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Economics

The Perpetually Canceled Ludwig von Mises

"Hold on, now, you're starting to sound like an anarchist..."

Peter Bagge | From the June 2022 issue

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Mises | Illustrations: Peter Bagge
(Illustrations: Peter Bagge)

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Peter Bagge is a contributing editor and cartoonist at Reason.

EconomicsLudwig von MisesLibertarian History/PhilosophyAustrian economicsComics
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  1. Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland   3 years ago

    I'm shocked that a reason writer would know who mises is

    1. JesseAz   3 years ago

      Is it sad I'm of the same thought?

    2. R Mac   3 years ago

      I’d bet a dollar ENB or the B team don’t.

      1. Diane Reynolds (Paul.)   3 years ago

        Does he have a blue checkmark?

    3. CE   3 years ago

      Oh, Mises is respectable enough to know about, even if they don't think his modern day followers are.

      Murray Rothbard is the one who would put the question marks over their heads.

      1. Dave Jakes   3 years ago

        Reason has been riding Murray Rothbard's corpse as a hobby horse since the Koch sisters donated their first sawbuck.

      2. The New Number Two   3 years ago

        To be fair, the movement would be better off if it would quit holding up Murray Rothbard as the libertarian gold standard. He was a shitty philosopher and economic historian.

    4. Quicktown Brix   3 years ago

      Ok, ok, but no criticisms from anyone that voted for Trump (or Biden, obviously). Fair enough?

    5. Zeb   3 years ago

      Bagge is always good.

  2. Brandybuck   3 years ago

    Fun fact: The anti-immigration anarcho-borderist Mises Caucus was named after the pro-human-migration and freedom loving Ludwig Von Mises. Go figure.

    1. Mike Laursen   3 years ago

      That is f’d up.

      1. Mother's Lament   3 years ago

        Only if you're a liar pretending that legal immigration and illegal entry are exactly the same thing.

        1. R Mac   3 years ago

          Well, lucky for Dee, she’s a liar.

        2. Brandybuck   3 years ago

          Under anarchy they are. And the Mises Caucus is explicitly anarchist.

          The idea that we abolish the state yet keep the INS is beyond stupid.

          1. The New Number Two   3 years ago

            Despite worshiping at the altar of Ron Paul and claiming the name of Ludwig von Mises, both of them minarchists. Slapping the "Mises" label on organizations that consider the views of 90s-era Rothbard, Rockwell, and Hoppe to define libertarianism seems to be trendy.

    2. JesseAz   3 years ago

      Tell me you know nothing about the Mises caucus except narratives build by leftists without telling me.

      This was very predictable. The leftists here hate both Mises and Rothbard.

      1. JesseAz   3 years ago

        An example of how ignorant Brandy is.

        Any discussion of immigration benefits from the following caveats:

        No truly libertarian approach to immigration is possible when governments at all levels own (i.e., control) vast amounts of "public" land, including coastlines and ports, highways, airports, roads, military installations, parks, and common spaces.
        Thus the debate, at present, centers around the question of what government should do under current conditions with regard to immigration.
        There are no easy answers to how government agents should control government property such as roads and other "public" commons. Real economic calculation is impossible when the state controls resources, and "non-economic" considerations are impossibly subjective.
        "Welfare," in the form of various taxpayer-provided goods and services, makes the issue more complex.
        Democratic voting, coupled with high-time-preference politicians, makes the issue more complex.

        https://mises.org/wire/immigration-roundtable-ludwig-von-mises

        What brandy calls anti-immigrant is really an understanding that free migration can't co-exist with a broad welfare state. What brandy intentionally ignores is that the Mises Caucus actually is open border AFTER welfare is removed. Because they aren't raging leftist idiots.

        Idiots like Brandy aren't actually libertarians. They are leftists masking themselves as libertarians but still only care about the base liberal agreements absent any type of inspection of their ideas.

        1. Mother's Lament   3 years ago

          When you have one group of workers forced to adhere to rules and regulations, and you basically import another group that's not, you're deliberately trying to create social instability.

          1. Dave Jakes   3 years ago

            No, no, you don't understand! They support doing away with minimum wage laws, special legal protections for union violence, idiotic licensing requirements, and the welfare state (well, except for that totally awesome universal basic income), but all of that can come later. The catalyst to a smaller government is a permanent underclass of illiterate foreign laborers who are the only members of society allowed to break those employment laws and regulations with impunity and whose legal status can be used as a social policy cudgel! It's Nth dimensional chess!

        2. DesigNate   3 years ago

          I’m sure the guy who thought anarchism-capitalist were crazy (assuming based on the comic) was totally for no borders whatsoever.

          1. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

            The correct term is anarcho-fascist or anarcho-communist depending on whether they love Jesus, Marx or Mohammed. All admitted anarchists throughout history have been violent communists, as their theory demands. Search the Google news archive and learn this is true in every spoken language these past 2 centuries.

    3. R Mac   3 years ago

      So they’re all racists, amiright?

  3. Diane Reynolds (Paul.)   3 years ago

    It's my understanding that Austria was merely pre-allocating newly available resources and giving them to disadvantaged groups. What's the issue? Money isn't a zero-sum game!

  4. Diane Reynolds (Paul.)   3 years ago

    From ‘MAGA Republicans’ to a $30 minimum wage, the political parties seem headed for a crackup | Danny Westneat

    Another one in the 2nd District, Jason Call, is continuing to push “defund the police.” Yet another out in the Olympic Peninsula’s 6th District, Rebecca Parson, proposed a nationwide $30-an-hour minimum wage — and this past week called on people to simply occupy empty homes.

    These “aggressive progressive” candidates presumably won’t win. But their presence reminds of what New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another Democratic Socialist, said earlier this year: “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party. But in America, we are.”

  5. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

    What I wonder about is how and why the good name of Ludwig Von Mises got lumped in with a bunch of Neo-Confederates and Paleo-Reactionaries? Nothing I've seen of his life or work would suggest he would support anything of their sort.

    1. Dave Jakes   3 years ago

      It's mostly because you're a pig-ignorant stupid pile of dog shit who jumps up and down histrionically screeching "RACIST!!!!!!!" at anyone who doesn't subscribe to your Marxist anarch-socialist retardation, and neither Mises, nor Rothbard, nor Rockwell, nor Paul are actually Neo-Confederates and Paleo-Reactionaries. But hey, if you really want to demonstrate what an absolutely moronic sack of shit you are, feel free to post all of those rock solid references to any of those guys being confederates, reactionaries or WACIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      1. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

        I didn't say Von Mises was, dumbass. I simply asked why his name is associated with them.

        One who is Neo-Confederate and Paleo-Reactionary is Lew Rockwell, who should be called the Flintstone name Lew Rockhead, as should you.

        1. LibertyWeeb   3 years ago

          It's always fun to see people who've never met Lew, and who will never do one thousandth as much for liberty as he has, say false and defamatory things about him.

          Meanwhile, Lew is kicking ass and spreading the philosophy of freedom, whether you approve of him, or not.

    2. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

      Simple. Von Mises has not, afaik, published any defense of individual rights of women to not be forced to reproduce. Nor is he supportive of Lysander Spooner's careful explanations of how vices are not crimes, and that an uncoerced economy is incompatible with shoot-first fanatical mobs seizing control of governments and banning trade and production by hysterical laws. He is therefore a "safe" gelded advocate of fake tax cuts and tiny deregulations Republican National Socialism palms off as laissez-faire.

      1. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

        That doesn't sound like Von Mises to me either.

        And even if he didn't publish support of abortion rights or repealing laws against "victimless vices," that doesn't mean he wouldn't support them. Sound like an Argumenum Ad Ignorantium (Appeal to Isnorance) Fallacy.

        C'Mon, Man! Even the LP Platform said that silence on unmentioned violations of Indivisual Rights does not automatically equal approval. Tighten up, Hank.

        1. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

          Correction, Appeal to Ignorance.

  6. Diane Reynolds (Paul.)   3 years ago

    Vision zero isn't working. It isn't... working, so the answer? Vision zero harder:

    Although fewer people die on Seattle’s streets than Portland’s or Austin’s, for example, the trends of the last two years have yet to reverse themselves in 2022 and Seattle’s “Vision Zero” goal of no fatalities on the roads remains maddeningly out of reach. Despite recent efforts, the combination of speed, larger vehicles and infrastructure that’s unfriendly to people outside of cars has meant deaths continue to rise.

    1. MT-Man   3 years ago

      I don't know exactly how Seattle approaches this, but I do ride my bike when I can - however with that being said I do think the folks that support alternative transportation have a vision that is skewed towards a competition with cars rather than coexisitng. What I mean by that is and relating to you comment above is that things like bike lanes or routes or even buses and stops rather than being one street over or a slighlty different path have to be in the exact same spot as the auto traffic. There seems to be a desire for conflict and then a false surprise that fatalities have been eliminated which allows the argument that cars are bad and transportation needs to change. Rather I think if they actually looked at a coexistence without competition that might have a better chance of reaching something close to vision zero. I'm not sure that would happen though because they seem to have to show a militant belief that only one way can exist and it's not single person autos.

  7. IceTrey   3 years ago

    Youbcan have a government and an anarchy. Anarchy means without rulers. Government prohibited from initiating force would be an anarchy. There would be no rulers because there would be no power.

    1. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

      Wrong in practice. Comancheria was utopian anarchism with no taxes, economy, borders or laws against murder and torture. Union General Billy Sherman, on the other hand, was power=the time derivative of stacking up corpses. In short order the Comanches, like all anarchists before and since, were shot, hanged or imprisoned and the buffalo they relied on nearly exterminated. If anarchism were anything other than idiotic, its proponents could form parties and compete for votes. But their violent methods merit only the noose, as history so clearly shows.

    2. mad.casual   3 years ago

      What prevents the government from initiating force?

  8. sarcasmic   3 years ago

    First or second time I've read one of Rand's Bagge's cartoons to the end.

    Really don't know about Mises' life and career. If the above is accurate it sounds like a sad story.

    1. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

      It's more accurate than most. Bagge can't be blamed for the Allies seeking to cover up the causes of the World Wars. The Republican party's struggle to pretend that prohibition's imposition of a "global planned economy" (in the words of the Opium Advisory Committee) was not what caused the Crash and Depression to fan out worldwide is also understandable. Political parties deny blame no matter how comprehensive the proof. Republicans invented "business cycles" to cover up how criminalization of production, trade and vices destroys economic functioning.

  9. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

    Speaking of "perpetually cancelled" Atheists and Libertarians both lost one of our boys:

    George H. Smith, R.I.P.
    https://www.cato.org/blog/george-h-smith-rip

    My kindest rational thoughts go out to him and his, and my disapointment goes out to Reason for not picking up on this and informing us earlier.

  10. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

    Von Mises thought fascism "preferable" to communism when most fascist regimes were very Christian and not all that determined to extirpate selfish Jews. His guesses as to the causes of the Depressions are all wrong. German heroin's huge market share led to WW1 and WW2. American bans on beer, etc, created a huge market for German drugs. This market was stirred, then shaken drastically by Bert Hoover pushing Narcotics Limitation in 1929 and June 1931--when major German banks collapsed, and American banking panics attended legal action against Al Capone and the glucose trust that depended on his services.

  11. d   3 years ago

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    1. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

      So it's all about "the childrens?" 🙂

  12. Davedave   3 years ago

    What in the everloving fuck is this? Actual, outright, honest-to-god Holocaust celebration*? Yup. Revolting.

    [*Holocaust celebration means accepting that 6 million Jews were killed and rejoicing, rather than the usual denial.]

    von Mises is not generally considered a real economist. But, unlike the 'artist' here, he wasn't a Nazi.

    Make no mistake, this piece of propaganda is straight out of the pages of Der Sturmer. It is directly arguing that Hitler was right, and that the Holocaust was justified.

    1. The Encogitationer   3 years ago

      What the fuck are you talking about? How is this Holocaust Celebration?

      Are you and Misek smoking the same stepped-on meth/crack mix and coming to opposite conclusions?

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