WTF Happened In 1971? - eviltoast

(kinda) A great website to share if you have no idea how to explain the downfall of the US economy.

Edit: Thanks to everyone who provided insight on this website. I’ve had this in my bookmarks for a very long time and was curious how it held up.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This site reads like a creepy Ayn Rand fesish tribute page:

    As mentioned previously, railroads were the first large scale industry. The railroad revolution brought with it tremendous improvements in standard of living and a fall in the cost of transportation of goods and people. However, as is the case with most revolutions of industry, the government intervened heavily with subsidy and regulation.

    Some railroads (for example The Great Northern) were indeed built in this Libertarian fashion, as purely free market enterprises which competed on the marketplace of transportation (coincidentally these were usually the few that did not go bankrupt) and productive land ownership.

    • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s weirder than that. The website owner is sharing his paraphrasing of a book by Murray Rothbard. He is the man who coined anarcho-capitalism, protege of von Mises, a Jewish immigrant who organized a group st Columbia to show support for Strom Thurman, mocked by The National Review for his old world isolationist beliefs, called Hayek a liberal, and inspiration to Pat Buchannon, David Duke, and Ron Paul. This Baffler article from Jon Ganz does a great job of breaking down who he was and his relevance to the current Trump moment. He was a self-declared paleo-libertarian.