Henry Hazlitt
Biography
Henry Hazlitt was the most successful popularizer of Austrian economics of the 20th century. A largely self-taught economic journalist, he served as the lead economic columnist at The New York Times from 1934 to 1946 — perhaps the last time the Times's economics page was reliably free-market — and at Newsweek through 1966. His 1946 Economics in One Lesson remains the single most-recommended introduction to sound economics in any library. Hazlitt's 1959 The Failure of the New Economics is the most thorough chapter-by-chapter refutation of Keynes's General Theory ever published.
Major Works
- Economics in One Lesson (1946)
- The Failure of the New Economics (1959)
- Man vs. the Welfare State (1969)
- What You Should Know About Inflation (1960)
The Bitcoin Connection
Hazlitt's lifelong project was teaching ordinary people that policies should be judged by their full effects, not their headline intentions. Economics in One Lesson is the cleanest available antidote to monetary policy rationalizations of every era — "a little inflation is good," "the government will spend the printed money wisely," "the long run is just a series of short runs." Bitcoin lands as the technological answer to the problem Hazlitt spent fifty years describing: how do you remove the temptation to inflate from politicians who will always be tempted? You take the decision out of their hands entirely.