The Road to Serfdom: Despotism, Then and Now | Thomas DiLorenzo

Thomas DiLorenzo presented this sample lecture from the Mises Academy's course, "The Road to Serfdom: Despotism, Then and Now," on 26 July 2010.

Dr. DiLorenzo is the instructor of the forthcoming online course, "The Political Economy of War," starting 20 September 2010.

For more information, visit http://academy.mises.org

Music by Kevin MacLeod.

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[mrseeds]

@successfulbuild The free market is us the people. So the free market has created a great many things.

[roibasses]

@successfulbuild how was it spent? Where did the money go? How does one measure its affect?

[daobagua]

@successfulbuild That is kind of like saying that freedom has never brought benefits, on account that no one has ever been perfectly free to do whatever they want in society. Their have always been some rules. That being said, societies with larger degrees of freedom have provided better quality of life for their members. Similarly, societies with higher levels of capitalism, have provided higher standards of living and larger growth of production for their members. Cheers.

[the29thtn]

Babbage designed the machine without government. The government was going to buy one but it never got finished. Hmm how is it that as soon as the government got involved the whole thing went to pieces? You Neo-Marxists like to make it sound like we don't think money funneled through the government can't be used to create something. We don't say any such thing. We only think it's wasteful, inefficient, and usually involves stealing. You can't answer the actual points, so the games start.

[successfulbuild]

The free-market, in fact, has never invented anything. The only place the free-market exists is in the speeches of politicians and right-wing economic ideologues.

[successfulbuild]

Programming languages were also mostly from the University system - so hardware and software.

[successfulbuild]

I just realized "the29thtn" is another neocofederate like so many of the forgotten conservatives here at the Mises Institute.

[successfulbuild]

"Babbage presented something he called the 'difference engine' to the Royal Astronomical Society on Jun 14, 1822 and in a paper entitled 'Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables.'"

It was able to calculate polynomials by using a numerical methid called the differences method.

The society approved the idea, and the government granted him £1500 to construct it -, in 1823."

[successfulbuild]

@the29thtn Also, the Hollerith was invented for purposes of the Census and thus IBM was a business created AROUND the government - and of course worked with governments all around the world, such as Germany.

_

The computer industry was basically entirely government during its early generations.

[successfulbuild]

@the29thtn Moore's law just shows that the industry is doing what it's supposed to be doing - but of course, Silicon Valley, Intel, and these large corporations all received billions of dollars of funding from the government anyway. The computer industry is among the most supported regulated industries of all time.