Ludwig who?
In a recent article I gave a quote from Ludwig Von Mises. I was delighted when I got an email saying the writer was pleased that such a major figure in economic thought had been mentioned. So who was he? Most people have never heard of him, but he had a huge effect on those who came after him, most notably Friedrich Hayek who was one of his doctoral students.
I think there are two reasons he has been somewhat passed over. The first is he lived at a time when Keynes was at the height of his powers. Whatever you think about him, at the time he held sway as post the second world war all countries struggled to regain some kind of stability. I’m sure most have forgotten but I remember as a child when chocolate and sweets were removed from rationing in the early 1950s. The second is Von Mises has wrongly been branded as a Fascist sympathiser. To take Nazism first, I think it extremely unlikely that he was a supporter seeing as how they destroyed all his books and work in progress and he had to escape Germany with literally nothing. As far as Mussolini went, his statements on Italian Fascism were that short term the dictatorship improved some things but as time went on Mussolini and his Fascisti became more and more entrenched in state intervention which ultimately destroyed Italian economic progress. I don’t read that as supporting them.
As did many others, he fled to America where he continued to espouse individual freedom. Germany’s losses, from all the people they drove out, was very definitely, America’s gain. I once read a book about this very thing and one sentence remains with me. “The American space program was staffed with our German scientists as opposed to the Russians, who had their German scientists.”
Possibly Von Mises most famous saying was “Socialism dies when reason prevails.” We can definitely see that in the present UK imbroglio. He believed Marx provided a strong and politically valid critique of capitalism. The problem was Marx didn’t really advocate anything positive in its place, beyond state control and direction. That is the “I know better than you” policy which ignores the market mechanism – and good luck with that over the long term. As we have seen it won’t last. He believed – as I tend to – that all statists have noble motives and believe they are serving a noble purpose. The problem is they are jealous and hate that anyone has anything they don’t (worked for or not).
For absolutely sure those currently directing economic policy in the UK are going in exactly the wrong direction.
Our tax system currently penalises success. You probably saw that one in six of the people in the Rich List of two years ago are no longer in it. It’s all right, they haven’t lost their money (even if you wished they had). They’ve simply moved themselves and it to another jurisdiction to avoid the depredations. We need a tax system that rewards work and investment, not the opposite. We need a trade policy that opens markets rather than closes them.
This present Government and the Blob want the UK to realign with EU. That would instantly sink our Tech industry.
They refuse to bring central government spending under control, which will in time actually bring the whole country to a grinding halt.
The new employment bill is going to hamstring employers but more importantly, it will mean that employees are less valued and reduced longer term. Guess what? Less people employed, less taxes collected and more paid out in benefits. There needs to be a fair balance between employees and employers which has now been suborned.
We have the highest electricity prices in the developed world. Net zero will do nothing to help that and will in fact make it worse. As far as energy security goes, we have already destroyed it. No oil and gas exploration now means none in the future that is not imported. We need to get our energy sector growing, not dying.
We need to rethink the excessive numbers of University students and what they learn so that they actually have a job to go to. At the same time we need to refinance students in such a way as to make it worthwhile for them to learn. I might just mention that when I was at University a very long time ago there were about 300,000 students in total. There were vocational students as well (usually at Techs) but my point is they all had training for a proper job – and please don’t shout at me for using that expression. The reason nearly all tradesmen are from other countries now is that the perfectly Ok system of techs and apprenticeships we had was effectively scuppered when Universities were told to ramp up what they were teaching with the result that an elite (yes an elite) of undergraduates became a rabble. Whatever else you may think, you do actually need people to be leaders and you won’t get them by teaching Fashion and Fabric or Travel and Tourism. Or media studies.
And we need radical planning reform to unleash housebuilding. The present Government said they were going to do just that. Of course they haven’t, but they have loaded more taxes and regulations on the building industry, instantly making it unprofitable to actually build out some of their existing landbanks. The most recent report shows a continuing decline for the last 17 months. That describes perfectly the period the present government have been messing about with building.
And still they think a programme of nationalising production will increase both it and profitability. Directing investment by political fiat will only make everything more expensive and almost certainly lead to shortages. It’s very simple. If it’s not worth your while to do something, you will stop doing it. And never mind if it inconveniences others and was a good thing in the first place. You can’t make people produce things at a loss, unless you subsidise them and once again State intervention distorts the market, makes it less efficient and a drag on people’s budgets and taxes.
So please, let’s revert to the workings of Mr. Market and let him sort out what state intervention cannot.
