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