European History

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Despite the near adoration with which Hayek is held in conservative and libertarian circles, he was no lover of laissez-faire economics or advocate of an indolent or passive state, an idea much associated with 19^th century classical liberalism. Recognizing that modern economies and societies had irrevocably reached a mixed solution to the marketplace that required state participation and state/private collaboration, he once argued against the idea that the state should be inert. He said, “In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing.” In fact, he understood that the government would play a role in the economy by providing those services that the free market could not create by itself. Hayek allowed the government to regulate safe working conditions, prevent pollution and fraud, and create a safety net in which citizens receive minimal food, shelter, and clothing.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Adherents to the Austrian approach to economics and its champion, Ludwig von Mises, rose to intellectually challenge the rise of the state, particularly the two great experiments in state dominance over individual life and the marketplace, Communism and Nazism. Von Mises’s most influential acolyte was Nobel Memorial Laureate Friedrich August Hayek. His premier insight in political economy was that as the involvement of the state grew, the reach of individual freedom was circumscribed and the productive, creative contribution of the marketplace to the general prosperity of society as a whole was compromised.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Lord Bertrand Russell, himself no slouch among the intelligentsia of the 20^th century, said John Maynard Keynes’s “intellect was the sharpest and clearest that I have ever known. When I argued with him, I felt that I took my life in my hands, and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool.”