Dictator Juan Peron was forced into exile and in his wreckage the Argentina economic foundation was destroyed. Peron successors didn’t improve thing much and out of this turmoil advices was asked for. Dr. Alberto Benegas-Lynch asked Ludwig Von Mises to deliver a number of lectures. Several hundred students heard the lectures that were taped and translated into Spanish for the students. In the speeches Mises didn’t rely on notes and didn’t restrain his talks even about communism and fascism. Mises wife, Margit, would later write on this occasion in My Years with Ludwig von Mises, “If anyone in those times would have dared to attack communism and fascism as my husband did, the police would have come in and taken hold of him immediately, and the assembly would have been broken up.”(pg 12)
Margit Von Mises later found the transcripts of theses speeches after Mises death and converted them into a book call Economic PoliciesThoughts of Today and Tomorrow.
Theses speeches were given in 1959 but in today’s world we all seem to be facing the same choices that Argentina faced. Here in the United States of America like too many other countries we have been headed towards omnipotent government which Mises warned against. In the introduction to the third edition Bettina Bien Greaves gives a condensed quote that should make Mises advice painfully obvious:
The ideal economic policy, both for today and tomorrow, is very simple. Government should protect and defend against domestic and foreign aggression the lives and property of the persons under its jurisdiction, settle disputes that arise, and leave the people otherwise free to pursue their various goals and ends in life (pg 5)
However we know that most countries around the world don’t do this. About the only claim they often make is that they are defending against foreign aggression to some degree and the rest they trample all over. They still hand out favors to certain business and keep repeating mistakes that have been known to ruin empires and the people’s lives for over a thousand of years.
Since 1959 Argentina has improved but slowly. The six lectures are as follow:
- Capitalism
- Socialism
- Interventionism
- Inflation
- Foreign Investment
- Policies and Ideas
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