After following this dialogue a long time, I suggest there are several  
images of von Mises, so you are talking past each other.  
  
1. Von Mises the starchy central European autocrat. I went to a von Mises  
lecture in 1952 or so, in San Mateo County, sponsored by Herbert Cornuelle  
for the Erhard Fdtn. It was by invitation only. There was one entrance only;  
you passed between two huge guards. Von Mises announced he would take no  
questions. He lectured ex cathedra for too long a time, and disappeared. You  
can understand how that leaves a fascistic impression, even though his  
record shows him opposing Nazism. (The enemy of my enemy need not be my  
friend, and all that.)  
  
2. Von Mises the reasonable philosopher, cited by his protagonists.  
  
3. Von Mises the cult leader, who coins his own words and insists others  
speak in his own private lingo.  That is usually a mark of crankiness; it  
gives that impression, anyway.  
  
4. Von Mises the follower of Austrian capital theorists who in turn followed  
Ricardo et al. on the importance of keeping capital turning over rapidly, or  
at least faster than glacially (I refer, of course, to pre-global-warming  
glaciers). These are the Austrians who could never merge with Chicagoans or  
Clarkians, in spite of their shared anarchistic tendencies. Personally I  
think this is their best side, and Wicksell stated the case better than  
most. However, no one in this dialogue has mentioned Austrian capital theory  
at all.  
  
5. Von Mises the Ayn-Randian. This may be a hijacked or cherry-picked  
version of von Mises, I leave that for Mises experts to sort out.  Whether  
or not, it is the one most people associate with Mises today, owing to the  
publicity of the Institute bearing his name in Auburn, Alabama, and the  
writings of Lew Rockwell and Walter Block and David Gordon and their  
like-thinkers. Roger Garrison there carries on the Ricardian tradition, but  
gets drowned out by the flood of far-out and single-minded libertarianism.  
  
All the dialogue would be more helpful, and brought to a point, by relating  
it to some policy issue.  What tax policy did or would von Mises espouse?  
Enlighten us, please!  
  
Mason Gaffney