Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises[n 1] (/vɒn ˈmiːzɪz/; German: [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian-American economist, logician, sociologist and philosopher of economics of the Austrian school.

[1] He is best known for his work in praxeology, particularly for studies comparing communism and capitalism, as well as for being a defender of classical liberalism[2] in the face of rising illiberalism and authoritarianism throughout much of Europe during the 20th century.

[21] Later, Mises was economic advisor to Otto von Habsburg, the Christian democratic politician and claimant to the throne of Austria (which had been legally abolished in 1918 following the Great War).

It is not just that those in the front line shed their life-blood in obscurity, while the commanders, comfortably located in headquarters hundreds of miles behind the trenches, gain glory and fame.

It is not just that John is killed and Mark crippled for the rest of his life, while Paul returns home safe and sound and enjoys all the privileges accorded to veterans.

[26]The same chapter concludes with how he coped with his involuntary servitude fighting as the aggressor in a war he wanted nothing to do with, and includes a quote from Virgil that would go on to become the slogan of the Mises Institute in Alabama: How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament.

In high school, as was custom, I had chosen a verse by Virgil to be my motto: Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ("Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it").

Like many other classical liberal scholars who fled to the United States, he received support from the William Volker Fund to obtain a position in American universities.

[29][30] For part of this period, Mises studied currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement, which was led by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, a fellow New York University faculty member and Austrian exile.

This framework considers both the material conditions influencing the availability of goods and services (supply) and the subjective preferences, values, and willingness to pay of individuals (demand).

[80][81] Mises used praxeology to further critique socialism, arguing that it is fundamentally flawed because it treats economics as a solvable, static problem[82] akin to mathematical or engineering challenges.

[52] Instead, he argued, economics involves an open-ended coordination process that aims to align the diverse and equally valid[83] subjective appraisals of millions of individuals.

[87] Mises argued that some people resent the burden of freedom, preferring the perceived security of a caste-like system where individual responsibility for one's position in the division of labor is minimized.

[88] As a result, our cognitive biases have not yet adapted to the modern world of rule of law and peaceful exchange, leading to a subconscious suspicion of wealth as being illegitimately obtained.

[1] Friends and students of Mises in Europe included Wilhelm Röpke and Alfred Müller-Armack (advisors to German chancellor Ludwig Erhard), Jacques Rueff (monetary advisor to Charles de Gaulle), Gottfried Haberler (later a professor at Harvard), Lionel, Lord Robbins (of the London School of Economics), Italian President Luigi Einaudi, and Leonid Hurwicz, recipient of the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

[90] Economist and political theorist Friedrich Hayek first came to know Mises while working as his subordinate at a government office dealing with Austria's post-World War I debt.

At his New York University seminar and at informal meetings at his apartment, Mises attracted college and high school students who had heard of his European reputation.

[118] He viewed the Great War as a watershed moment in human history, arguing that it marked a significant departure from previous conflicts due to the advanced technology employed.

[119]Marxists Herbert Marcuse and Perry Anderson as well as German writer Claus-Dieter Krohn accused Mises of writing approvingly of Italian fascism, especially for its suppression of leftist elements, in his 1927 book Liberalism.

[121] Mises, in his 1927 book Liberalism, wrote:[122] It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization.

He notes that Mises said it was a "fatal error" to think that it was more than an "emergency makeshift" against up and coming communism and socialism as exemplified by the Bolsheviks in Russia and the surging communists of Germany.

"[123] However, this paragraph is also in keeping with a theme that runs through his work: he consistently refrained from imputing bad intentions to those he disagreed with, regardless of how fascistic or homicidal their policy outcomes were.

[124]Mises, in his 1927 book Liberalism, also wrote of fascism:[122] Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success.

That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion.

But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.In his earlier work, Socialism (1922), Mises also made a similar remark with more context, saying that Mussolini did his best to prop up Austria-Hungary as a means of protecting Italian speaking minorities, but regardless concludes that he was one the most wretched figures in history: Only those Italians are free to blame Mussolini who begin to understand that the only means of protecting the Italian-speaking minorities in the Littoral districts of Austria against the threatening annihilation by the Slavonic majorities was to preserve the integrity of the Austrian state, whose constitution guaranteed equal rights to all linguistic groups.

[130] More recent commenters, such as Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, have listed it alongside Socialism (1922), and Liberalism (1927) as one of the most important books of the 20th century, despite describing Human Action (1949) as "cranky and dogmatic".

At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Machlup gave a talk in which I think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of floating exchange rates.

In his words, Mises was "unbelievably sweet, constantly finding research projects for students to do, unfailingly courteous, and never bitter" about the discrimination he received at the hands of the economic establishment of his time.

[134]Critics more broadly argue that praxeology's reliance on a priori reasoning and rejection of empirical methods limit its ability to test and validate economic theories.

[139] While the Austrian's prosaic approach provides valuable insights into the decision-making process, econometrically-minded critics argue that it lacks the predictive power of other economic models that rely on more objective measures.