The Transition From Absolute Monarchy to Parliamentary Monarchies

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Gordon Tullick tells some very interesting stories about the transition from absolute monarchy to parliamentary monarchy in 19th century Europe. He says that precisely because these were predatory monarchies where there was no real competition to get to the throne, eventually just by luck you wind up getting some people who are not very power hungry and then were willing to voluntarily sign away their power. If I were looking I would probably go and take a look at some of these transitions from at least officialabsolute monarchy to parliamentary governments and see what was going on.

Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and blogger at EconLog talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about two books: Eugene Richter's Pictures of the Socialistic Future and F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Both books warn against the dangers of socialism. Pictures of a Socialistic Future, published in 1891 is a dystopian novel imagining what life would be like after a socialist revolution. The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, explores the links between economic freedom and political freedom and the inherent similarities between communism and fascism. Both books look at the German roots of centralized planning and the nature of the people who rise to power when the State is powerful. The conversation includes discussion of the these topics as well as the rule of law and the amount of state control of the economy in Nazi Germany.