The political economy of the dynamic nature of government intervention: An introduction to potentials and problems

In almost all aspects of social life government intervention seems much more pervasive and intrusive today than ever before—at least in many of the Western countries. Governments seem year by year to consume still more resources and to regulate the details of the actions and interactions of their citizens still further. As such the development might easily be seen as an expression of the dangers, which the Nobel Prize winning giant of the Austrian School of Economics, F.A. Hayek (1899-1992), warned against in his famous classic, The Road to Serfdom (1944). While Hayek’s exposition of this analysis was path-breaking and eye-opening to many people, he was in reality only making an application of a logic, he had been taught by his mentor, fellow Austrian School giant, Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), in the 1920s. Mises’ analysis was begun as early as in 1912, it was later developed in his critiques of socialist planning, and is set out in detail in a number of shorter works, and in his magnum opus, Human Action, Mises explicitly and systematically integrated his analysis of the dynamic character of government intervention with his more fundamental logic of human action, the socialist calculation problem, property rights, etc. This research paradigm, its promises, problems and potential—is the topic of the present collection of essays.