Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute
Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute
Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute
- No tags were found...
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
<strong>Liberty</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Property</strong> 19attention to statistics they would easily havediscovered the fallaciousness of their opinion.Infant mortality dropped, the averagelength of life was prolonged, the populationmultiplied, <strong>and</strong> the average common manenjoyed amenities of which even the well-todoof earlier ages did not dream.However this unprecedented enrichmentof the masses were merely a by-product ofthe Industrial Revolution. Its main achievementwas the transfer of economic supremacyfrom the owners of l<strong>and</strong> to the totality of thepopulation. <strong>The</strong> common man was no longera drudge who had to be satisfied with thecrumbs that fell from the tables of the rich.<strong>The</strong> three pariah castes which were characteristicof the pre-capitalistic ages—the slaves,the serfs, <strong>and</strong> those people whom patristic <strong>and</strong>scholastic authors as well as British legislationfrom the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuriesreferred to as the poor—disappeared. <strong>The</strong>irscions became, in this new setting of business,not only free workers, but also customers.This radical change was reflected in the