In the same way that a farmer knows the soil in his field, Lanny Ebenstein — UCSB lecturer and former candidate for mayor of Santa Barbara — knows the University of Chicago and its renowned School of Economics. With his latest work, Chicagonomics, which Bloomberg recently named as one of the top five books in economics, the prolific Ebenstein has now written five tomes with connections to Chicago, including biographies of two of its leading lights, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
Endowed by John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago bears the distinction of establishing the first separate economics department in the United States. Chicago’s influence on economic theory and policy in the United States and beyond is unparalleled. Ebenstein traces the contributions of other notables, including Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons, and makes clear that although Chicago is most frequently associated with Milton Friedman and libertarianism, the school is actually better understood as the home of classical liberalism.
I sat down with Ebenstein two days before Christmas, intrigued to learn more about how classical economic liberalism — which promotes free-market capitalism but with the recognition that government has a legitimate role to play — morphed into neoliberalism and the notion that any government involvement in the economy is an abomination and all taxation (of the wealthy in particular) evil.