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Ham_Ahoy t1_iutjcf6 wrote

Reply to comment by mittenedkittens in $10 a day for jury pay is absurd if Pennsylvania says they are holding fair trials. by Jazzlike_Breadfruit9

The thing I can't stand the most about Mises libertarians . . . Mises died penniless in a paupers grave. If he was the greatest economic mind in history, shouldn't he at least have died. . . Wealthy? If your obsession was art, at least you could make the case that Van Gogh, or really most famous artists aren't appreciated until their death. Mises couldn't even get a job as a bank president or whatever after being minister of finance of a major European country. How do you defend that kind of clear and obvious incompetence?

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[deleted] t1_ivp08y2 wrote

You do realize that the Mises Institute has nothing to do with Ludwig von Mises right? It’s a well known thing that they co-opted his name for their political organization. Ludwig passed away before the institute was even created, so they asked his wife if she was okay with it, and she told them she was fine with it.

Ludwig was very well off in Europe, but he soon became an enemy of the state in 1940 because he opposed Nazism, so he fled to America with nothing to his name because his assets were seized by the govt. In America, he received a living stipend grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as funding from the William Volker Fund. He then won a visiting professor position at NYU, which he held until his death.

Ludwig basically conceptualized the theory of the Austrian Business Cycle, which is very much used today. It explains how when Central Banks keep interest rates low for too long, it leads to banks and corporations abusing the lending process, which leads to market collapses that harm regular people. Ludwig was more of a liberal than people think. In fact, he was considered a progressive for his time, and was persecuted by the Nazis for it. He was very much anti-corporation, in that if they do stupid things, the govt should not help them. This way those businesses fail and the people can create better ones in their places.

Ludwig was a liberal, forward thinking economist who was simply a victim of the time (Nazism stifled his career). The Mises Institute is essentially a Libertarian think tank, which Ludwig had nothing to do with. Furthermore, Libertarian (Mises Institute) does not equate to Liberalism (Ludwig).

Remember, when people like Ludwig were discussing “free markets,” they didn’t mean a total lawless free for all. They simply meant things like no bailouts for dbag businesses and banks, and no Central Banks playing with interest rates in-favor of those banks and businesses. The only people who believe in total lawless free for alls are Anarchist Capitalists (AnCaps), which is completely unrelated to Ludwig.

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Ham_Ahoy t1_ivp0y5j wrote

He died penniless because he was an idiot, and his disastrous economic literature has ruined the world.

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