There are many great resources about Austrian economics on the Mises Institute site. I’m just picking something that sounds like it might have basic information geared to someone just getting into this. As I find passages that are interesting, I transcribe them and post them. Unfortunately, most of the documents are in PDF format and therefore, horrible to read online, so progress is slow.

As long as men continue to view goods and services as a package of labor or the sum of the costs of production, they will continue to turn to government for subsidies, handouts, privileges, guaranteed incomes and the like. The more this is done, the less chance there is to trade for gain in the open market - the only system of pricing that conserves rather than wastes scare resources. Chief and foremost among those scarce resources is man, not for his capacity to consume as the socialists imply, but for his productive power to serve himself by serving others.

Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader
Irvington, NY: FEE, 1974. Bettina Bien Greaves
http://mises.org/books/reader.pdf

Valuing man for his capacity to consume is no longer limited to socialists. The Democrats have long been for subsidies, handouts, privileges, guaranteed incomes and the like. Even the current Republican administration is on this consumption-advocating bandwagon. We have come a long way since this document was published in 1974.

But on the bright side, there is a way out of this mess - trade for gain in the open market - the only system of pricing that conserves rather than wastes scare resources … [man’s] productive power to serve himself by serving others.

It may be difficult to get there from here, but it will be worth it.

Austrian economics - economics for the rest of us. The notion that economics must some how account for masses of people with individual interests, needs and motivations sounds messy but realistic. Like the human body - it is there working smoothly before your very eyes. But poke around and you realize that this is an incredibly complex system with its amazing ability to function within a wide range of conditions, even when subjected to stress, uncertainty, meddling and abuse.

Rooted in the tradition of Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises, as well as Murray Rothbard and F.A. Hayek, the Austrian School offers a rigorous and logical approach to economics that gives free markets their due and takes full account of the reality of human choice.

More than a field within economics, the Austrian School is an entirely different approach that dissents from the mainstream on method, theory, and policy. It views economic actors as unique, conscious, and freely choosing individuals, not as undifferentiated data to be manipulated mathematically or politically.
–Mises University

from DealBreaker

newsletter published by the Ludwig Von Mises institute, the foremost center for Austrian economics in these United States. Each year around this time our favorite edition of the newsletter was printed, the Christmas issue. It usually presented some contrarian take on a famous Christmas story. One year it might be the economics of Santa’s workshop. Another year the feature story was about the entrepreneurialism of shiny red noses. Another year about Scrooge’s generosity.

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Ludwig von Mises Institute
“Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving and receiving.” - Omnipotent Government

LewRockwell.com

THE ORIGINS OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

to possess value an object must be both useful and scarce. … The just price is found not by counting the cost but by the common estimation.

Leon Walras (1834-1910) … presented economics as “the calculus of pleasure and pain of the rational individual.” … expanded on the subjective theory of value

Menger asserted that such perfect knowledge never exists, and that therefore all economic activity implies risk. … price of the finished product bears no resemblance to the costs of production, since the two represent market conditions at very different points in time.

…Boehm-Bawerk … always a difference in value between present goods and future goods of equal quality, quantity, and form. Furthermore, the value of future goods diminishes as the length of time necessary for their completion increases. Boehm-Bawerk cited three reasons for this difference in value. First of all, in a growing economy, the supply of goods will always be larger in the future than it is in the present. Secondly, people have a tendency to underestimate their future needs due to carelessness and shortsightedness. Finally entrepreneurs would rather initiate production with goods presently available, instead of waiting for future goods and delaying production.

… Wieser also developed the notion of the paramount importance of accurate calculation to economic efficiency. Prices to him represented, above all, information about market conditions, and are thus necessary for any sort of economic activity. … economic change. More concerned with processes than actual outcomes

… Two other uniquely Austrian traits also deserve mention. First of all, the first generation of the Austrian school contained a spirit of compromise between pure laissez-faire and the traditional Austrian ideals of order and bureaucracy. … strong and stable social order based ultimately on the authority of the State.

A second aspect is the strongly psychological nature of the Austrian school. No other economic school of thought has placed such a premium on the effects of psychology–as far as it determines an individual’s perceptions of means and ends–on the economy as a whole.

.. The Austrian economists were, however, the first to clash directly with Marxism, since both dealt with such subjects as money, capital, business cycles, and economic processes.

… tremendous impact that Austrian ideas had in the free- market revivals of the 1980s in Britain and the U.S

http://www.gmu.edu/departments/ihs/hsr/s97hsr.html#austrian

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tremendous impact that Austrian ideas had in the free- market revivals of the 1980s in Britain and the U.S