Don Boudreaux offers an hour-long video of a talk by Ralph Raico in 1986. I found it well worth watching.

In three-axis terms, Raico begins his talk by saying that we consistently are taught to think of the role of government during the Industrial Revolution along the oppressor-oppressed axis. He ends his talk by saying that the welfare state’s origins in Germany should be viewed along the freedom-coercion axis.

In my forthcoming e-book on the three-axis model (not sure when it will appear, because I have just begun the process), I point out that every partisan blames the media for pushing the (false) narratives of the other side. Thus, it is quite typical for libertarians to complain about the false narrative of the Industrial Revolution and to try to supply the “true” narrative.

Having said that, and keep in mind that I put myself in the libertarian camp, I think that Raico makes a very good case, at least in the first half of the talk. That is, progressives tell a story in which whenever laissez-faire breaks out for a while, it has horrible consequences in terms of oppression, until government rescues the common man. A quarter-century after his talk, that is exactly how progressives tried to frame the financial crisis. Concerning the Industrial Revolution, this oppressor-oppressed narrative with government as savior is, as Raico points out, a baloney sandwich.