Austrian Economics Entrepreneurship: Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter: "The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail" --Joseph Schumpeter

Austrian Economics Entrepreneurship: Mises, Hayek, Schumpeter: "The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail" --Joseph Schumpeter

http://artsentrepreneurship.com
http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org

Hero's Journey MBA
"The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail" --Joseph Schumpeter

Austrian Economics Entrepreneurship
The Greatest Investment Autumn, 2008
by Dr. Elliot McGucken

Entrepreneurship cannot be taught. But in no way does this mean there is nothing to teach in a class devoted to entrepreneurship. We must teach of liberty's ideals and the precepts underlying our precious, exalted freedom. We must battle for the soul of capitalism; and this has ever been done best by those brave men who acquainted themselves with the classics' immortal ideals in books written pages, and then took rugged action in rendeirng those ideals real in living ventures, as did our Founding Fathers.

Thus a class devoted to Entreprneurship--to the supposed bottom line--is actually a class devoted to the higher ideals. And so it is that I flipped the script on the modern university, by sneaking the Great Books back onto the debt-based campus in a Trojan Horse called The Hero's Journey in Arts Entreprenuership & Technology.

As the winds are forever shifting throughout the financial world, oft opposing the more constant winds in that higher, ethereal realm, a greater, more-enduring investment is to be found in a classical liberal arts education. For Socrates reminds us that virtue does not come from wealth, but that wealth and every lasting good of man derives from virtue:

For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. --Socrates, The Apology

The Great Books have been hedged against and shorted across all realms, and now is a great time to buy in--right on the cusp of a renaissance in classical honor, integrity, and character. All the classics in my Hero's Journey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology class can be purchased for less than the typical textbook--most can be downloaded for free--and the ideals contained within their pages will last a lifetime, providing sublime mentorship in all endeavors.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. --Plato

"What warrants success in a fight for freedom and civilization is not merely material equipment but first of all the spirit that animates those handling the weapons. This heroic spirit cannot be bought by inflation." --Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 469

"The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders." --Ludwig von Mises

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law. --Hayek

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. --F.A. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (1967)

A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. --F.A. Hayek

Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread, but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn. --Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom, p. 71 Keynes

A work of art is an attempt to experience the universe as a whole. One cannot analyze or dissect it into parts and comment on it without destroying its intrinsic character. --Ludwig von Mises

Economic affairs cannot be kept going by magistrates and policemen. --Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 282 Coercion

Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them. --Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 311 p. 314

Ludwig von Mises --"An entrepreneur cannot be trained." Human Action p. 311 p. 314

Ludwig von Mises The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place.. Progress cannot be organized. --Ludwig von Mises, Socialism p. 167 Genius

One cannot organize or institutionalize the emergence of new ideas. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science Ludwig von Mises p. 129 Ideas

A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their conditions is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation. Planning for Freedom pp. 92-93 Material Well-Being --Ludwig von Mises

The general intellectual climate which this produces, the spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth which it engenders, the loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth, the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry.... Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders even in countries still under a liberal regime. --F.A. Hayek

In the etatist state entrepreneurs are at the mercy of officialdom. Officials enjoy discretion to decide questions on which the existence of every firm depends. They are practically free to ruin any entrepreneur they want to. They had the power not only to silence these objectors but even to force them to contribute to the party funds of nationalism. --Mises

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. --Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. --Mises

Individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices. --Mises

It was in the climate created by this capitalistic system of individualism that all the modern intellectual achievements thrived. --Mises

"The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not." --F.A. Hayek

"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." --Ludwig Von Mises

"[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office." --Ludwig Von Mises

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. --Ludwig von Mises, Government and Civil Society

"Economics deals with society's fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen." --Ludwig von Mises

"Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind, while it is the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual process." --F.A. Hayek

"I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide. Conversation at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. (9 February 1978); published in A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism (1979)" --F.A. Hayek

"If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants." --F.A. Hayek, Nobel Lecture of December 11, 1974, The Pretence of Knowledge

Murry Rothabrd wrote, "The Mises Institute's coat of arms is that of the Mises family, awarded in 1881 when Ludwig von Mises's great-grandfather Mayer Rachmiel Mises was ennobled by the Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria. In the upper right-hand quadrant is the staff of Mercury, god of commerce and communication (the Mises family was successful in both; they were merchants and bankers). In the lower left-hand quadrant is a representation of the Ten Commandments. Mayer Rachmiel, as well as his father, presided over various Jewish cultural organizations in Lemberg, the city where Ludwig was born. The red banner displays the Rose of Sharon, which in the litany is one of the names given to the Blessed Mother, as well as the Stars of the Royal House of David, a symbol of the Jewish people. Ludwig's lifelong motto was from Virgil: tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito." --http://mises.org/about/3248

In many ways the modern (postmodern) financial and familial crises are a product of our postmodern universities, which have substituted "truthiness" for "truth," financial engineering for physical engineering, and innovations in ethics for ideals in innovation. It is almost as if the Greats, by their simple exaltation of Truth and Reason, have been deemed irrelevant in the academy, as simple principles get in the way of financial bubbles, unprecedented student debt, and the privatization of profits and socilzation of risk that is spearheaded by postmodernism's best and brightest--by those who speak forth one thing while holding in their hearts another.

For as I detest the doorways of death, I detest that man, who hides in his heart one thing and speaks forth another. --Achilles, Homer's Iliad

All-too-many contemporary classes are void of any and all Enlightenment Thinkers and the classical giants upon whose shoulders they stood.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

The academy has all but forgotten the importance of character over cash, of the higher ideals over the bottom line, of the soul over semblance. And character, ideals, and the soul are found not in corporate case studies, but in eternity's case studies--the Great Books and Classics. And like Odysseus and Hamlet, the students are longing for their true fathers, as without them, they know their house is in danger.

The students naturally take to the Greats, for there is no higher adventure than sailing forth with the greatest that has been written and spoken, and passage alongside the fellowship of immortal souls is as free as the truth's wind. And as entrepreneurship rewards not risk alone, but risk based on a faith in something greater--in higher ideals and a better way, I'm betting that the Western wind will rise again in a Great Books renaissance, and fill the souls and imaginations of the rising generation, exalting the classics to new heights in living ventures--in novels, films, video games, labs, and institutions--in the Rugged Soul--that wellspring of innovation.

http://artsentrepreneurship.com
http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org

And so, with the government growing and family fading, we head for the wild waves and wilderness of entrepreneurial ventures, where one makes things "for himself and by himself"--the requisite foundation of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We sign aboard for a greater adventure, where one gets to own their sweat equity--their very life and dreams--and where, like the knights of King Arthur's Court, each student must find their own path through the forest in an independent project--the forest where Dante also begins--"Midway through the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood." And it are those who find their way through that dark wood alone who create all enduring wealth, culture, art, and science:

New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment. --Max Planck

And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. --Joseph Campbell

And the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek agrees!

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for conscious control or conscious planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." --F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

And the students all agree--America needs a bold, rugged form of leadership to guide us out of this dark wood. A leader who serves principle above politics, who reaches on back towards the past masters, so as to illuminate the prologue with that eternal light.

Martin Luther King Jr. presents the class's motivation:

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values--that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. --MLK

Thomas Jefferson agrees, writing in his later years, "They all fall away, one by one, until one is left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone."

We must read the Greats not for tenure and titles, but so as to render their ideals real in living ventures, as the Founding Fathers did in the Constitution and Bogle did in Vanguard. As freedom requires eternal vigilance, and as for evil to triumph all good men must do is nothing, the classical ideals must be perpetually performed in the living context via action--via matching exalted word with exalted deed, as all the enduring poets and prophets agreed.

We again return to Socrates' Apology for a most fundamental lesson in economics and courage, which ought be reunited: "I tell you that virtue is not given by money," Socrates addressed his fellow Athenians who would soon sentence him to death, "but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth . . . acquit me or not, but understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."

http://artsentrepreneurship.com
http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org