Peter Boettke reckons that people wanting to understand Austrian school economics need to read, at least, four books.
When I teach my PhD course in the Austrian Theory of the Market Process I assign four required books that in my opinion students must master to make a contribution to the this literature — Mises, Human Action; Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order; Kirzner, Competition and Entrepreneurship; and Rothbard, Man, Economy and State.
I have reservations about Rothbard. Not that he wasn’t a great economist, or prolific, but I think too many people start and end with Rothbard. Three of those books are available for download at the Mises Institute (the Kirzner book isn’t there). People should read more Kirzner.
Human Action is a great book but unfortunately it takes almost 200 pages to get to through the preliminaries to reach the economics. What is worse, the apriori methodology that Mises preached is unhelpful and distracting. Mises never got the message that the natural sciences do not fly because of empiricism and positivism and he thought that the human sciences needed something different. Yes, but so do the natural sciences.
Sinc, how do you advise people to negotiate the preliminaris and get to the real stuff in Human Action?
Rafe
29 Jul 10 at 10:15 pm
Human Action is broken up into sections. Read the sections in the order that you want. Also Eamon Butler has some introductory stuff, although I prefer the read original stuff before getting into the introductions and explanations and so on.
Sinclair Davidson
29 Jul 10 at 10:21 pm
Besides, Sinclair – Rothbard was simply wrong on FRB. The rest of it makes a lot of sense, though.
Andrew Reynolds
29 Jul 10 at 10:25 pm
Where did he go wrong with FDR?
Rafe
30 Jul 10 at 7:41 am
Whoops! Caffeine infusion required.
Is it safe to mention FRB on this site?
Rafe
30 Jul 10 at 7:44 am
Rothbard’s ideas on money are just silly. Insurance receipts are not money.
.
30 Jul 10 at 7:44 am
Rothbard’s political philosophy is just awful. I get the feeling from some libertarians that his PP is more influential than his economics.
dover_beach
30 Jul 10 at 10:20 am
Rafe,
Fortunately or unfortunately a certain party is banned – so no more long, long threads on FRB.
[sigh]
Andrew Reynolds
30 Jul 10 at 11:06 am
Andrew
you could always pay a visit to said person’s site and start a ‘conversation’
jtfsoon
30 Jul 10 at 11:08 am
For economics I would rather prescribe Alchian’s excellent book.
jtfsoon
30 Jul 10 at 11:22 am
sadly out of print.
I may have one of the few copies left in the world that isn’t in a library
http://www.amazon.com/Exchange-Production-Competition-Coordination-Control/dp/0534013201
jtfsoon
30 Jul 10 at 11:23 am
Jason,
I think that a comment from me would either be deleted summarily or redacted quickly – or perhaps both simultaneously. Besides, leaving my ip address over there is not something I want to do. I had a discussion on another blog and when the blog owner disagreed violently with my point of view he contacted my (then) employer to enquire if I was permitted to comment online during work hours.
As I had already cleared it with my employer I was OK, but it has made me a little wary of commenting on the more foaming at the mouth blogs since.
I do just miss the occasional good argument with him.
Andrew Reynolds
30 Jul 10 at 2:29 pm
Those Alchian – Allen books are very good. They can still be picked up at second hand stores.
Sinclair Davidson
30 Jul 10 at 4:32 pm
I’ve often read of the Alchian book and decided I’d buy if I saw it. Somebody needs to do a web PDF of it.
With Rothbard, it is hard to get past the constant vague uneasy feeling that he’s a nut.
pedro
30 Jul 10 at 8:13 pm