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What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow man. Is, in the market not compulsion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen and penal courts, it is self interest.

Ludwig von Mises

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Ludwig von Mises
Age: 92 †
Born: 1881
Born: September 29
Died: 1973
Died: October 10
Economist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lemberg
Austria
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Mises
Market
Penal
Service
Hangman
Court
Exertion
Interest
Utmost
Part
Courts
Self
Compulsion
Every
Fellow
Men
Fellows
Impels

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Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.
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In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.
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Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions.
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Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little.
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Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.
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If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.
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The Pseudo-liberals monopolize the teaching jobs at many universities. Only men who agree with them are appointed as teachers and instructors of the social sciences, and only textbooks supporting their ideas are used.
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The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody...It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous.
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The capitalist system, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way.
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The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into big business was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses.
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The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard.
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The system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
Ludwig von Mises
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The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
Ludwig von Mises
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Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.
Ludwig von Mises
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Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
Ludwig von Mises
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Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
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The consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.
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The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression.
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Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.
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The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
Ludwig von Mises