"Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business"
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Leave it to von Mises to treat cannons and barricades the way an accountant treats a busted balance sheet. The line is deliberately unromantic: war and revolution aren’t framed as tragedies or moral catastrophes but as “bad business,” a phrase that needles anyone tempted to dress destruction up as destiny. It’s a rhetorical move common to liberal economists of his era: strip the romance away, force the argument onto the ledger, and make the costs impossible to wave off as noble sacrifice.
The intent is not merely pacifism. Von Mises is staking a claim about social cooperation: markets, property, and predictable rules are the infrastructure of prosperity, and war or revolution is the moment a society decides to smash its own operating system. Capital is destroyed, supply chains fracture, trust evaporates, and calculation itself becomes unreliable. Calling it “economically considered” is a warning label. Even if people believe violence will deliver justice or national glory, the economic mechanism doesn’t care; it registers disruption, waste, and the diversion of talent into nonproductive ends.
The subtext also pushes back against a recurring 20th-century fantasy: that upheaval can be a shortcut to renewal, that breaking things is a kind of cleansing. Von Mises, shaped by World War I, the collapse of empires, and Europe’s revolutionary convulsions, rejects the idea that you can dynamite your way to efficiency. It’s a cool, slightly acidic reminder that whatever moral arguments you bring to war or revolution, the bill arrives in the same currency: lost wealth, lost time, lost optionality.
The intent is not merely pacifism. Von Mises is staking a claim about social cooperation: markets, property, and predictable rules are the infrastructure of prosperity, and war or revolution is the moment a society decides to smash its own operating system. Capital is destroyed, supply chains fracture, trust evaporates, and calculation itself becomes unreliable. Calling it “economically considered” is a warning label. Even if people believe violence will deliver justice or national glory, the economic mechanism doesn’t care; it registers disruption, waste, and the diversion of talent into nonproductive ends.
The subtext also pushes back against a recurring 20th-century fantasy: that upheaval can be a shortcut to renewal, that breaking things is a kind of cleansing. Von Mises, shaped by World War I, the collapse of empires, and Europe’s revolutionary convulsions, rejects the idea that you can dynamite your way to efficiency. It’s a cool, slightly acidic reminder that whatever moral arguments you bring to war or revolution, the bill arrives in the same currency: lost wealth, lost time, lost optionality.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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