I have a degree in economics 1959 and I learned nothing except one professor said and I quote, “you cannot bankrupt a country that prints it’s own money”. He neglected to add that you would also destroy it’s currency.

I began studying Von Mises in about 1992 or a bit later. Thank God. It has saved me thousands of dollars.

In 1974, I was studying economics at a pre-Mises Inst Auburn University. At the same time, I stumbled upon the work of Mises & Rothbard. I soon realized that my econ courses were not just useless—they were positively harmful.

That made me take a hard look the rest of the curriculum at Auburn. I discovered that virtually every course of study there was riddled with misinformation and ignorant opinions, except for hard sciences such as physics, chemistry and math. But even those were taught badly.

Upshot: I left college after a few months and became an autodidact. Best decision I ever made. Ended up reading everything Mises ever wrote and realized that virtually every major institution of higher learning in America completely ignored (and still ignores) the work of the greatest social theorist of the 20th century.

Leaving university saved me a lot of time and money. Becoming an autodidact provided me with myriad hours of pure pleasure as I could pursue problems without the worry of grades or pleasing so-called “professors” and their mostly narrow-minded opinions.

My relative success in life to this point is due in large part to my decision to forgo formal studies and pursue an independent course of thinking, which was spurred in large part by my discovery of Mises and the Austrians way back when. Continued study of the Austrian approach has kept my feet on the ground by, for instance, teaching me to accept the irreducibility of uncertainty in financial markets. I’ve now read Human Action cover to cover 3 times. The third read was far and away the most useful and most delightful. His 20 or so pages on the subject of probability, including discussions of lotteries, gambling, game-playing, and the different types of probability, were more enlightening than all the books on probability and statistics I’ve ever read. They are so beautifully clear.

Human Action is, without question, the most important work in the social sciences published in the 20th century. That it is still not considered worthy of study in most universities, tells you much about the value of a university degree in any field outside of biology, physics, chemistry or math.

BTW, understanding the Austrian theory of the business cycle allowed me to sail through the stock mkt collapse of 2001 with sanguinity. It also prepared me for the current market turbulence. As Mises taught me, you don’t know when or how, but you do know that when the state uses its monopoly position in currency to manipulate the markets as avidly as the Greenspan and Bernanke Fed, the built-up malinvestment will sooner or later lead to a bust.

To Lew Rockwell and everyone at the Mises Inst, I deeply appreciate your continuing efforts to make the work of LvM available to anyone who’s interested.