3-5 Most Libertarian Societies in World History

Mises wrote in “Liberalism” (first published in 1927 in German): “The philosophers, sociologists, and economists of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century formulated a political program that served as a guide to social policy first in England and the United States, then on the European continent, and finally in the other parts of the inhabited world as well. Nowhere was this program ever completely carried out. Even in England, which has been called the homeland of liberalism and the model liberal country, the proponents of liberal policies never succeeded in winning all their demands. In the rest of the world only parts of the liberal program were adopted, while others, no less important, were either rejected from the very first or discarded after a short time. Only with some exaggeration can one say that the world once lived through a liberal era. Liberalism was never permitted to come to full fruition.

Nevertheless, brief and all too limited as the supremacy of liberal ideas was, it sufficed to change the face of the earth. A magnificent economic development took place. The release of man’s productive powers multiplied the means of subsistence many times over. On the eve of the World War (which was itself the result of a long and bitter struggle against the liberal spirit and which ushered in a period of still more bitter attacks on liberal principles), the world was incomparably more densely populated than it had ever been, and each inhabitant could live incomparably better than had been possible in earlier centuries.”

Read the rest at Mises.org.

He’s wrong about that: federalism was a new idea “in the last couple thousand years,” as were an independent judiciary, representative assemblies, and trial by jury. Mr. Goldberg ain’t no historian.

Some areas from the American Old West were probably very libertarian. People settled out west faster than it took for government to be established. Check out Tom Wood’s 33 Questions “Was the Wild West really so Wild?”