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The Robber Baron Myth - Milton Friedmanyoutube.com/watch?v=dmzZ8lCLhlk
525 sats \ 9 comments \ @kepford 7 May econ
Professor Friedman explodes the myth that America's 19th century industrialists exploited the ordinary man.
So much of our modern problems arise from the false belief in the myth of the robber barons. Free market capitalism is not the problem we suffer from. Free trade leads to prosperity. Of course we also need morals and a culture based in faith but neither of these come from the state. They come from our faith traditions and our cultural history.
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38 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 7 May
I wasn't aware of Friedman's take on this. These guys radically reduced the cost of living for regular people and greatly expanded the variety of goods available.
If only we could get a new wave of Robber Barons today.
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23 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford OP 7 May
If only we could get a new wave of Robber Barons today.
Yeah... I don't see it happening. Some think that is basically the Paypal Mafia. I don't agree but not because I just think those guys are evil. Its because the state is so massive you literally can't do what those guys did any more. You have to buy or control parts of the state in order to accomplish things at the scale of the Robber Barons. The state during that period was tiny by today's standards.
I think some of our fellow travelers don't really get this. They don't really get that the free market is the path. There is an anti-rich attitude that comes from the left and envy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Elon and the Palantir guys but they are about as close to the Robber Barons we are gonna get.
People should really read Atlas Shrugged once. Its stupid long but it is crazy how it mirrors the attitudes we see today. Of course Rand was not a Libertarian let alone an anarchist(as many falsely believe), but she did get the types of people that are drawn to "public service". The leaches that populate DC and our state capitals.
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29 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 7 May
Far to many bitcoiners do not get the state IMO. They do not get just how central it is to our economy and how much socialist ideals have taken hold.
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65 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 7 May
Totally agree.
If there are going to be new Robber Barons, they'll come from the permissionless Bitcoin and digital space, and they'll be openly flaunting government attempts to shut them down.
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29 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford OP 7 May
I wasn't either. I listened to the president of the Mises Institute on the Bitcoin Standard Podcast and he mentioned this era. I went to YouTube and was really disappointed in the lack of content on this topic. It was pretty much Tom Woods and this video. Wood's talks are good but long. This video was nice and short :)
More needs to be done to destroy this myth. It comes up so often in my talks with people interested in the issues of our time. Far to many right wingers don't get it either. I think the vast majority of the population has no clue just how ill-informed they are on history.
I don't mean to say I'm enlightened. The contrary, the more I have read the more angry I get about how I was deceived by both public and private education as well as the culture.
The misunderstanding of our own history is a huge factor in our decline as a people and nation(not government).
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7 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 7 May
Tom DiLorenzo, the Mises Institute president, has written and spoken a lot on the subject.
He's the one who demolished the predatory pricing myth, in particular, and the general myth of widespread monopolies. Shockingly, all it took to do this was just looking at the publicly available records on prices and existing companies.
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 7 May
Yeah, I've read one of his books on Lincoln. We are drowning in ignorance and lies of omission.
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33 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford OP 7 May
I kinda wanna read some books on this topic. I have read some books that back this presentation up but nothing specific to it. I believe Rothbard wrote something on it and there's a good talk by Tom Woods on this subject as well.
For those who don't buy this I will add something. We often get a cartoon version of history in school, and even in university history courses. Its laughable how bad our info can be. Of course there are always greedy people that do terrible things but over and over again the more deeply I read on a topic the more I find that there is often much more to the subject that gets ignored. Usually due to an agenda.
Lies of omission are all over the traditional history we are all taught. When I started broadening my reading on history I began to understand why our world is so screwed up. History is not very kind to statism, central planning, and the current world order.
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73 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 7 May
This might be a good jumping off point.
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