Liberty Chronicles

We have the ability to readily appreciate this transition and its impact on overall economic productivity. We live in a vastly richer world than has ever existed before and every one of us above the bare level of subsistence lives incomparably better than kings, emperors, and the wealthiest elites even just a century ago. But in many ways, medieval life was stolen from people during the fledgling...

When you change your perspective on past events by changing the sources of information, the facts of your narrative change as well. We have some decent tools to guide our exploration of the past, so let’s start digging. Further Readings/References: The First Charter of Virginia; April 10, 1606 Charters to Columbus and Walter Raleigh The Dutch Path from Explorers to Monopolists Rediker & Linebaugh....

History is the grand catalog of human action in the past. At its broadest, it encompasses everything that everyone everywhere has ever done. If all history is about individual actions, and all individual actions are based on some sort of perceived self-interest on the part of the actor, one may conclude that chronicles of an historical actor’s life would reveal patterns about how they expected to...

Methodological individualism is the principle that only individuals act—only individuals consciously apply means toward the fulfilment of ends. whenever we investigate society we must do so through the experiences and actions of the individuals which compose it. Further Readings/References: Mises, Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. 2...

We overview Marxism and classical liberalism so we can get a very full picture of what produces, change over time. Further Readings/References: On Marxism, see: Marx, Karl. “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859) from Lewis S. Feuer, ed. Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Anchor. 1959) On Classical Liberalism: The collected works of Wi...

By studying history, though, we empower ourselves to challenge received wisdom and create knowledge of our own. Sometimes doing history from below (rather than above) is as simple as broadening the scope of your evidence beyond the relatively controllable published record. It might mean deep dives into personal diaries, letters, newspapers, pop and material culture, archeological evidence, or the...

Welcome to the first installment of Liberty Chronicles! Everything you were taught about why the world is the way it is was planted in your mind. What does the development of the bathtub have to do with how we think about history? On first glance, it might seem to contribute very little. It is, after all, only a mundane and humble tub. Further Reading: For a history of the history of the bathtub,...

Join host Dr. Anthony Comegna on a series of libertarian explorations into the past. Liberty Chronicles combines innovative libertarian thinking about history with specialist interviews, primary and secondary sources, and answers to listener questions. At its most useful, studying history is a sort of purgative process through which we can better understand past actors’ motivations and mistakes; w...