Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Eaton, and in a broad sense, a liberal, either a classical liberal or a neoliberal shill, depending on

who's yelling at me. Although it's not altogether clear if the broad intellectual family I hail

from is the triumphant default state or an increasingly endangered species.

Liberalism, in the broad sense, kicks off during the Enlightenment when a bunch of rabble-rousers

started asking questions like, well, who made you king? And why can't I sell breaches here?

The default state, prior to to that was feudalism, tyranny, caste systems, and unyielding superstition.

Authority just was.

It came from God.

Politically, the king was appointed by God, So you had to do whatever he said. The priests

also appointed by God. So you had to think whatever they thought. Your role in life, that too,

had been appointed by God. If you were a peasant, it was all a part of the celestial order

with you at the bottom,

the bottom of a rigid, hierarchical, and horribly impoverished system.

Enlightenment thinkers, the first liberals, said,

Okay, but why?

And they began writing pamphlets, the memes of their day, about why freedom of thought and speech and religion were actually pretty good ideas in both principle and in effect.

And they began a long-term project of clawing feudalism out of the economy.

In the dark ages, back when most people thought you could cure a bad harvest by setting witches on fire,

people understood economics as a subset of theology.

Prices rise because of greed.

That's pretty much it.

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