Defending The Undefendable

Professor Block's book is in a new edition from the Mises Institute, completely reset and beautifully laid out in an edition worthy of its contents.

It is among the most famous of the great defenses of victimless crimes and controversial economic practices, from profiteering and gouging to bribery and blackmail. However, beneath the surface, this book is also an outstanding work of microeconomic theory that explains the workings of economic forces in everyday events and affairs.

Murray Rothbard explains why:

"Defending the Undefendable performs the service of highlighting, the fullest and starkest terms, the essential nature of the productive services performed by all people in the free market. By taking the most extreme examples and showing how the Smithian principles work even in these cases, the book does far more to demonstrate the workability and morality of the free market than a dozen sober tomes on more respectable industries and activities. By testing and proving the extreme cases, he all the more illustrates and vindicates the theory."

F.A. Hayek agreed, writing the author as follows: "Looking through Defending the Undefendable made me feel that I was once more exposed to the shock therapy by which, more than fifty years ago, the late Ludwig von Mises converted me to a consistent free market position. … Some may find it too strong a medicine, but it will still do them good even if they hate it. A real understanding of economics demands that one disabuses oneself of many dear prejudices and illusions. Popular fallacies in economic frequently express themselves in unfounded prejudices against other occupations, and showing the falsity of these stereotypes you are doing a real services, although you will not make yourself more popular with the majority."

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Ludwig Von Mises

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

In 1954, after a lifetime of serious theoretical work in economic science, Mises turned his attention to one of the great puzzles of all time: discovering why the intellectuals hate capitalism. The result is this socio-psycho-cultural analysis informed by economic theory. Mises explores answers from a wide variety of angles, and discusses the nature of academic institutions, popular culture, and how vices like jealousy and envy affect theory. All play a role in preventing people from seeing the self-evident benefits of economic freedom relative to controls. His comments on the resentment of the intellectuals cut very deeply. Mises shrewdly teases the anti-capitalist bias out of contemporary fiction and popular culture generally. In the course of his narrative, he explains aspects of the market that have generally eluded even its defenders. For example, is it true that markets dumb down the culture, exalting trashy novels and movies over higher-brow fare? Mises points out that the tastes of the masses will always and everywhere be lower than those educated and cultivated to love higher culture. But, he says, the glory of capitalism is that it brings to every sector what it wants and needs, and more of it than any other system. So, yes, there will be more trash, but also more great work as well. It is a matter of availability: Under socialism, nothing is available. Under capitalism, choice seems nearly infinite. His is quite subtle in his analysis here and throughout. It's remarkable how his narrative applies in our time, even more than when it was written. The style of this volume is more casual than you will find elsewhere. In some sense, it is more thrilling for it. The reader senses that Mises has unleashed a lifetime of frustration here, and shined a very bright light on some dark corners of opinion. The contents of this volume include: I. The Social Characteristics of Capitalism and the Psychological Causes of Its Vilification 1. The Sovereign Consumer 2. The Urge for Economic Betterment 3. Status Society and Capitalism 4. The Resentment of Frustrated Ambition 5. The Resentment of the Intellectuals 6. The Anti-capitalistic Bias of American Intellectuals 7. The Resentment of the White-Collar Workers 8. The Resentment of "Cousins" 9. The Communism of Broadway and Hollywood 10. The Non-Economic Objections to Capitalism 11. Ant-Communism vs. Capitalism II. The Ordinary Man's Social Philosophy 1. Capitalism as it is and as it is Seen by the Common Man 2. The Anti-capitalistic Front III. Literature Under Capitalism 1. The Market for Literary Products 2. Success on the Book Market 3. Remarks about the Detective Stories 4. Freedom of the Press 5. The Bigotry of the Literati 6. The "Social" Novels and Plays

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Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Democracy The God That Failed

The core of this book is a systematic treatment of the historic transformation of the West from monarchy to democracy. Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events.

A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property.

Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers. Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy—The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy.

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Milton Friedman

Capitalism And Freedom

Selected by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the "hundred most influential books since the war"

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy—one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more and more influential as time goes on.

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