Gary Wolfram writes a New Year’s outlook about Mises’s message of peace and cooperation. He notes that Mises understood the coming of the Great Depression and WWII in his classic book Liberalism because he saw the nations of the world moving away from liberalism and towards various sorts of socialism.
Mises wrote Liberalism to convince the world that if we all adopted the philosophy of liberalism we could avoid World War II and the Great Depression. As we begin the new year, imagine if everyone in the world adopted the philosophy of liberalism — if everyone believed in peace and we all lived in an economic system based upon social cooperation. Then, by the end of 2014, the conflicts of the world would be resolved.
