World History

Venezuelan politicians hoping to replace the current regime in Venezuela mostly offer just re-treads of the failed socialism the country has endured for decades.

The theory goes like this: capitalism combines with consumerism and advertising to make us sad, lonely, and forever chasing after material goods. So we consume endlessly and the Machiavellian capitalists reap the rewards. It's not a great theory.

Liberalism has many meanings, but I wish to maintain that the most authentic form of liberalism has been concerned above all with two things: the expansion of a free functioning civil society and the restriction of the activity of the state.

The workers were never enthusiastic about socialism. Socialism was brought to the masses by intellectuals of bourgeois background, dining and wining together in the luxurious London homes and country seats of late Victorian "society."

One of the most instructive of all examples from maritime history is that of privateering, that is, the employment of profit-seeking, private armed ships during wartime.

Unlike the Versailles peace, which failed horribly, the successful episodes of peacemaking — Westphalia, Vienna, and even the process that ended World War II — had in common extended multi-lateral negotiations and compromise.

The Versailles treaty was in many ways an extension of the imperialistic impulses that caused the Great War in the first place. Even worse, it paved the way for World War II.

Modern Monetary Theory is the new thing among progressives. But it's been tried by many others, including the Roman dictators who ruined the Roman economy and had Rome falling apart before the barbarian invasions.

In the Soviet Union, any significant goods had two price tags: one real and another virtual. One was the actual black-market price. The other was the "official" government price.

Jason Morgan reviews John Sagers' book on Shibusawa Eiichi, often called the "father of Japanese capitalism." Was Shibusawa truly a capitalist, or just a "crony capitalist"?