Rothbard explains why he is optimistic. The norm of civilization has been despotism and statism. The quantum quality change in history has been the Industrial Revolution from mid-18th Century to mid-19th. Only the free market, libertarian society can expand this viable and moral industrialism.
Republican policy has always been high tariffs, keeping foreign goods out. But, then the US would lend those countries money to be able to pay for our higher-priced exports. This peculiar foreign-lending scheme included farm goods. Until 1928 there was an enormous foreign lending boom. The stock market collapsed in October 1929.
The state must invest in human beings the same way you invest in cattle on a farm. This progressive corporatist view was behind the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation. Industrial solutions were to be strictly scientific, e.g. minimum wage laws, public works, and government concentration camps (CCC).
The World Economic Conference of 1933 met to deal with America's Great Depression, but, without consulting anyone, FDR declared that the U.S. would not agree to the proposal because he wanted to take the U.S. off the gold standard in order to inflate the dollar. The gold-supporting British and French were horrified; Nazi Germany was delighted.
Despite the drive for monopoly, only oil, sugar and corn products ended up dominated by a particular company. Bigger was not better. Biggest was not best. Smaller and more mobile was more competitive. Major inventions are still coming from small firms.
The progressive period birthed the cancerous growth of the welfare/warfare state, fake capitalism, the middle way, neomercantilism, and the corporate state. Morgan and Rockefeller men warred with each other over many issues and many generations.
The only genuine, long-term solution is to force the state to retrench and allow the essential characteristics of free enterprise to reassert themselves in the market, especially in the realm of market prices and private property. There is no middle way. To plan otherwise is to plan for chaos.
In the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th, the rise of big business on the free market could not create monopolies and cartels. Only government could do that. Government tried. Government failed.
The Spanish and Portuguese were not very effective about colonizing the New World, despite finding gold and silver and claiming land. The London Company arrived about 1611 with indentured servants. Life expectancy was as young as twenty-one, although food supplies were better in the New World. Land was cheap and available to most immigrants.
The study of U.S. history seen through the lens of economic theory teaches us lessons like: (1) Why did America do so well economically?, (2) Why do we have the problems of war, terrorism, and immigration?, (3) What results from the growth of government?, ...
