Lew Rockwell is running my blog post from the other day. That means a lot more people are seeing it, including the end-the-Fed-so-government-can-print-the-money-directly, or Greenbacker, crowd.
One person wrote to deny that Mises addressed the topic of interest, at least in his magnum opus. I explained that to the contrary, Mises held the pure time-preference theory of interest, and defended this theory in his writing.
In response, I got this:
If Mises “helped sharpen the pure time frame reference theory of interest”(whatever that is), he didn’t do it in his magnum opus. In fact his refusal to deal with interest in that book is either in the foreword or the introduction. I don’t have it here or would quote verbatum [sic]. On the other hand if he does deal with interest in another book, please give me an exact reference, book and chapter. [Bold and italics in original.]
Note that the pure time-preference theory of interest comes back to me as the “pure time frame reference theory of interest.” The guy is going to condemn Mises, and has never heard of the time-preference theory of interest. This means he has never read the Austrians on the subject of interest. (I hope you were sitting down for that shocking revelation.) It is impossible to do so without coming across time preference and its role in determining interest rates. It is the foundational concept.
This happens all the time with the Greenbackers. They have never read anything other than what confirms their own views. They condemn people they know nothing about.
As for the claim that Mises never addressed interest in his magnum opus, I replied:
Here is Mises’ magnum opus: http://mises.org/page/1470/
Human_Action Chapter 19 is entirely about interest. Chapter 20 deals with interest as it affects the business cycle. Chapter 18 deals with time preference as the determinant of interest. Chapter 31 deals with the state’s manipulation of the rate of interest. Is that sufficient?