Naevius - nice post. Each of your #'s 1 through 4 were also breakthroughs in my own thinking. I didn’t “struggle” with those things (the topic of the thread), but I will say that the phrase “Human Action” had me scratching my head for quite awhile.
I thought, Human Action? Why did Mises name his treatise on economics Human Action? Why didn’t he call it “Economics”? Now, it is perfectly clear. Human action is the essence of economics. What else could economics be?
That’s because Selgin and White strawman Rothbard, and also conveniently ignore the most damning parts of capital theory that make their Monetary Equilibrium theory false.
That the above is totally fallacious is actually one of the most assertive and consistent economic stance of Mises. It’s almost intellectual fraud to somehow portray this as being some Rothbard unique position or twist.
Social cooperation. (The original title of the book)
Which is human action.
ABCT was difficult for me, particularly how monetary policy and interest rate adjustment affect the structure of production. While I understood it fairly well, I worked a little harder at it so that I could teach its basic fundamentals to my high school economics class, which I began doing towards the end of my teaching career. Ironically, attempting to do that vastly increases your understanding, because students will come up with questions that you sometimes take for granted.