Time to Celebrate the Entrepreneur

Toby Baxendale, perhaps England's most important Austrian, writes an excellent piece on the importance of the entrepreneur (though you wouldn't know it if you examined virtually every government policy under the sun).

Here's my as yet unmoderated comment, in reply:

Jack Maturin
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March 22nd, 2010 at 21:03 · Reply

“Do you think it is very worrying that not one government policy encourages the entrepreneurs of the world to create wealth?”

I reckon this is largely due to the anti-capitalistic mentality which has successfully infected the minds of over 99.99% of the chattering classes, for many different reasons, most particular of which is the rise of Marxism from the 19th century onwards. However Marxism is merely a nastily virulent strain of a horribly recurring virus, which is the mental disease of envy, an incoherent thought-system barely hidden behind a feeble shield wall of irrational scribblings. So even while they chatter to each other on iPhones, perhaps the ultimate product of 10,000 years of entrepreneurial capitalism, the socialists of “It’s Grim Up North London” denigrate the very process which brought them such an unbelievably advanced and incredible piece of technology.

Politicians will always appeal to whatever element in society will keep re-voting them back into power, so that they can continue to enjoy the comfortable leather seats of their well-deserved limousines, and if the anti-capitalistic mentality holds sway, then this is the voting bloc to which all of their policies will be pointed. That’s why I think it’s important that anyone trying to escape the madness of socialism should ensure they read Ludwig von Mises’ explosive short book, “The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality”, which is freely available here:

=> http://mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap.asp

Perhaps the best way of understanding how the anti-entrepreneurial mentality took such a powerful hold of what we might call “The Intellectual West”, is then to read Murray Rothbard’s magnificent two volume book series, on the history of economic thought:

=> Volume I: Economic Thought Before Adam Smith
=> http://mises.org/books/histofthought1.pdf

=> Volume II: Classical Economics
=> http://mises.org/books/histofthought2.pdf

Alas, Uncle Murray never survived to write the third volume, which would have also destroyed Keynes, but hopefully Toby you can persuade Joe Salerno to complete the set, and write this important third edition, the next time you’re in Auburn?

Buttonhole him, Toby. Don’t let him out of your sight until he agrees to do it.