 We are of course interested in Mises because we learn most of what we do about economics, we learn from Mises. Therefore, we are so much interested in Mises. So what can we learn from Mises as a person? What can we learn from him? How can this affect our life choices? Maybe how can we imitate Mises in certain respects? As we have learned from Stephen Kinsella, life choices are not patented and copyrighted. So we are free to imitate this and emulate Mises and apply this in our own lives. Now clearly, one cannot imitate the other person's lives. It's not possible to relive Mises' lives and of course that would not be the point. We have to live our own lives. It's not possible in most cases to imitate Mises' objectives or his vocation. That's what he really cared for and was passionate about. That's not possible either. If you do not share this passion in the first place, now fortunately for all of us this applies. We do share Mises' vocation, we do care about economics, we do care about political organization of society. And plus to some degree we also share in his virtues, the classical virtues, love, hope, faith, prudence, justice, strength, moderation. As we set them to some degree we have them too, to some degree, different degrees. So we can learn about their relative importance by considering his life and we can also learn about how and when to bring them to bear. In short, Mises can be our model at least to some extent. We are used to thinking of Mises as an intellectual and of course he was a premier intellectual. As far as the social sciences is concerned, as far as I'm concerned, he was the premier intellectual of the 20th century, possibly of all times. But Mises did not just live the life of an intellectual, he was not a full-time professor of economics from start to finish. In fact, he was a professor only during the comparatively short time of his life. In other words, Mises confronted a situation that applies to most of us. He had a profession on the one hand and he had a vocation on the other hand. He had to earn his bread, his daily bread, with an activity that he was not necessarily passionate about. And this was on the basis on which he could engage in those activities that he was really passionate about, was the life of ideas. Now, this seems like a handicap, but in fact it has also several advantages. Maybe I should highlight one or two of them, the major advantage is obviously that standing in life somehow and not just living in the ivory tower of academics has the big advantage of bringing you in constant contact with that real world. Great temptation for an intellectual, for a pure academic, is to engage in exercises, games and so on that are ultimately without relevance for the real world. That is, intellectual activity becomes sort of say an end in itself, it's become self-serving. This is what we actually see in the economics profession, with the hyper-mathematization of economics, it's become an end in itself, people specializing in developed ever more models, ultimately pointless. Game theory would be another example, it's a nice intellectual exercise. It has sometimes certain pedagogical uses, but ultimately in order to understand the world, it's perfectly useless. Another example would be happiness research, those who study economics have heard about this, so we were trying to measure the happiness of people and then try to derive political conclusions from this, it's also perfectly superfluous, the whole thing is I won't go into detail. But these are outcrawls, these are bad flowers in the swamp of academia run wild. And you don't encounter it ordinarily with people who have a day job, a daytime job, such as Mises, because necessarily they don't have so much time to waste and if they spend any time on intellectual inquires, it's about things that are somewhat important for real human life. So these excesses that we find in economics, we find them also in other fields, music, physics, climate research or whatever, very often so this takes on a life on its own, becomes divorced from the economy. So Mises can hear the RR model, it's not actually a disadvantage to live both a vacation and a professional life, just as we've talked about money this week, it's not a disadvantage that money costs a lot of money to produce, production costs, actually one of its biggest advantages, that silver or gold coins are expensive to produce, that's the biggest strength. So Mises lived a profession and a vocation, let me just go through this major life after his studies, so he started until 1906, it's when he got his doctorate, he started working as a legal clerk, he worked for a couple of, well first he entered a public administration, the financial administration in Vienna, that was the career path for those who really wanted to get to the higher echelons of the public bureaucracy, the central government bureaucracy, like making a big career in Washington DC and you raise up high within the state department, I don't know what, so this was the way to go, to go, Bumbavak did it, started in the very same administration, Bumbavak eventually turned out to be the Ministry of Minister of Finance, so it was kind of customary, the very promising young pupil, students of the Austrian school, the most promising of them, they would start in the same administration and then eventually also rise to become a high civil servant somewhere, for example one of Bumbavak's students became the president of the central bank, it would not have been unthinkable that Mises this way would have become the president of the central bank of Austria, which is difficult to imagine for us today, but so that would have been the career path, or he could have become Minister of Finance, he did not, he did find this life unbearable, it just could not suffer the bureaucracy, so the inertia, paralysis, took obey rules in all fields and so on, and later on he would turn this experience into a magnificent theory of bureaucracy that contrasts the logic of bureaucratic action to the logic of market action, this is a book, bureaucracy that he published in 1944 was his first English language book, so he went on to work as a legal clerk in a couple of law firms and then starting in 1909 he became a consultant for the Chamber of Commerce in Austria and so he remained until the outbreak of World War II, in the year before the outbreak of World War II he obtained his habilitation degree, it is a license to teach at a state university within Austria, so he started becoming a private lecturer at the University of Austria for a year and a half approximately until the outbreak of World War I prevented any further scholarly activities and had to join the army and he had a previous training as an officer, so he entered the war as an artillery officer and started off as a lieutenant and eventually became a captain, now within the war he actually spent most of his time at the front which is significant because that was not by itself, most of his former student colleagues who had been with him in the seminar of the bar back and attend the same lectures and so on, they were not sent to the front but employed in the various administrations of the war economy, Austria during World War I like virtually all other countries imposed on the economy a system of central planning, so needed people to actually do the planning and then coordinate the different planning agencies, so that's what was handled typically by graduates of the economics programs, Mises would have been first in line because he had just defended a brilliant book, the theory of money and credit had published this and was a well-known expert in monetary affairs, so he was suitable for employment in such agencies much too good to the sent to the forefront as cannon fodder but he was nevertheless, so we'll come back on this later, he survived the war, there's a great unfortunate accident for all of us because otherwise we would not be here, he survived the war, he then became an executive of the Chamber of Commerce and started lecturing as a private lecturer that is meanwhile yet become an adjunct full professor, adjunct professor at the University of Vienna, started lecturing economics, but what was not paid, gave a seminar and gave a lecture and so therefore some interactions with students and finally in 1934 he gave up his full-time position at the Chamber of Commerce and became a professor at the Graduate Institute for higher studies at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, this was the only time in his life when he was actually a full-time professor in 1934 to 1940 but even then his position was somehow fragile because he was in a one-year position which was only extended six times, six times in a row and probably would have been turned into a lifelong position had it not been for World War II and then his situation in Switzerland became dangerous that the Nazis were going after him they wanted he was relatively high on his on the list of enemies so he was one of the it was apparently was apparently some sort of an attempt at kidnapping him in Geneva so things were getting dangerous and he decided to leave the country and go to the United States. The United States you first survived for the first four years approximately on a stipend of the Rockefeller Foundation with whom he had worked already before the 1920s and 1930s something equally difficult to imagine for us today but happened in those days and then starting in 1945 he became a visiting professor at the University of New York University and so he was on a one-year contract again this one-year contract was extended 23 times and so Mises was visiting NYU for 24 years kind of visitors that you like I come over and see me anytime then he stays on and on but this seminar was actually quite successful so Mises lived within the world of ideas but not only within the world of ideas right his head was in the world of ideas but not all the time and his feet were always firmly rooted in a daytime job and this was certainly one of those elements that gave a certain coloration to Mises work which make them so interesting so relevant for us today one of the things that we have underlined a couple of times during this week is that also economics cares actually is distinguished by its realism realism by of the hypothesis realism of the actual actions of the laws that we use to analyze reality realism also in the choice of the kind of questions that we raise and questions that we try to answer this is certainly at least partially a result of this particular life situation of Mises so for those of you who would like to engage in an academic career but there's actually no university that would like to hire you don't despair of distinguished predecessors the important thing then isn't this is the difficulty in also the art right is to somehow combine these two things you need to find some suitable employment that makes it possible for you to also take part in this other life this is something for which there are no general rules each one of us has to solve this kind of problem for himself or for herself but it is feasible Mises shows us that it was feasible how did he combine this in the early years he he would typically work during the day whatever from the office from 9 to 5 and then when you return home where he would spend whatever five six hours and sometimes even more reading books and writing books of course it's difficult to combine this with a family life so if you ever get married I would say well don't don't do this right don't try to at least you wish a divorce within within 12 months or something right so this is the way to go right but Mises so he made this choice we did not get married at least not at that point there's a choice that each of there's no general rule that we can infer from Mises life and it's difficult to say what is more important is it more important that we carry on our scholarly life or is it more important that we get married and maybe pass on our passion for fortune economics and for ideas to our children it's difficult to say and it depends really from differs from one case to another so Mises made his choice he never had children that's a tough thing of course eventually in life when you see that your friends do have children and their grandchildren and so on it's something that you will miss and that Mises certainly has missed and he had adoptive children stepchildren from from the wife that he later married it's not quite the same thing so it's a choice to make in one's life so Mises made his choice and this choice allowed him to spend his time on scholarship whereas others would have spent it on their families the life of ideas is of course a life of learning and of curiosity the first temptation here again is this life becomes life on its own was an ended itself and one of the forms in which they can be a degeneration is that this turns into a purely historical interest for ideas and you can study approach ideas from two points of view from a practical point of view that was Mises's thing because he believed that ideas can be applied and should be applied that ideas actually do our instruments to understand the world as it is but you can also of course approach the study of ideas let's say as a gourmet in a restaurant tasting a little bit here and tasting a little bit there yeah this guy thinks this and this guy thinks the opposite I don't care what's right I mean I just know that this guy thinks this this the other guy thinks that you're happy with this you can become a brilliant participant in salon discussions and appear on TV and say display all your knowledge and so on but ultimately it's fruitless and sterile knowledge so Mises did not do this right he did not approach ideas as an historian would or as an idea gourmet would but he cared for truth he believed that there was something like truth it was of the utmost important what the truth was and this is what of course made him a very productive scholar a historian of ideas is only in a story enough ideas we just register this guy thinks this the other person thinks that's etc etc usually they don't pollute any ideas on their own because they're not they do not care for truth so they cannot critically analyze ideas that's precisely what Mises did and here we can learn a lot from it so we would have failed at this week if we have just imparted on you a couple of concepts of Austrian economics and so on and not something also of the spirit what is important was really important is to care for truth it's not important to learn whatever the law of roundabout production but to understand what the law of roundabout production relies on what does it actually say maybe it's not correct maybe it needs to be restated so that is really important not should not just swallow ideas but develop the ability and the routine to critically analyze ideas and care for truth that's what Mises did and that's what preserved him from the typical professional diseases of professional academics did not grow indifferent to ideas did not make intellectual compromise and of course he would not that's of course the worst sins of all and betray what he believed in what he believed to be true and just lie can be wrong can be different at least in those cases you recognize that there is a truth somewhere if you lie of course you recognize there's a true out there and you deny it and you oppose it you betray it which is exactly the kind of behavior that we see quite often in public institutions without naming individual names or we can certain IMF employees or I think of the European Commission and OECD and so on you have people who are very smart sometimes very well informed they say exactly the opposite of what they know to be true just for example to get along just to cater to the political sponsors etc etc so Mises would never do this he cared way too much for to the love truth it's a true love of truth that prompted him to follow this love at several critical junctions in his career I will go again through just a little list to give you a couple of examples couple of Mises career choices the first choice came on very early when Mises started criticizing the historical school of course you are all aware of this that the Austrian school was early on involved in a dispute with the champions of the historical school was a discussion between Karl Manger and in Austria and Gustav Schmoller and his followers in Germany and the subject of the dispute was no other general economic laws that are true independent of empirical investigation independent of empirical validation observation based validation Manger said yes Manger Schmoller said no now the historical school was way more powerful way more influential than Manger's burgeoning Austrian school Manger had some influence and he could build up disciples and so on and get them onto chairs of economics social policy etc within Austria but the historical school was way more important they even managed to get their guys and some of the few professorships within Austria one of them was Mises primary professor Mises started off as a disciple of the historical school and he wrote first book analyzing the relationship between peasants and landlords in his native Galicia completely inspired by the approach of the historical school so Mises went to the archives he was destined to do this kind of work because he could be German and Polish and also I think essentially that there was these were the languages were required for this kind of work and so he went through the documents of the public administrations etc and he composed this work based on administrative records and it was praised by all the colleagues of his professor so they were writing raving reviews wonderful very promising young man and this is another example of the fruitful work of our colleague in Vienna professor Greenberg etc etc etc so Mises was perfectly positioned he was the only one is in his age cohort who came up with such a work so early on he was the star in the Greenberg seminar and he could have set out for a wonderful career relaxed at some chair within the German Empire or within Austria etc nothing much to think about but Mises cared for truth and he saw the weaknesses of the kind of work he was doing how can we infer causal relations from the study of archival records all of this hangs in the air so this is the big weakness why you know just making assertions or sometimes when I don't make causal assertions I've just given the timeline or I've just stated metal facts but that's not actually what we are interested in we want to know causal relationships because only causal relationships are useful for us in future oriented action we want to know what we have to do now in order to attain certain objectives in the future the historical school had no clue about this what answering this question so he turned away from the historical school he turned away from an easy career so much did he love this is care for truth that he would risk his career his mother grew nervous she became almost desperate when he eventually after his studies when he first entered the financial administration then quit the job because he didn't suffer bureaucracy this boy is hopeless where do we get with him well another critical career choice was at the onset of World War I mentioned before that Mises was not did not remain within the administration charged with the execution of the war economy but that he was that he actually spent most of his time of those four years from 1914 to 1918 on the front why was that well because he had the temerity to criticize war socialism before you remember that the panel session that we had on monetary reform that the king the question came up so what's the second best what do we do should we rather go for interest rate targeting or for money supply targeting and offer for price level targeting etc etc and Mises in fact so applied to this case was to say well this is all the loony because it doesn't work anyway where the price targeting or actually say socialism the problem is not how do we manage completely the socialist economy it just is wrong and it doesn't get us anywhere we will lose the war if we do this it's not just my little preference as a liberal the battalion would say today economists that we have a fetish for the free market we are engaged in the war we want to win this war and we will lose it because we are wasting resources it's precisely in a war when you need the market most it's not then that you need the market least now that was not very fashionable was not very popular and in the discussion circles when you so imagine so sitting there you're a younger economist and so there's the ministry minister of war is there the minister of finance you come up with such things well it's not exactly what gets you high up in the war administration so they decided well they could dispense with the services of this young man and send him to the front there the problem would probably be solved by itself some some enemy bullet so again I mean so Mises made this choice not just in a peaceful calm environment okay so you round to an academic career but there was still other career choices of me also made this choice when his life was at stake how much more value can you place on truth it's not more a few of us of course will can hope to to attain this degree of love for truth and this would be unfair to us this of anybody but at least that's that's a great standard to aspire to another career choice was his critique of post-war socialism in Austria so right after World War one socialist governments became supreme in most countries in central and eastern Europe in Russia actually there was a revolution in 1917 as you know but they were also socialist governments not just socialists as today social democracy but real socialist communists right like the central planning guy ties and we shoot you if you don't obey guys right so they were elected in Austria in Germany Hungary there were real communist revolution violent revolutions also in Hungary and in Bavaria so Mises then confronted his former friend and fellow student in the Balabek seminar who had become the chancellor of the of the new socialist government Otto Bauer and again he could have played it easy he could have benefited from his personal good personal relationship that he had with Bauer and in fact he became an actual member of the government right he became a member of the State Department so he said yeah and then other people would have just schmoozed up to to Bauer and say yes this is a very good policy and let's see what the second best is in this case and so on and so on so that I might become then whatever the not only the Secretary of State but go higher and so on the administration Mises wouldn't have this he actually he did the exact opposite he spent one night after another for about a week discussing with Bauer and his wife and explaining to them that the policies they had in mind for Austria they had in store for Austria that were about to be applied next month would within a few weeks imply utter disruption of economic life in Austria and a few days or weeks later lead to a revolution and he managed to convince him and that not only led to the loss of his job in the State Department but also to break up of his friendship with Bauer. Another career choice that is relevant this is a critique of inflation of inflationary policies in Austria in the 1920s Mises was among the most adamant opponents of expansionary monetary policy that in those days and he was an adamant opponent of fractional reserve banks in fact he in his book the theory of money and credit as I told you yesterday he called for outlawing the practice of fractional reserve banking so according to Mises all additional issues as from now would have to be covered 100% by base money. Now here too Mises effectively close to himself otherwise promising career options he was asked several times to join the executive board of Austria's big banks it's like somebody asked you today well you can join you can remain a teacher at the university give your classes there but please join the board of Citibank or of Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan or something like this. How many economists today today's America would actually say no in that instance so I see you think about it and I thought a little about the question I didn't come up with a with any name and that is because it's a it's a it's a tough call renouncing to ingang prestige that were associated with this and Mises renounced this because he didn't want to not want to become compromised by such a professional affiliation. I have two other examples the first one concerns his stance on the methodology of the social sciences as you know because we've presented Mises views a few times during this week Mises held the opinion that economic laws and more generally speaking praxeological laws hold true on a priori grounds they cannot not only they do not need to be validated or refuted by empirical demonstrations but they cannot be so they hold true on a priori grounds that is independent of our of information that be gathered through our senses and can only be validated and or refuted by purely logical means. Now that effectively closed all doors to Mises in an environment in which positivistic ideas came to reign supreme that was the case already in australia in the 1930s but even more so in the United States after World War II he was completely out of step with the profession there was certainly one of the reasons why he was visiting NYU for 24 years right you cannot hire such a dinosaur impossible so this guy not only out of tune as far as politics is concerned but he holds some infuse that are laughable or methodological grounds right but he held on to this irrespective of what the profession was the opinion of his colleagues was and finally after World War II so he continued to live this life this life of a scholar at a relatively moderate income until his death in 1973 and he did so even though his pay at NYU was really moderate even though he had lost his pension claims with his native Austria that is officially that the pension claims still existed but they were debased through the inflation that had occurred during the war years and also because of the fact that there was a foreign exchange control so he could not repatriate his Austrian pension to the United States so given this most people would have looked for some some sort of profession that would allow them to to gain more or money even at the expense of the ideas that they hold to be true means this could have become a lobbyist for various industrial associations and he was asked to do so and always is association with these association these institutions ended because he could not be a lobbyist only be an economist that is also reasoning from the overall point of view and not just in the light of special interests so what is evident in these choices is unusual strength really few of us could do what Mises has done but sometimes we managed to make tough choices that are then imposed on as a price to be paid either in terms of career opportunity sometimes also in monetary terms and so on as far as I'm concerned I'm always proud when I make such a choice sometimes we were to renounce a really a lot of money saying this was a great day but of course you're you're poor up then otherwise right so right so the point is Mises can serve as a model here and it's probably impossible to to attain this and for some maybe some might have greater strength and so on but this is truly an inspiring model as far as I'm concerned second what we see here is unusual love why does Mises care so much I mean it's not just for any kind of truth that he cares it's it's true that is relevant from the point of view of society as a whole from the point of view of the Commonwealth Mises cared for others not I mean sometimes among lefties you have the tendency to care for humanity as a whole but they wouldn't give a dime to the beggar next door or help spend two hours with with their children helping them doing homework as a whole is fine but when it gets down to individual persons let's not be that's not exactly right and and that was not at all Mises thing Mises had time and he took time to to care for others something that I discovered during my biographical research on Mises was that he would often place people were difficult and had find difficulties finding jobs who would get them jobs helping them out in that respect giving money charitable donations he didn't brag about these things but this was a was a big thing in his family right both on the paternal side and the maternal side they just gave a lot of money to charitable institutions and finally it's a care beyond one's lifetime the things that were relevant that Mises cared for were not just important for his own generation they were important for all of the all of mankind also subsequent generations we've already said before that when the fact that we are here today is due to the fact that Mises survived World War one right but the fact that we are here today is of course also due to the fact that Mises did not care about second best options for monetary policy then we would no longer care for him today but that he was trying to hammer out a systematic economic analysis that can be applied for to all times in all places so in conclusion Mises can be a model and should be a model for us that he taught us how to stand for what we believe that he also taught us to pay the price to attain that what we believe he taught us to love truth more than ourselves even though we might not always follow him there but because we are too weak that's the idea that he gives us and he taught us to share the love for ideas in the classroom but also in the family and to pass it on this is the great legacy of the summer university and I'm glad to have been part of this with you during this week thank you