Reviews for The Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis (Volume 15)

The average rating for The Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis (Volume 15) based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-07-04 00:00:00 Andreas Ruckes 2021-07-04 Finished this a day or two ago. Very cool collection of the transcriptions of a nine speech series delivered by Mises in the summer of 1951 at FEE (The Foundation for Economic Education), in Irvington-on-Hudson, NY. The style is lighter than his more academic and longer work, so should be easier to get into as an introduction to his work. But I appreciated some of the insights that seemed new to me, even though I have read most of his work already. This table of contents might be helpful for those considering this short volume: 1. Economics and Its Opponents 2. Pseudo-Science and Historical Understanding 3. Acting Man and Economics 4. Marxism, Socialism, and Pseudo-Science 5. Capitalism and Human Progress 6. Money and Inflation 7. The Gold Standard: Its Importance and Restoration 8. Money, Credit, and the Business Cycle 9. The Business Cycle and Beyond. I particularly loved the last three chapters/speeches and their simple, clear restatement of the problem of the business cycle and his analysis of its causes and cure. Totally relevant to what has been happening and will unfold again before too long, even though the talks were delivered 70 years ago. I also note that this is beautifully bound and printed little paperback edition, and reasonably priced from 2004, but is now available in PDF version for free at the FEE.org website. Highly recommended. NOTE: The title of this book differs oh, so subtly from another neat little book published by FEE and written by its founder, Leonard Read: The Free Market and its Enemy. The books are very different, but both are recommended.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-20 00:00:00 Willie Gilmore A lecture (that can be found on YouTube) by G. Edward Griffin in 1969 titled The Communist Revolution in America led me to Ludwig Von Mises. In the lecture, Griffin states that “we must recapture the American faith in the free enterprise system. Capitalism has almost become a dirty word. We must become students again and study the words of Madison, Jefferson, Bastiat and Von Mises as intently as our enemies study Marx and Lenin, Galbraith and Keynes. Not only must we become grounded in theory, but we must become advocates and spokesmen. We must know what we stand for.” I wish my high school Economics class would’ve taught us the principles laid forth by Ludwig Von Mises, (I like to call him Lu), an Austrian Economist born in 1881 whose foresight and wisdom resounds through his lectures and writings. I’m sure I’m not remembering everything correctly, but our class discussion seemed to be more about definitions of terms that deal with the money market and never got to the heart of the value of the Free Market, something I tend to think might’ve been planned, but I digress. Tying in core values that revolve around freedom and less government are specifically connected to how well the Free Market and capitalism prospers a people, a nation. As Lu says “the interference of the government in money and banking has made government supreme in devaluing the money.“ I plan to correct what went wrong with my education for my children. Lu is now our homeschool Economics teacher.