Book Description
Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) has been described as a revolutionary, an author of scholarly books and popular tracts, a social philosopher, a successful entrepreneur-a remarkable Renaissance man. He is best known as author of the law of markets, known as Say's law, and as the first to coin the term "entrepreneur." Say's concern with the average interested citizen and his zeal for economic education for the masses is most apparent in his classic work, A Treatise on Political Economy.
Readers will see that Say is without doubt a luminary of classical economics. He single-handedly revived the study of political economy from its decline and kept it alive during a difficult period of opposition to liberal ideas. Say had a missionary belief that society will be best served if the principles of political economy are widely disseminated and understood by the citizenry. His organization of the Treatise's subject matter-production, distribution, and consumption of wealth-continues to guide authors of economic textbooks to this day. His treatment of the role of the entrepreneur as a contributor to production different from that of either the manager or the capitalist was the most advanced of his times.
In their new introduction, Quddus and Rashid note that present-day readers of this volume will benefit from the remarkable freshness of Say's ideas. The longevity of this volume proves that good ideas can successfully withstand the test of time. The role played by the Treatise in spreading liberal economic ideas and especially laissez-faire and free trade in France, the rest of Europe, and in the newly independent United States must also be appreciated. One suspects Say would have liked nothing better than to have his Treatise attract entrepreneurs, managers, and other non-specialist readers to economics. Given the emphasis on capitalism, free markets and unrestricted global trade republication of this great classic could not be more timely. Political economists, social philosophers, and those in business fields will find it indispensable reading.
Customer Reviews:
Economics for the Common Man.......2003-05-28
Anyone interested in economics, but afraid to tackle it due to it's abstract reasoning and theories needs to pick up Jean Baptiste Say's "Treatise on Political Economy". Say, a free market liberal, was an admirer of Adam Smith, but was also critical of his views on the Labor Theory of Value. Say, an ardent republican, and participator in the French Revolution, was also an admirer of Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson with whom he corresponded.
Say believes government policy should stimulate frugality, risk taking, and investment. Say provides a very complelling arguement against excessive regulation, unequal privilege, high taxes, and corporations. Say,although a free marketeer, does not see pure benevolence in corporations, he see them for what they are: chartered privelged companies with government favor. This favor imperils economic freedom and destroys individual risk taking. Say advocated the abolition of monopolies, trade restrictions, and subsidies to corporations.
Say also shows his Enlightenment ideals of public spirit and the diffusion of knowledge. He relates the proper role for government as the propmotion of public schools, academies, libraries, canals, roads , bridges and military defense. Say although a thorough liberatrian, was not a worshipper of social darwinism. Say feared huge concentrations of wealth, luxury, and privilege as destructive to a free economy and republcan values.
If you love freedom and republican government, this is a classic.
Book Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program.
Book Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program.
Product Description
The first American edition, compiled from the works of the author. List of subscribers and advertisements on two pages at rear. Fairman portrait frontispiece.
From the Publisher
Human Action, Mises' seminal work, lays out the principles of economics, political economy and the social sciences with a meticulous logic which has prompted many to hail it as the "bible" of economics. This fourth revised edition, features a new hardcover and a new foreword and index by Bettina Bien Greaves.
Customer Reviews:
Drivel.......2007-09-30
The hyperbolic praise heaped on this book comes from a minority. Von Mises's method is proof by intimidation, by sheer length and tedium.
One example suffices: von Mises proves that slavery is impossible, from his axioms. So much for history.
A Work of Genius.......2007-07-30
Human Action is one of the ten most insightful books on economics ever written. This is impressive, but even more impressive that Mises has more than one book on this list (in my opinion). Human Action is the most recent (hopefully not the last) great treatise on political economy. While some treatises compile the ideas of others, there are many original and important insights to this book. Perhaps the most important insight of this book concerns economic calculation. Mises sees economic calculation as the most fundamental problem in economics. The economic problem to Mises is that of action. We act to dispel feelings of uneasiness, but can only succeed in acting if we comprehend causal connections between the ends that we want to satisfy, and available means. Mises is drawing upon Menger's brilliant 1871 book here, but he has his own ideas as well. The fact that we live in a world of causality means that we face definite choices as to how we satisfy our ends. Human Action is an application of Human Reason to select the best means of satisfying ends. The reasoning mind evaluates and grades different options. This is economic calculation.
Economic calculation is common to all people. Mises insisted that the logical structure of human minds is the same for everybody. Of course, this is not to say that all minds are the same. We make different value judgments and posses different data, but logic is the same for all. Human reason and economic calculation have limitations, but Mises sees no alternative to economic calculation as a means of using scarce resources to improve our well being.
Human Action concerns dynamics. The opposite to action is not inaction. Rather, the opposite to action is contentment. In a fully contented state there would be no action, no efforts to change the existing order of things (which might be changed by merely ceasing to do some things). We act because we are never fully satisfied, and will never stop because we can never be fully satisfied. This might seem like a simple point, but modern economics is built upon ideas of contentment- equilibrium analysis and indifference conditions. It is true that some economists construct models of dynamic equilibrium, but the idea of a dynamic equilibrium is oxymoronic to Mises. An actual equilibrium may involve a recurring cycle, but not true dynamics. True dynamics involve non-repeating evolutionary change.
Mises explains dynamic change in terms of `the plain state of rest'. A final state of rest involves perfect plans to fully satisfy human desires. A plain state of rest is a temporary and imperfect equilibrium deriving from past human plans. Though any set of plans is imperfect, to act means attempting to improve each successive set of plans. Movement from one plain state of rest to another represents the process of change, either evolutionary or devolutionary. How then do we experience progress?
Mises links progress and profits. Profits earned from voluntary trades are the indicator of economic success. It is monetary calculation of profits that indicates whether an enterprise has generated a net increase in consumer well being over true economic costs. The close association that Mises draws between economic calculation and monetary calculation leads him to conclude that market prices (upon which monetary profits are calculated) are indispensable to progress in bettering the human condition. Without markets there are no prices, and without prices there is no economic calculation. One point that Mises made, but did not get enough attention, is that monetary calculation takes place primarily in financial markets. This is especially clear on page 704 of the scholar's edition. Monetary calculation is vitally important, but who actually carries out these calculations?
Mises stresses the importance of entrepreneurship because it is entrepreneurs who actually do monetary calculation. This fact puts entrepreneurs at the center of all progress (and failure). Entrepreneurs who estimate costs more correctly than their rivals earn high profits while also serving consumers. Such men rise to top positions in industry. Entrepreneurs who err seriously in their calculations experience financial losses and cease to direct production. Mises described this market test of entrepreneurial skills as the only process of trial and error that really matters. The concepts of monetary calculation, financial speculation, and entrepreneurship form the basis for the von Mises critique of socialism.
Mises has nothing good to say about interventionism either. As for the business cycle, this is generated by the manipulation of interest rates by central banks. It is fairly obvious that Mises opposed the idea of government run economic systems, but Mises did see limited roles for government in providing national defense, police protection, and criminal justice. Some contemporary Mises enthusiasts would disagree, yet the state proposed by Mises would (in my opinion) be a vast improvement over our present state of affairs.
There are too many angles to this book to discuss fully in this review, but the more controversial parts concern methodology. Mises rejects positivism and mathematical economics. As for positivism, Mises does not argue that economics should not be empirical. Mises argues that it CANNOT be empirical. Ideas are logically prior to data of complex phenomena. Without ideas to interpret data on social phenomena we could not make sense of anything in society. Critics of von Mises tend to be totally unaware of this argument.
Mises sees ideas as all-important. It is our ideas that govern our actions. We act because we have ideas as to particular means of dispelling uneasiness. Some see causal connections between government intervention and increased societal welfare. Students of Mises see things differently, because we hold different ideas. This is a very important angle of the Mises paradigm. As Mises wrote in 1922, only ideas can overcome ideas. Marxian notions of the material forces of history and class interest as the prime movers of history are not only wrong, but dangerous because they are anti-rationalist. Ideas matter above all else, and the ideas developed by Mises in Human Action matter above all others.
Genesis.......2007-07-18
Murray Rothbard: "Every once in a while the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by producing a noble work of the intellect. . . . To state that _Human Action_ is a `must' book is a greater understatement. This is the economic Bible of the civilized man."
When I make it to the Big Time, the first thing I'll do is hand a free hard-cover copy of Human Action to every chimp on Capitol Hill and whilst I'm at it, I'll maybe even stop by the White House and hand them a few copies. To people who don't know the difference between a Republic and a Democracy this book will provide a lighted runway to the Genesis and rebirth of Free Laissez Faire Capitalism. But they will have to relinquish their misbegotten power to accomplish this feat.
Masterpiece.......2007-05-25
Ludwig von Mises
"The first thing a genius needs is to breathe free air."
"Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public."
"Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act."
"People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict."
"All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out."
"Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own."
"Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow..."
Terrible Economics, Terrible Philosophy.......2007-04-19
Ludwig von Mises of the Australian School of Economics finds it perfectly reasonable to make up words such as "praxeology" and expect people to know what he is talking about. Also it is disappointing to note that von Mises apparantly took drugs during his lifetime.
Verdict: Avoid
Book Description
Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life.
In just ten minutes, The Meeting, as it would forever be known, would begin. Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch.
“How could my life have unraveled so quickly?” he wondered.
In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centered around a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.
Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn’t know how to solve. And he doesn’t know where or who to turn to for advice. His staff can’t help him; they’re as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings.
Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey’s world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.
As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.
Download Description
Casey McDaniel had never been so nervous in his life.
In just ten minutes, The Meeting, as it would forever be known, would begin. Casey had every reason to believe that his performance over the next two hours would determine the fate of his career, his financial future, and the company he had built from scratch.
“How could my life have unraveled so quickly?” he wondered.
In his latest page-turning work of business fiction, best-selling author Patrick Lencioni provides readers with another powerful and thought-provoking book, this one centered around a cure for the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business: bad meetings. And what he suggests is both simple and revolutionary.
Casey McDaniel, the founder and CEO of Yip Software, is in the midst of a problem he created, but one he doesn’t know how to solve. And he doesn’t know where or who to turn to for advice. His staff can’t help him; they’re as dumbfounded as he is by their tortuous meetings.
Then an unlikely advisor, Will Peterson, enters Casey’s world. When he proposes an unconventional, even radical, approach to solving the meeting problem, Casey is just desperate enough to listen.
As in his other books, Lencioni provides a framework for his groundbreaking model, and makes it applicable to the real world. Death by Meeting is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.
Customer Reviews:
Pointed and on topic.......2007-09-09
The book was pointed, on topic, and did what I think it intended to do, show that meetings don't have to be and truly shouldn't be boring. He gave some solid reasons why meetings end up that way and provided ways to avoid these pitfalls. I don't think he exhausted the reasons for boring meetings (i.e. trouble employees) but he hit some highlights. He didn't stray off course or try to cover too much. I tend to agree with one reviewer that by keeping it short and sweet the possibility of co-workers actually reading the book goes way up and thereby their buying into the multiple meeting strategy goes up as well.
Also, his suggestions can impact a company in ways beyond making meetings more fun. His suggestion to engender conflict/"working out issues" leads to everyone being less confusion about what is expected. I truly liked the book and would recommend it to my co-workers.
Meetings are a snap-shot of an organization's culture.......2007-08-23
The quickest way to identify a company's culture is to observe their key meetings. One of the most impactful ways to change a company's culture is to change the way they handle meetings. In this parable (cannot be a fable, as it lacks the necessary animal cast) by consultant Patrick Lencioni, these truisms provide the platform for Lencioni's theory of meeting management. This theory addresses what Lencioni sees as the two key problems with most business meetings; lack of drama, and lack of contextual structure. He looks to the meeting owner to provide `The Hook' (set-up the plot for the drama), and the meeting facilitator to `Mine for Conflict'. Then he recommends contextual structure can be established by segregating meetings according to the time-frame they address; the daily check-in, weekly tactical, monthly strategic, and quarterly off-site review.
Great title, easy read, but misleading if you think this book is about how to reduce the number of meetings within your organization. Lencioni, in fact, recommends more and not less meetings; but without explicitly stating it, he implies that every meeting must have a clear purpose (context), identified objectives for each topic, and that the meeting owner and the meeting facilitator roles must be clear. His story also illustrates the importance of pre-meeting planning and content preparation. Lencioni makes the point that meetings are not a necessary evil; they are an opportunity to focus and engage people if done well. The book is recommended as a reminder of the value that meeting management can bring to an organization.
How to reduce (if not eliminate) one of the major causes of organizational waste.......2007-07-17
This is one in a series of "leadership fables" in which Patrick Lencioni shares his thoughts about the contemporary business world. His characters are fictitious human beings rather than anthropomorphic animals, such as a tortoise that wins a race against a hare or pigs that lead a revolution to overthrow a tyrant and seize control of his farm.
In this instance, Lencioni focuses on probably the single greatest waste of organizational resources: meetings. Although they are "the closet thing to an operating room, a playing field, or a stage that we have...most of us hate them. We complain about, try to avoid, and long for the end of meetings, even when we're running the darn things! How pathetic is it that we have come to accept that the activity most central to the running of our organizations is inherently painful and unproductive?" Nonetheless, in most organizations, meetings comprise the single greatest cause of waste of resources and, yes, of opportunities as well.
Briefly, here's the fictitious situation. Lencioni introduces Casey McDaniel, generally viewed as "an extraordinary man - but just an ordinary CEO" of Yip Software, a designer and manufacturer of sports-related video games company he founded. What is perhaps most significant about Casey is the fact that conducts lethargic, unfocused, and passionless staff meetings that his colleagues understandably dread, as does he. For reasons best revealed within the narrative, he sells his company to Playsoft, the second-largest manufacturer of video games. Enter J.T. Harrison who serves as a liaison between Yip and Software. Almost immediately, Casey's inadequacies as a CEO and, especially, the consequences of the executive staff meetings he conducts become obvious to Harrison who becomes increasingly concerned about Yip's underperformance. Casey's career and the fate of his company are in jeopardy when Casey hires Will Petersen to be his temporary administrative assistant while his permanent administrative assistant is on maternity leave.
What then happens - and does not happen -- throughout the ensuing weeks enables Lencioni to dramatize the importance of scheduling, preparing for, conducting, and then following through on meetings that are never boring nor ineffective. Hence the great emphasis Lencioni places on having different kinds of meetings (e.g. daily check-in, weekly tactical, monthly or as-needed ad hoc strategic, and quarterly off-site), each of which has a different context, purpose, structure, and timeframe. Obviously, some meetings will generate more conflict, excitement, drama, etc. than will others. Over the years, many (if not most) of the staff meetings I have participated in (including those I conducted) wasted time on discussion of what to discuss rather than on making decisions about what to do.
At least 8-10 years ago, Lencioni apparently made a conscious decision to address especially important business issues by creating a human context for each rather than merely offering answers to questions or prescribing solutions to problems. To me, this is one of the greatest benefits of a business narrative, in this instance of a leadership fable: Creating a series of real-world situations (albeit portrayed fictitiously) that readers can identify with emotionally as well as rationally. He is a brilliant business thinker but he also possesses the skills of a master raconteur as he introduces a cast of characters, develops conflicts between and among them, and then allows "rising action" to build to a climax that is also best revealed within the narrative. Unexpected plot developments engage the reader even more.
Of special interest to me is Will's role in this business fable. He serves as an especially effective means by which Lencioni articulates his insights and suggestions. Eventually, in ways and to an extent also best revealed within the narrative, Will has a profound impact on Casey's leadership style as well as on Yip Software's fate. Although Casey and his colleagues as well as J.T. Harrison are fictitious characters, each is credible as a human being rather merely functioning as a literary device. Their values, concerns, personalities, anxieties, and behavior will be very familiar to anyone who has been involved in non-productive group discussions.
As is Lencioni's custom in each of the other volumes in the series of "leadership fables," he also includes (after the Fable) a "Model" section, consisting of supplementary material (Pages 221-254) whose value-added benefits will help his reader to make effective application of the lessons learned from the experiences shared by Casey and his colleagues at Yip Software. Lencioni leaves no doubt that there are direct correlations between enjoyable as well as productive meetings and effective leadership and management to establish and then sustain a "healthy"organization.
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Patrick Lencioni's other "leadership fables" as well as Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, David Maister's Practice What You Preach, Bill George's Authentic Leadership and his more recently published True North, James O'Toole's Creating the Good Life, and Michael Maccoby's Narcissistic Leaders.
Good for learning the basics of a meeting.......2007-07-17
This gives a great layout of the many meetings that take place in work places. For those who have managed or lead people and organizations for more than a few years it will be a review.I recommend it for any new manager or leader. The movie analogies work well too.
Great book.......2007-07-02
I enjoyed this quick read. I found it paralleled some issues I was facing in my meetings. I can't wait to give these models a try.
Average customer rating:
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Digital Gift to the Nation: Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital and Internet Age
Lawrence K. Grossman ,
Newton N. Minow , and
TCF
Manufacturer: Century Foundation Press
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ASIN: 0870784668 |
Book Description
As the United States enters the new century, technological advances have the power to transform commerce, the public sector, and how citizens interact. This volume, part of the multiyear Digital Promise project administered by The Century Foundation, examines emerging technologies including wireless telephony, electronic data transmission, and Internet communications and how they impact educational, cultural, and other nonprofit organizations. The book features a report prepared by Lawrence K. Grossman, former president of NBC News and PBS, and Newton Minow, former chairman of the FCC and PBS, two of the leading intellectuals on public telecommunications matters. They offer specific policy recommendations for securing and protecting the public's interest in the ongoing technology revolution. Specifically, Grossman and Minow suggest creating a "Digital Information Trust," modeled after the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of the nineteenth century. The trust fund would be financed by revenues from the federal government's sale or lease of electromagnetic spectrum and would be used to support the work of a range of educational and nonprofit groups.
Book Description
From the Amazon Jungle to the Canadian Arctic, Gerry Mitchell has helped people take advantage of the most enticing opportunities the Travel Industry has to offer for more than 30 years. The author has presented his seminars and manuals to the Travel Industry, Adult Education, Small Business Development and entrepreneurs wishing to take advantage of the Second Largest Income producing Industry in the World—TRAVEL.
Additionally, he has been Associate Professor at Western Carolina University, The University of Alabama.
Distinguished clients include Pen State University, West Point Academy, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD and U.S. Navy, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Ministries of Tourism throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Far East Russia.
The GEM Group is register consultant with the Organizations of American States and The World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank.
***** Learn How This Travel Manual Can Benefit You and Your Future · Inside Secrets From a 30-Year Travel Veteran · Reaching Your Markets · Building On Success · Resources and Additional Sources of Assistance · Be Your Own Boss · Leave Corporate Stress Behind · Make Part of Your Home Tax-Deductible · Learn How to Market Your Tours and Cruises · Turn Your Talents Into Profits · Write Your Travels Off as "Tax Deductible" · Travel FREE while earning an Income!!
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- Advanced Financial Risk Management: Tools & Techniques for Integrated Credit Risk and Interest Rate Risk Managements
- Against the Conventional Wisdom: A Primer for Current Economics Controversies and Proposals
- ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S PAPERS ON PUBLIC CREDIT COMMERCE AND FINANCE
- Applied Statistics For Engineers and Scientists Using Microsoft Excel and MINITAB (With CD-ROM)
- Basic Principles of Economic Value
- Basics of Mortgage-Backed Securities (Frank J. Fabozzi Series)
- Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street
- Communities And Workforce Development
- Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities
- Computer-Aided Econometrics (Statistics: a Series of Textbooks and Monogrphs)
Books Index
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