The ideas of liberty are relatively new, and it’s easy to just assume that they always existed. But we forget that many of the libetarian ideas that we simply take for granted were just conceived in the relatively recent past. Ideas, like so many other things in life, evolve over time. It’s virtually impossible to define when, where, and who came up with key ideas in the freedom philosophy.

I thought this video was interesting, because it provides a brief glimpse into how some of these ideas develop. There’s nothing particularly glamourous about it, but it’s fascinating to me to hear stories by people who were around some of the people who developed these ideas. In this interview they casually mention how people like Mises impacted Andrew Galambos, how people like Bob Lefevre came up with certain ideas, and so forth and so on.

It’s amusing how they talk about how after lectures on the freedom philosophy, they would discuss and argue about ideas in the parking lot while their wives couldn’t figure out why on earth they weren’t home yet. I can directly relate to that, albeit without the wife part.

In this discussion, they talk about the concept of how the insurance industry could provide essentially all of the functions of government, including police protection and even national security protection for the individual. The fascinating part is how this came about simply from them having discussions about how it is not logically consistent to insist that the free market provides better results…except in the most important areas of life like personal safety. It would be like arguing that the free market is better at providing all material aspects of life except groceries and clothing, when in fact, of course, the more important something is, the more important it is to keep government and coercion out of it.

Something else that has always fascinated me, is how virtually all of the progress in any given area is created by a relatively small group of people, often knowing each other personally and in the same geographic area. This should not be surprising, since ideas evolve, and in order to evolve faster, they must compete with other similar ideas for supremacy. Silicon Valley is just one obvious example of this. There is a reason most of the really successful software companies came from there. There are hundreds of other examples. The Austrian school itself is another obvious example. And the modern day libertarian movement can be directly traced back to the Austrian school. From Menger to Mises to Hayek, to Leonard Read, to Ron Paul, etc., etc., with many other individuals along the way, these ideas evolved and grew increasingly refined.

It is my firm belief that these ideas will continue to evolve and will lead one day to a world without government coercion. I don’t see any other way for mankind to survive another thousand years without this happening. Maybe mankind won’t survive another thousand years, but I see no reason why it couldn’t. After all, we have thousands of years of recorded history of material, and somewhat more controversially, ethical and moral improvements. Why should we believe that this will end anytime soon? This is one of many reasons that I find the topic of human freedom so fascinating and exhilarating. What topic could be more interesting than how human beings have become what they are, and where they’re heading? It makes every other topic seem mundane in comparison.

Andrew Galambos is another interesting character, and his thoughts on this are fascinating. But that’s another post for another day. In the meantime, here’s the video: