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{{Chicago | Chicago = [[Ludwig Mises|Mises, Ludwig von]]. 2010. ''[[Human Action: The Scholar's Edition]]''. Ludwig von Mises Institute.}} <!-- two single quotes for italics --> <noinclude> __NOTOC__ <!-- you can have any number of categories here --> [[Category:Book|Mises, Ludwig von]] [[Category:Fundamental Libertarian Books]] {{Availability | isbn = 1610161459 | | | }} <!-- can place links to online versions between the bars --> {{DES | des = (1940, originally) (The Scholar's Edition) [[Ludwig von Mises]]' enormous rant in favor of the pseudoscience of [[praxeology]]. A self-study course in convincing yourself you understand economics and all the academic and professional economists are mistaken.|show=}} <!-- Place text about the book here. --> From an anonymous Amazon review: ''As shown by the reviews below, Human Action is the object of a libertarian cult, and regarded by some right-wingers as the greatest economic text of the 20th century (if not of all time). In reality, it's a mixed bag. Buried within the 800+ pages of text are worthwhile sections on entrepreneurship, monetary theory, inflation, and the business cycle. There's even an interesting section on monopoly, an issue that most right-wing economists gloss over. Unfortunately, to find these sections, the reader has to wade through hundreds of pages of repetitive, disorganized text, dubious historical asides, ponderous philosophizing, tirades against math (was Mises innumerate?), tirades against non-libertarian economists (was Mises jealous of their professional success?), and sheer nonsense.'' ''One example of the latter is on pg. 314, where Mises rants that public education can't help the poor to get ahead in life because successful entrepreneurs learn their craft on the job and thus don't need schooling. (It's good to know that Harvard Business school grads aren't in demand in the marketplace.) There's more hilarity just eight pages later, where Mises argues that a ban on the advertising of quack medicines will lead to government regulation of religion and free speech. (Sure, that's what happened after the Food and Drug Act was passed.) And throughout the book Mises asserts that economics is an a priori science like logic or mathematics, as if markets or firms were concepts we analyze rather than things we find in the world. If Mises had thought of economics as an empirical discipline, about real-world institutions, he might have been inspired to do real empirical research. To judge by Human Action, he never did.'' ''It's too bad that cranky stuff is found on almost every page of the book, since it undermines the force of the good sections (and makes the book twice as long as it needs to be). But the truth is that anyone with even an undergraduate knowledge of economics will have trouble taking seriously the whole Mises package. To my knowledge, Human Action isn't taught in any leading economics department in the country. Libertarians see this non-attention as a conspiracy to repress Mises' views. Just read a few sections of Human Action at random and you'll understand the real reason.'' <!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them. Use these explicit workarounds. --> <!-- normally, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}} --> {{List|title=Human Action: The Scholar's Edition|links=true}} {{Quotations|title=Human Action: The Scholar's Edition|quotes=true}} </noinclude>
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