Johan Norberg Surprisingly Endorsed Land Reform as a Prerequisite for Prosperity
Johan Norberg is perhaps the classical liberal historian most famous for rebutting the fallacious claims about the supposed socialism of the Scandinavian countries around 2015 when such rumors were being spread by Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and before that, as the economist who best broke down why Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine was a very flawed book, built much more on ideology than sound history or political economy. It was, however, with his 2001 book In Defense of Global Capitalism , that he really cut his teeth and it is because of that book that he seems to be much more qualified than most Reason or Cato Institute scholars to talk about issues in a way that can only be described as less ideological. The example of this? The issue of land reform and how it could have stopped economic populist madmen, like Juan Peron in Argentina or Getulio Vargas in Brazil, from rising to power. This must have been especially brazen given the climate that this was happening rig...