Disc 1: The Battle of Ideas
The Battle of Ideas identifies how the world, for much of the twentieth century, first moved toward more government control and then began to move away. The program focuses on the struggle between two economic thinkers, John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas on government intervention dominated much of the twentieth century, and Freidrich Von Hayek, whose free-market ideas were largely ignored until the economic crises of the 1970s forced political leaders to rediscover them. In the 1980s, the simultaneous emergence of the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronal Reagan set the stage for a worldwide capitalist revolution-- one that will be tested by economic turmoil in the future.