Angus Burgin on Hayek, Friedman, and the Great Persuasion

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2013

⏱️ 69 minutes

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Summary

Angus Burgin of Johns Hopkins University and the author of The Great Persuasion talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the idea in his book--the return of free market economics in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Burgin describes the reaction to Hayek's Road to Serfdom, the creation of the Mont Pelerin Society, and the increasing influence of Milton Friedman on public policy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:16.0	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is maladykontalk.org.
0:28.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:30.1	Today is March 12, 2013, and my guest is Angus Bergen of Johns Hopkins University.
0:38.8	He's the author of the Great Persuasion, reinventing free markets since the Depression.
0:44.2	Angus, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:46.6	Thank you for having me on.
0:48.2	Our topic today is your book, The Great Persuasion, which chronicles the reemergence of free market
0:53.1	economics and the aftermath of the Great Depression.
0:56.1	Let's start with the state of that viewpoint at the end of World War II.
0:59.3	What was the intellectual situation for free market economics and free market economists?
1:04.1	Yeah, well, what I found was that the really striking thing about free market economics
1:08.7	and the wake of World War II was just how downtrodden its leading proponents found it
1:13.5	to be.
1:14.5	And so if you take somebody who at the time was seen as a really central figure in free
1:19.1	market advocacy, Friedrich Hayek, author of the Road to Serfdom, which came out in 1944,
1:25.1	he really emphasized that very few people believed in free market ideals, even among academic
	...

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