Human Action

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

First edition
Author	Ludwig von Mises
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Political economy
Publisher	Yale University Press, Ludwig von Mises Institute
Publication date	1949, 1998, 2010
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages	881
ISBN	978-0865976313
OCLC	730271204

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics is a work by the Austrian economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises. Widely considered Mises' magnum opus,^[1] it presents the case for laissez-faire capitalism based on praxeology, his method to understand the structure of human decision-making. Mises rejected positivism within economics, and defended an a priori foundation for praxeology, as well as methodological individualism and laws of self-evident certainty.^[2] Mises argues that the free-market economy not only outdistances any government-planned system, but ultimately serves as the foundation of civilization itself.^[3]

Nationalökonomie: Theorie des Handelns und Wirtschaftens is the 1940 German-language predecessor to Human Action.^[4]

Mises argues that market-generated money prices are essential to determine the most highly valued uses for resources to satisfy consumer demands. He attempts to demonstrate the inconsistencies of piecemeal political intervention in the market economy and the pernicious effects of political control and manipulation of the monetary system. In Mises's view, government interventions that distort market prices always result in misdirections of resources, including labor, and malinvestments of capital, leading to inflationary upswings followed by inevitable economic downturns. Mises believed that the market economy was the only system that provided freedom and personal choice to all members of society while generating the means for coordinating the actions of billions of people in the most economically rational manner, and that monetary manipulation by central banks was one of the most disruptive distortions to the process of economic calculation.^[3]