Thursday, October 27, 2011

Ludwig von Mises on 'Occupy Wall Street'

The Phantom Capitalist emails:

I found a paragraph in Human Action that I think describes the current occupy protesters (My emphasis-RW)


There are people to whom monetary calculation is repulsive. They do not want to be roused from their daydreams by the voice of critical reason. Reality sickens them, they long for a realm of unlimited opportunity. They are disgusted by the meanness of social order in which everything is nicely reckoned in dollars and pennies. They call their grumbling the noble deportment worthy of the friends of the spirit, of beauty, and virtue as opposed to the ignoble baseness and villainy of Babbittry. However, the cult of beauty and virtue, wisdom and the search for truth are not hindered by the rationality of the calculating and computing mind. It is only romantic reverie that can not thrive in the milieu of sober criticism. The cool-headed reckoner is the stern chastiser of the ecstatic visionary.

Our civilization is inseparably linked with our methods of economic calculation. It would perish if we were to abandon this most precious
intellectual tool of acting.
Goethe was right by calling bookkeeping by double-entry "one of the finest inventions of the human mind."

11 comments:

  1. Screw #ows. Its nothing but a bunch of socialists protesting crap they don't have the remotest understanding of.

    The real story today is the the absolute destruction of the Sovereign CDS by the ISDA's ruling that a agreed notional reduction is not a triggering event. If that's the case, there will never be a triggering event since the government can just force everyone to accept a write down.

    ReplyDelete
  2. > The real story today is the the absolute destruction of the Sovereign CDS by the ISDA's ruling that a agreed notional reduction is not a triggering event. If that's the case, there will never be a triggering event since the government can just force everyone to accept a write down.

    This. Whatever happened to the rule of law?

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Wenzel

    There's some controversy regarding how important DEB was in the emergence of capitalism.

    This relates to the the alleged-anti-Semitism of the German economic historian Sombert and the belief by critics that his exaggeration of the role played by DEB had something to do with other views he held, allegedly anti-Semitic.

    Goethe and the German romantic spirit itself are said to be tinged with this anti-Semitism..

    I have no opinion of the matter, never having read Sombert.

    There is apparently very little you can quote from anyone with getting into the toils of PC.
    But there it is.

    Just this morning I had to delete one of my blog posts, because one of the links went back to a magazine that is on the anti-PC radar.

    I couldn't care less myself, but what with the Maple-Syrup Thought Police on the rampage up north, it might be wise to take note.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Lila Rajiva

    Since I am quoting Mises, quoting Goethe, I am not going to lose too much sleep over this. If Mises, being Jewish and much better read than I am, was comfortable quoting Goethe on DEB, I'll yield to Mises' comfort in doing so.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love that Goethe quote. Faust II is very good on inflation too.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Wenzel

    Go for it.

    I just wanted to mention it...

    Standards for non-semantics (as some wag calls it) quoting putatively anti-semantic stuff seem to differ radically from semantics quoting the same stuff.

    Just thought I'd defuse it preemptively by mentioning it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. double-entry bookkeeeping

    ReplyDelete
  8. @Wenzel
    No opinion ON the matter, not OF. Sorry. Long time me no speakee the English. Speakee the weblish and the bloglish....

    ReplyDelete
  9. For those of you haters out there who always have something horrible to say about the Catholic Church, a priest invented double-entry bookkeeping.

    ReplyDelete
  10. http://www.canhamrogers.com/HDEB.htm

     In 1494 an Italian monk published a book on mathematics which included 36 chapters explaining double entry bookkeeping. In his book, "Summa", Luca Paciolo wrote "we describe the method employed in Venice".

    Paciolo thus made no claim to the invention of the double entry system, but its inclusion in his book has resulted in his being generally recognized as the the author of the first published double entry bookkeeping text.

    Benedetto Cotrugli is believed to have written the first double entry bookkeeping book in 1458. It and other hand written manuscripts seem to have circulated in the Italian city states during the 15th century. Cotrugli's book was not published until 1573 so Paciolo may claim the first published text. Hatfield wrote "it is seldom the case that a first book on a subject has so dominated its literature as was the case with Paciolo's De Computis et Scripturis.

    ReplyDelete