One libertarian’s classic response to the argument . . .

[BlueStateSaint]

I truncated the title because the Subject line truncated it in an awkward place.  From The Blaze:

One libertarian’s classic response to the argument that free-marketeers are “living in the nineteenth century”

Apr. 4, 2014 12:13pm    Benjamin Weingarten

How many times have you heard progressives argue that conservative principles are outdated, and the Constitution unable to deal with the complexity of our times, while those who advocate for free-market economics are “living in the nineteenth century?”

Well all the way back in 1949, free-marketeer, journalist and author (best known for his classic “Economics in One Lesson“), Henry Hazlitt, had enough of such attacks, and responded with an article published in Newsweek titled “4,000 Years of Price Control,” which can be found in the collection of his Newsweek writings titled “Business Tides.”

Read on for Hazlitt’s epic response [all links ours]:

Tablets, said to be 200 years older than the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, have just been translated which show that the ancient kingdom of Eshnunna had wage control and price control. The news ought not to have come as a surprise. For the code of Hammurabi itself (unearthed in 1902), which was promulgated earlier than 2000 B.C., fixed prices, wages, interest rates, and fees. This makes price control at least about 4,000 years old.

The real economic discovery of civilization was the free market. It was Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, who more clearly than any other mind up to his time glimpsed the marvels of the free market. In the first flush of his discovery he compared the system of free prices and free profits and losses to “an invisible hand” that led men pursuing their own interest to promote the welfare of the whole nation more effectively than when they deliberately tried to promote it.

The rest is here:  http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/04/04/one-libertarians-classic-response-to-the-argument-that-free-marketeers-are-living-in-the-nineteenth-century/#more-789727

Mods, if this belongs in the Political Ammunition forum, please move it there.  I feel that it should be here, but if you think differently, please move it.

[obumazombie]

Just a little more history that libs are going to have to revise.