• "Well written, well researched, and the thesis put forth is well argued.... Woods has opened up an area of historical analysis that should invite further study."
    -Journal of American History

  • "During these times that challenge our freedoms there is no one more qualified to make U.S. history relevant to the fight against big government than Thomas Woods."
    -Barry Goldwater Jr.
    Former Member of Congress

  • "I strongly recommend Woods's work."
    -The Honorable Ron Paul,
    U.S. House of Representatives

  • "Written with great clarity and fluency, making the complex philosophical and theological concepts approachable."
    -Journal of American Studies

  • "A must-read."
    -Barron's

  • "An excellent reading source for anyone interested in financial markets, and much more so for anyone interested in learning about capitalism without all the misinterpretations being thrown about in the financial media."
    -Asia Times

  • "Provocative, well-written, and deserves to be read."
    -Catholic Historical Review

  • "An engaging and important contribution to scholarship on the history of American Catholicism."
    -Journal of the Historical Society

  • "Woods and [co-author Kevin] Gutzman appeal to both left and right in this constitutionalist jeremiad…. The authors' exegeses of the Constitution and court decisions, heavy on original intent arguments, are lucid and telling."
    -Publishers Weekly

  • "A marvelous read. Every chapter taught me something new and unexpected."
    -Tom Bethell, senior editor,
    The American Spectator

  • "The hottest book today is Meltdown, by my friend Tom Woods."
    -Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst,
    FOX News Channel

  • "Should be required reading."
    -Economic Affairs (London)

  • "Woods, one of the best classical liberal [libertarian] scholars of his generation, has once more placed us in his debt with this lucid and tightly argued book."
    -David Gordon, The Mises Review

  • "Tom Woods is one of my dearest allies in the struggle against wrong-headed and dangerous economic policy."
    -Peter Schiff

My Real Education

How I was introduced to the Austrian School of economics.

Unlearn the Propaganda!

  • Michael Mills

    Does buying from the Mises store count?

  • http://profiles.google.com/msouth Mike South

    Hi Tom,

    Speaking of getting a real education, I was reading this:

    http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

    which linked me to this;

    http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf

    I haven’t read them in detail yet, mostly skimmed. What I am wondering is whether it would be possible to set up some kind of mathematical model with a few simple raw materials and goods and assumptions about labor or whatever, and show mathematically how quickly the number of calculations become impossibly large when more than a few people with a few resources and a variable environment (harsh vs easy winter, etc) come into play.

    What I’m thinking about is something along the lines of the three body problem in physics. When two bodies are acting on each other gravitationally it is easy, given the initial positions, masses, and velocities of those bodies, to write a mathematical formula showing their future trajectory, for all time. If you add a third body, however, there is no closed-form solution. Even three bodies acting on one another are too many for the math. (Scientists deal with this through simplifying assumptions and numerical approximations, etc–but they know that is what they are getting, and that the three body problem is not solvable in closed form.)

    It might make a more convincing argument of the impossibility of efficient central planning of an economy if we could come up with a result like this.

    Has this been tried?

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