In the end I couldn't follow this as an audiobook. I didn't abandon it because it wasn't interesting, 'twas very interesting.

Basically monetarism geography time humans. Delivers a constant stream of iinteresting ideas (Keynesiasm as inflationary disaster, inflation as a very uneven redistribution - banks first.)

But this book is from way back, before the current era of a completely false economy ( )

This was surprisingly readable once I got into it (I expected von Mises to be impenetrable). Critics will say it has not aged well since some things von Mises posits as impossible have come to pass. I'm actually not sure our current, completely-untethered-to-gold money system will remain indefinitely intact, but I doubt von Mises would have believed it would endure 35 years, which it has. Still, I found myself agreeing with the basic thesis that money is too important to entrust to government, even a theoretically apolitical part of it like a central bank. The temptation to expand monetary issue, stealing little by little from the holders of money until a crisis occurs, is a problem I cannot see any way to avoid but removing the power over money from government altogether. ( )

Most books in economics don't retain their importance for very long, but this one is still well worth reading a hundred years after it was first published. That's because the author writes from a broad perspective about theoretical and philosophical questions which are current in any age. I especially liked the author's theory of economic value which seems to be more sensible than much of what I've read in modern textbooks. The level of difficulty rises toward the end when the focus turns toward credit and banking, so I found myself in over my head there. In these latter sections the discussion is to some extent tied to specific examples of credit instruments from the early 20th century, so a detailed knowledge of the history of banking might be necessary for understanding it fully.

This is one of the greatest books ever written on the subject of money, the first to apply marginal utility theory to money, and an important, early (indeed, one of the first) post-cardinalist revisions of marginal utility along ordinalist lines. The book is the author's first great work, a masterpiece, and the first classic of the third generation of the Austrian School. In it, Mises pushes beyond the work of Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk and Friedrich Freiherr von Wieser (his immediate precursors) while at the same time restoring the broad insights of the school's founder, Carl Menger.

This is not Mises's easiest book. But it is worth reading nevertheless. It contains an expansion of Menger's theory of the origin of money. It contains an important critique of the common misuse of index numbers, and, in general, attacks the ever-popular scientism that so many economists bring to the discipline.

The book also contains many interesting thoughts on the gold standard and what Mises calls "monetary reconstruction." Really, this is a must-read for anyone concerned about economic policy, as well as those, like me, who are mainly concerned with the core ideas of economics.

I do not pretend to agree with all of Mises's points. Indeed, I'm something of a skeptic about some of his conclusions, to say the least. But I know a classic when I read one. And I know that this is the kind of classic that is still worth reading.

Economics has not yet moved beyond Mises in a reliable way. We are still, to some extent, enmired in the twin catastrophes of Keynesianism and the Walrasian revival. ( )