One of the most common criticisms of liberalism — also known as libertarianism and the often-pejorative and vague “neoliberalism“ — is that liberalism is extreme in its individualism. That is, its critics accuse liberalism of forcing its alleged victims into an “atomistic” existence separated from the communal institutions and activities that have been central to human civilization from time immemorial.

As Murray Rothbard often emphasized, the free market and a peaceful foreign policy are indispensable partners. We cannot maintain a free market if the government engages in a bellicose foreign policy. A powerful and aggressive state constantly engaged in war requires vast resources to sustain it, and “military socialism” is an all-too-present reality.

Oxfam, the leftwing NGO devoted to poverty relief has released a new report blaming poverty in wealth inequality. In other words, its central claim is that the existence of very wealthy people creates poverty. 

When I visited Shanghai in December 2016, I was interviewed by Tyler Xiong at Jifeng Bookstore about the forthcoming Chinese edition of Hayek’s The Fortunes of Liberalism, and about the prospects for liberty in China and around the world. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Earlier this week, the Oxfam organization published a “report” about global inequality. It’s not really a report, since most of it consists of babble-economics with little empirical foundation, and the hard data that it includes comes from an external source: the Credit Suisse Report.