Human Action
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Human Action
| Full title | Human Action: A Treatise on Economics |
|---|---|
| Author | Ludwig von Mises |
| Published | 1949 |
| Pages | 907 |
| Recommended | 2 times |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Mises’s thousand-page treatise and the fullest statement of the Austrian programme: economics as a branch of praxeology, the study of purposeful action, with the market understood as a continuous process of individual valuation rather than a system tending to equilibrium. Much of it shows that socialism cannot compute — without money prices for the means of production there is no way to compare uses of resources. |
Where I heard about it
- On Jay’s investing reading list — a Google Sheet of 92 books by discipline, saved in Kyle’s Roam notes on April 15th, 2020 (Jay’s Investing Reading List). Jay’s reason: “Ontology-based understanding of social sciences / economic factors”
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List (March 2026), anchoring the Austrian School Economics section that the other entries (Hayek, the Mont Pèlerin transcripts) argue with and around. Full transcription: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
Connections
- Economics — the discipline the book rebuilds from first principles.
- Socialism — the target of its calculation argument.
- The Road to Serfdom — Hayek’s popular statement of the adjacent case, also in Kyle’s anti-library.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the list this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.