A review of “Early Austrian Economics” (audiobook)

So I recently finished an audiobook about “Early Austrian Economics,” about the famous Austrian School in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This is a school that has long been admired by conservatives, because they supported the idea that free markets reflect the subjective preferences of individuals (specifically consumers). Thus, they considered free markets to be a positive thing on this account. Their work was highly focused on economic science, but it did have obvious political implications as well, because of the insight that markets meet the demand of society, and satisfy its needs and wants.

Actually, the Confederacy had no intention of ever abolishing slavery

Warning: For obvious reasons, this post does not censor the offensive language out of the historical sources that it quotes from. To do so would be to obscure the truth about past racism and bigotry.

The Confederate Constitution shows that the South intended to prolong slavery

Even today, there are still some White Southerners who support slavery (although they are few), but most of them now disapprove of the institution, and the racial discrimination that was at the heart of it in these prior times. Perhaps because of this, there have been some White Southerners in recent years who have argued that the South would have abolished slavery anyway, and that it was inclined to do so at this time. (The fictional book “The Guns of the South” is one example of this trend, and I have encountered various other examples of this in some conversations that I have had with White Southerners over the years.)

I will show this with some relevant quotations from the Confederate Constitution

Because of this, it might be helpful to correct the record here, and show that the South had no intention of ever abolishing slavery. I will do this with some quotations from the so-called “Constitution of the Confederate States” (ratified 1862), which show how pro-slavery this wanna-be “Constitution” really was. In many ways, it was even more pro-slavery than the United States Constitution that it would have permanently replaced, which had a number of defects of its own with regards to slavery.

First page of the Confederate Constitution

A review of “Joseph Schumpeter and Dynamic Economic Change” (audiobook)

I recently finished listening to an audiobook about the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, who lived from 1883 to 1950. He eventually emigrated to the United States, and obtained U. S. citizenship. This was a good audiobook about him, and seemed to offer a good summation of his life's work. But I have somewhat mixed feelings about Joseph Schumpeter's ideas.