure, but a student who reads Mises, however, is not left 61 00:06:07.900 --> 00:06:10.780 walking on the shifting sands of empiricism. 62 00:06:10.780 --> 00:06:16.380 No, he's walking on the terra firma of true axioms and sound logic. 63 00:06:16.380 --> 00:06:22.020 It's hard to overestimate the importance of Mises' rooting economics in the truth of 64 00:06:22.020 --> 00:06:23.020 human action. 65 00:06:23.020 --> 00:06:29.100 For the student, the intellectual consequences are many. One of the most important consequences 66 00:06:29.100 --> 00:06:33.380 is that it allows the students to integrate economics with other bodies of thought. And 67 00:06:33.380 --> 00:06:37.980 for me, as a student, this was especially important. As a student being exposed to new 68 00:06:37.980 --> 00:06:43.060 ideas and new thoughts on both the undergraduate and graduate level, I wanted to make sure 69 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:49.120 that economic theory could be integrated with my primary frame of reference, Christian Orthodoxy. 70 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:54.120 Did economic doctrine regard to the nature of humans and human action square with Christian doctrine? 71 00:06:54.120 --> 00:06:58.120 A Christian orthodoxy teaches that a man is a person who acts with a purpose. 72 00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:02.120 As Jay Gressen Matron writes in his Christian View of Man, 73 00:07:02.120 --> 00:07:06.120 quote, the actions of a person, just because they are free actions, 74 00:07:06.120 --> 00:07:12.120 and no mere meaningless beggaries of blind chance, are determined by motives. 75 00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:15.120 When a man is placed before some turning point in his life, 76 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:25.120 In life, he sets before himself the considerations on the one side and the considerations on the other side, and then, in light of those considerations, he acts. 77 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:38.120 Mainstream economics gives lip service to what it calls choice theory. However, it starts from the assumptions of the neoclassical model and proceeds to do analysis as if economic agents are more like the inanimate object of physics, 78 00:07:38.120 --> 00:07:42.120 and finally reacting to the stimuli we call relative costs. 79 00:07:42.120 --> 00:07:45.120 Mises on the other hand takes a different approach. 80 00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:50.120 Mises recognized that economic activity was the result of purposeful choices made by individuals, 81 00:07:50.120 --> 00:07:53.120 a point of view that fits nicely with Christian doctrine 82 00:07:53.120 --> 00:08:01.120 and integrates the body of economic truth with truth in the larger context, 83 00:08:01.120 --> 00:08:07.120 which gave me a prime motivating factor to want to go ahead and learn more of this stuff. 84 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:13.200 Finally, a great tension was resolved in my mind as I read Mises' exposition of self-interest. 85 00:08:13.200 --> 00:08:18.040 This is so important for a student, because in so many other classes, he is being told 86 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:23.640 that economists assume that people are motivated only by selfish greed and a desire to gain 87 00:08:23.640 --> 00:08:29.840 the things only of this world, kind of like old man Potter in It's a Wonderful Life, right? 88 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:33.240 That there's something out there that he can't get his finger on and it's gone, and that's 89 00:08:33.240 --> 00:08:42.240 Now, Mises, on the other hand, destroys this criticism when he writes, quote, 90 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:47.240 What a man does is always aim at an improvement of his own state of satisfaction. 91 00:08:47.240 --> 00:08:53.240 In this sense, and in no other, we are free to use the term selfishness 92 00:08:53.240 --> 00:08:57.240 and to emphasize that action is necessarily always selfish. 93 00:08:57.240 --> 00:09:03.240 Even an action directly aiming at the improvement of other people's conditions is selfish. 94 00:09:03.240 --> 00:09:11.240 The actor considers it as more satisfactory for himself to make other people eat than he'd eat himself. 95 00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:19.240 In other words, it's perfectly possible for people to find satisfaction procuring for others. 96 00:09:19.240 --> 00:09:21.240 That's what Mises is saying. 97 00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:28.240 Mises allowed me to see that economics takes into account all the variation of various motivations that people have. 98 00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:37.240 He explains that human actions are motivated to increase their level of satisfaction, not necessarily that they are greedy. 99 00:09:37.240 --> 00:09:44.240 This is one of the most important stumbling blocks that students, especially at Christian colleges and universities, have to overcome. 100 00:09:44.240 --> 00:10:11.240 He also, in his book, makes a clear distinction right off the bat between economics and ethics and was very good at communicating the point that what economics is about is linking cause-effect theory, identifying the cause and effect relationship between human action and the consequences of that action. 101 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:17.240 and kind of, as Roger pointed out, not exactly the why people act, but the ends that they're searching. 102 00:10:17.240 --> 00:10:23.240 It's not about identifying the ends, Dwayne, well, are the ends good or bad, noble, ennoble, etc. 103 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:37.240 And so very quickly, as such, you get a sense of human action that what is efficient is not necessarily what is ethical. 104 00:10:37.240 --> 00:10:46.240 And so early on I became very skeptical of a defense of intervention based on the notion of quote-unquote efficiency. 105 00:10:46.240 --> 00:10:53.240 Which again was important for my mind as I started learning more and more about economics. 106 00:10:53.240 --> 00:11:00.240 Besides increasing my understanding of economics, my reading Human Action set me forth on my career. 107 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:04.240 Reading Human Action made me want to become an economist. 108 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:15.240 A few college students know exactly what they want to be when they graduate. Of course, they don't want to make a living, but they don't want just any job. They look for vocations they feel are worth pursuing. 109 00:11:15.240 --> 00:11:20.240 After my exposure to Human Action, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to do this. 110 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:32.240 Economic theory is true. It isn't a waste of one's life researching, studying and teaching economics. It is furthering a body of knowledge. It is teaching more students the fundamental truths of economic law. 111 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:40.240 Human Action was also encouraging because while it was high-level economics, I could read it and I could understand it, most of the time. 112 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:50.240 Mises' prose was clear and his logic made sense, unlike the professional economic journals that were on the periodical shelves of our school library. 113 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:55.240 I would never have become an economist if all there was to read was the American Economic Review. 114 00:11:55.240 --> 00:12:03.200 One of my economic students, who happens to be from China, who's attending this conference, 115 00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:07.120 he's read all of Human Action and he's praised it for his readability. 116 00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:11.560 In fact, and I've never heard this before by anybody, he thinks it's a lot easier to 117 00:12:11.560 --> 00:12:16.240 read than Man Economy and State by Murray Rothbard. 118 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:20.420 In our conversations I've directed a couple of independent studies in the intermediate 119 00:12:20.420 --> 00:12:27.340 Micro and Intermediate Macro courses, since we don't offer them on a regular basis at 120 00:12:27.340 --> 00:12:28.340 SBU. 121 00:12:28.340 --> 00:12:33.940 He told me that the reason he likes Human Action was reading Human Action that convinced 122 00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:40.140 him that communism was an impossible utopia. 123 00:12:40.140 --> 00:12:46.100 And this student hopes someday to complete a PhD in economics. 124 00:12:46.100 --> 00:12:51.980 I was further encouraged as I read Human Action because it became apparent that good economics 125 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:58.300 provides knowledge very relevant to the world in which we live. Mises did not spin out some 126 00:12:58.300 --> 00:13:05.220 sort of ideal theory of perfect competition that is removed from life. As I sat then in 127 00:13:05.220 --> 00:13:11.380 my microeconomics classes and heard the professor describe the characteristics of perfect competition, 128 00:13:11.380 --> 00:13:16.460 I join my fellow students in doubting whether any market was really like this. 129 00:13:16.460 --> 00:13:21.900 While the model may provide some helpful conclusions, it is unrealistic enough to cause even the 130 00:13:21.900 --> 00:13:26.260 most earnest economic student ample cognitive dissonance. 131 00:13:26.260 --> 00:13:30.420 As I describe to my students, the same market construct for the sake of exposing them to 132 00:13:30.420 --> 00:13:31.420 the model. 133 00:13:31.420 --> 00:13:35.180 I mean, I don't after a while want them to get out and be considered mental magics because 134 00:13:35.180 --> 00:13:43.180 I've never heard of perfect competition and the construct of the model or perfect monopoly for that matter. 135 00:13:43.180 --> 00:13:52.180 As I explain to them what the quote unquote profession thinks about how the market really works or how we study the market, 136 00:13:52.180 --> 00:14:00.180 I often hear my students ask, does it really work like this? 137 00:14:00.180 --> 00:14:30.180 and you know they give me the same reaction that I had and this is a perfectly reasonable question now in Human Action Mises gives a picture of the real market where real entrepreneurs make real decisions and real uncertainty in real time with real information limitations as a student I was able then to compare the standard textbook model with the real economy described by Mises and this kept me incidentally from changing majors and 138 00:14:30.180 --> 00:14:36.180 And it also gave my students, and gives my students, a better theory upon which they can hang their hat. 139 00:14:37.180 --> 00:14:48.180 Now, one of the most important benefits the student receives from reading Human Action is its authoritative comments on policy issues. 140 00:14:48.180 --> 00:14:55.180 When assigned to write a paper on the viability of Social Security, the first place I turned to was Human Action. 141 00:14:55.180 --> 00:15:02.680 The passage I read then, I have never forgot. It is a passage that is as timely as today's headlines, as it turns out. 142 00:15:02.680 --> 00:15:04.680 Mises writes, quote, 143 00:15:04.680 --> 00:15:15.180 One may try to justify Social Security by declaring that the wage earners lack the insight and the moral strength to provide spontaneously for their own future. 144 00:15:15.180 --> 00:15:21.180 But then it is not easy to silence the voices of those who ask whether it is not paradoxical 145 00:15:21.180 --> 00:15:29.180 to entrust the nation's welfare to the decisions of voters whom the law itself considers incapable of managing their own affairs. 146 00:15:32.180 --> 00:15:37.180 And you'll recognize this question rings as true today as it did when it was written. 147 00:15:40.180 --> 00:15:46.180 Additionally, I was required from the American Public Policy Class to discuss welfare reform. 148 00:15:46.180 --> 00:15:58.180 And if you read Mises' comments on welfare, you quickly understand the problems of intervening in the economy just a little bit to help just some people get out of poverty. 149 00:15:58.180 --> 00:16:09.180 I became quickly acquainted with the truth that any sort of middle-of-the-road welfare policy, any sort of middle-of-the-road interventionism could never be a stable solution. 150 00:16:09.180 --> 00:16:12.180 Such interventions quickly create new problems, right? 151 00:16:12.180 --> 00:16:14.680 If you subsidize poverty, you're going to get more poverty. 152 00:16:14.680 --> 00:16:17.180 If you subsidize grain, you're going to get more grain. 153 00:16:17.180 --> 00:16:18.680 If you subsidize anything, you get more of it. 154 00:16:18.680 --> 00:16:21.180 So we subsidize illegitimate children. What do we get more? 155 00:16:21.180 --> 00:16:23.180 Illegitimate children. 156 00:16:23.180 --> 00:16:25.680 Such interventions quickly create new problems. 157 00:16:25.680 --> 00:16:26.680 And then, of course, what do we do? 158 00:16:26.680 --> 00:16:30.180 Well, we have a crisis. We've got to intervene more, right? 159 00:16:30.180 --> 00:16:33.680 So we create new problems and call for even more intervention 160 00:16:33.680 --> 00:16:37.180 until we're at the doorstep of full-blown socialism. 161 00:16:37.180 --> 00:16:45.680 And I knew this was right, but I must confess that at that period of time I wasn't quite, I didn't always act on my convictions, 162 00:16:45.680 --> 00:16:56.180 particularly when a grave seemed to be writing on things, and I kind of, I weaseled out, because my soul, I want to be honest with you, 163 00:16:56.180 --> 00:17:03.680 I do think it was my soul effort and pure intellectual dishonesty when I pretty much kind of offered up Friedman, of all people, 164 00:17:03.680 --> 00:17:07.680 Friedman's negative income tax is a possible solution. 165 00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:11.680 And I did this because I knew the professor seemed like 166 00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:15.680 he could be possibly sympathetic to Friedman's negative income tax idea. 167 00:17:15.680 --> 00:17:18.680 I knew there was no way in the wide, wide world of sports 168 00:17:18.680 --> 00:17:21.680 he would be sympathetic to Mises's, you know, 169 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:23.680 suggesting we abolish the whole thing completely. 170 00:17:23.680 --> 00:17:25.680 I mean, he's said as much in class. 171 00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:29.680 And so, I kind of, I went ahead and wrote the paper 172 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:32.680 with a Friedman-like perspective, and I've always regretted that. 173 00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:37.680 I've always regretted that. It's always kind of gnawed on my conscience for the rest of my life. 174 00:17:37.680 --> 00:17:44.680 So, you know, if you're ever in that position, don't do it. And don't sell out. It doesn't work. It doesn't pay. 175 00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:55.680 You know, sometimes, you know, an A is, there's no cost high enough to get, you know, to have to go through to get an A. So it's not worth it. 176 00:17:55.680 --> 00:18:04.680 When confronted with the pure socialist ideology in my Cultural Anthropology course, again I found Human Action to be a fount of much wisdom. 177 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:11.680 In fact, the Cultural Anthropology course was taught by our only, or I guess one of our only two sociology professors, 178 00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:14.680 and the sociology professor even looked like Karl Marx. 179 00:18:14.680 --> 00:18:17.680 He had kind of the bushy hair, kind of his beard. 180 00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:21.680 In fact, he had like a poster of Karl Marx up on the wall behind his thick desk, 181 00:18:21.680 --> 00:18:38.680 The Cultural Anthropology course was all about the haves and the have-nots and the haves are generally irresponsible, the have-nots are poor, oppressed folk. 182 00:18:38.680 --> 00:18:47.680 Early on, Mises exposed my mind to the hypocrisy of much egalitarian rhetoric. 183 00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:52.640 I mean, when a leftist begins chanting, you know, fraternity, equality, he's really yelling, 184 00:18:52.640 --> 00:18:54.640 what about my needs? 185 00:18:54.640 --> 00:18:57.440 That tends to be what was really communicated. 186 00:18:57.440 --> 00:19:01.240 And in a passage that is ever struck with me, Mises writes, quote, 187 00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:04.360 when the American wage earner refers to equality, 188 00:19:04.360 --> 00:19:09.000 he means that the dividends of the stockholder should be given to him. 189 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:13.600 It does not suggest a curtailment of his own income for the benefit of those 95% 190 00:19:13.600 --> 00:19:43.560 Mises provided me with an early reputation of deconstructionism, the anti-theory literary 191 00:19:43.560 --> 00:19:47.920 Criticism that claims there is no meaning to be found in what an author says, except 192 00:19:47.920 --> 00:19:54.160 that which the individual reader brings to the text, that he constructs for himself. 193 00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:59.560 So if you think an author is saying one thing, and I think he's saying exactly the opposite, 194 00:19:59.560 --> 00:20:04.480 well that's okay, both are equally true constructions, I used to say. 195 00:20:04.480 --> 00:20:08.480 There's no meaning in the text, it's just how we interpret the words. 196 00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:27.480 Students need a sure mind now more than ever in these postmodern times, for our very president has taken a stab at deconstructing the meaning of the word alone, and questioning what our definition of the word is. 197 00:20:27.480 --> 00:20:33.480 Throughout the modern era, different interest groups have argued for what Mises termed polylogism. 198 00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:39.480 Marxists, for instance, thought that there was an inseparable gulf between the proletariat mind and the bourgeois mind. 199 00:20:39.480 --> 00:20:46.480 Not that the two classes had just had different opinions about things, but that they really used two different types of logic. 200 00:20:46.480 --> 00:20:50.480 Their minds were constructed differently. So let's kill the bourgeois. 201 00:20:50.480 --> 00:20:57.480 Working in Washington D.C. for a couple of years, I often saw a popular teacher that spoke to this philosophy along racial lines. 202 00:20:57.480 --> 00:21:02.480 Perhaps you've seen it. It proclaims it's a black thing. You wouldn't understand. 203 00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:10.480 as if to say, well look, I've got problems, but your white mind just can't think about 204 00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:15.760 problems the way my black mind can think about them, so there's no use of us even talking 205 00:21:15.760 --> 00:21:23.400 about anything, we just can't communicate, except in case you are understanding me right 206 00:21:23.400 --> 00:21:30.280 now, give me my subsidy, that's kind of the thinking behind this sort of line of thought. 207 00:21:30.280 --> 00:21:38.280 Now the same thought of thinking is found in feminist academic circles, in all brands of multiculturalism. 208 00:21:38.280 --> 00:21:43.280 Mises, by the way, demonstrates that Marx was bourgeois himself. 209 00:21:43.280 --> 00:21:48.280 And somehow, you know, Marx never did really explain how he escaped the bourgeois mind 210 00:21:48.280 --> 00:21:50.280 even though he was, you know, bread of bourgeois parents. 211 00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:56.280 It's kind of an interesting little paradox that Marx didn't want to discuss, at least openly. 212 00:21:56.280 --> 00:22:02.280 Mises concludes his reputation of all this sort of illogic by writing, quote, 213 00:22:02.280 --> 00:22:13.280 A theory is either correct or incorrect. A theory can never be valid for a bourgeois or an American if it is invalid for a proletarian or a Chinese. 214 00:22:13.280 --> 00:22:25.280 As I was a junior, having read this tonic for such diseased thinking, I became fully conversant in the discussions that I was having with my friend at the time, an English major, about the various schools of literary nonsense. 215 00:22:25.280 --> 00:22:31.280 She was taking her senior seminar in literary criticism and discussing the poetry of Hopkins 216 00:22:31.280 --> 00:22:36.400 from all these different perspectives, from the Marxist perspective, the feminist perspective, 217 00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:42.920 and then finally just the basic, I don't know, the normal perspective, I guess. 218 00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:48.680 She really didn't buy any of it either, but because I'd read Mises, I felt fully up to 219 00:22:48.680 --> 00:22:53.160 speed on this intellectual conflict. 220 00:22:53.160 --> 00:22:59.840 And over lunch we had much joy deconstructing the deconstructions, and in fact, in a particular 221 00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:06.920 moment of zeal, when I knew she was at the computer lab, I re-read this passage in Mises, 222 00:23:06.920 --> 00:23:11.960 I got all excited and I grabbed my copy of Human Action, ran over to the computer lab 223 00:23:11.960 --> 00:23:15.400 and said, look, look at this, look at what I just read, and it was such an exposition 224 00:23:15.400 --> 00:23:20.480 of why Marxist polylogism was a bunch of rot. 225 00:23:20.480 --> 00:23:26.400 And she read it and said, uh-huh, hmm, and she kind of agreed with it and said, I hope 226 00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:29.920 you didn't bring this all the way over here just for me. 227 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:36.680 I thought, well, of course not, I often, you know, walk around campus with a 900-page economics 228 00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:37.680 textbook. 229 00:23:37.680 --> 00:23:46.720 Some people get more excited about Human Action than others, and we can't help that. 230 00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:51.720 In writing Human Action, Mises did not only provide us with a coherent treatise on economic theory. 231 00:23:51.720 --> 00:23:55.720 He did not only set forth a ringing defense of reason and liberty. 232 00:23:55.720 --> 00:23:59.720 In Human Action, a student holds in his hands a supreme act of scholarship. 233 00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:07.720 Human Action did not only make me want to become an economist, it also inspired me, and still inspires me, to be a true scholar. 234 00:24:07.720 --> 00:24:12.720 From the beginning, the reader of Human Action was struck by how sweeping Mises' knowledge is. 235 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:19.720 Murray Rothbard once commented, once recounted, how when someone first recommended the book to him, he asked, well, what's it about? 236 00:24:19.720 --> 00:24:23.720 And the response to Rothbard was, everything. 237 00:24:23.720 --> 00:24:26.720 Just this week, a student of mine was impressed with the same observation. 238 00:24:26.720 --> 00:24:32.720 For my managerial economics course that I was again directing him one-on-one with, 239 00:24:32.720 --> 00:24:35.720 because the regular classes fit into his schedule quite right, 240 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:40.720 I assigned him to read a particular brief section out of Human Action 241 00:24:40.720 --> 00:24:46.160 about the distinction between the manager and the entrepreneur and how, while sometimes 242 00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:49.760 those functions kind of overlap, they're two distinct functions. 243 00:24:49.760 --> 00:24:53.680 And the student then, after he read it, he came back and he volunteered that he liked 244 00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:58.000 the section and then reported that he liked it so much he went and started to read the 245 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:00.000 beginning of the book. 246 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:03.880 And as he read the first part of the book he was greatly impressed with just how much 247 00:25:03.880 --> 00:25:04.880 Mises knew. 248 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:09.600 He said he doesn't just write about economics, he said of course it's an economics test, 249 00:25:09.600 --> 00:25:15.720 But he also writes about everything else. This student now has in his mind what real scholarship 250 00:25:15.720 --> 00:25:21.120 is. That's the value of human action. Mises's high standard is manifested throughout the 251 00:25:21.120 --> 00:25:27.320 book. He is obviously well versed in economic thought. He's read in his, you know, comprehended 252 00:25:27.320 --> 00:25:34.320 Bamba work, you know, as Garrison pointed out. But he also demonstrates his familiarity 253 00:25:34.320 --> 00:25:39.320 with History, Political Theory, Philosophy and Culture. 254 00:25:39.320 --> 00:25:44.320 Throughout Human Action, one finds references to Aristotle, Bentham, Mill, Bismarck, Napoleon, 255 00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:51.320 Marx, Engels, St. Francis of Assisi, Locke, Leibniz and Einstein, just to name a few. 256 00:25:51.320 --> 00:25:56.320 One facet of Mises' thinking that particularly impressed me was his reference to the arts. 257 00:25:56.320 --> 00:26:01.320 Whenever Mises discussed art, it was clear that he knew what real art was. He was a man 258 00:26:01.320 --> 00:26:12.320 Mises was a man of high culture. His examples of creative genius were Mozart, Dante, and Beethoven. No Snoop Doggy dog for him. 259 00:26:12.320 --> 00:26:18.320 After reading Human Action as a student, I was left with the feeling that this is what real scholarship is. 260 00:26:18.320 --> 00:26:23.320 This is the level I should aspire to. This is the level that all scholars should aspire to. 261 00:26:23.320 --> 00:26:27.320 Mises provides for every student a role in prayer meetings. 262 00:26:27.320 --> 00:26:31.820 Now of course, you know, it wouldn't hurt these critics to attend a real prayer meeting just once in a while. 263 00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:33.820 That's what happens. 264 00:26:33.820 --> 00:26:38.820 Nonetheless, this criticism is patently untrue. It's patently false. 265 00:26:38.820 --> 00:26:43.820 Of course, shallow minds can take any book that they read and turn it into a holy text. 266 00:26:43.820 --> 00:26:48.320 But the fact of the matter is that if a student comes to Human Action with a critical mind, 267 00:26:48.320 --> 00:26:51.320 he will find economic truth on page after page. 268 00:26:51.320 --> 00:26:55.320 And this is not the truth of dogma, but the truth of objective logic. 269 00:26:55.320 --> 00:27:02.320 There is nothing supernatural or mystical about it. Mises simply gets it right, time after time after time after time. 270 00:27:02.320 --> 00:27:05.320 Would that more of today's economists had such a record? 271 00:27:05.320 --> 00:27:11.320 It is impossible to calculate the full benefits I have taken from Human Action. 272 00:27:11.320 --> 00:27:15.320 It showed me the truth of economics. It showed me, or it made me want to become an economist. 273 00:27:15.320 --> 00:27:20.320 It helped me to be a scholar and it set forth the rational case for liberty. 274 00:27:20.320 --> 00:27:22.320 It does the same for my students. 275 00:27:22.320 --> 00:27:28.320 I am extremely honored to have the opportunity to speak at a conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of this great book. 276 00:27:28.320 --> 00:27:38.320 When my economics professor, Dr. Elder, encouraged me to buy a copy of Human Action, neither of us knew where we would end up, or where I would end up. 277 00:27:38.320 --> 00:27:46.320 If you want to fan the embers of liberty and economic truth, buy a student you know a copy of Human Action. 278 00:27:46.320 --> 00:27:53.320 Someday, he will be speaking at a conference like this, explaining the great impact it had on his life.