World History

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is thought to be the greatest work of the 20th century with 150 million readers. The book's thesis - Evil power cannot be defeated by power - is libertarian.

The net profit of reform is the accumulation of State power; the net loss is borne by Society.

Public housing, planned cities, government power plants, and coerced unionism were all part of the great cooperation between corporations and government through WWI and WWII.

Mises illustrates his case with a review of the fall of Germany, from the collapse of classical liberalism to the rise of nationalism and socialism

If capitalism is self-destroying, as he says it is, if socialism leads to the servile state, and if the distributive state as a practical matter is not feasible, then we have but one choice; and that is a choice between serfdom and death.

Finally, this view, based only on the doctrines of one obscure and heterodox scholastic, was enshrined in conventional histories of economic thought, where it was seconded by the free market but fanatically anti-Catholic economist Frank Knight and his followers in the now highly influential Chicago School.

Ayn Rand's books sell between eight hundred thousand and a million copies a year. Her first novel We the Living was admired by Mencken. Night of January 16th opened on Broadway. Her major novel The Fountainhead (1943) was "masterful". Atlas Shrugged (1957) was Rand's magnus opus.

The "protective" service rendered by the State is paid for not only with taxes but also with subservience. Society is much poorer for it.

From An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume I. Pages 81-95 in the text. Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

From An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume I. Pages 3-10 in the text. Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.