Saturday, April 09, 2005

The Road to Stupid Comics

In 1944, WWII was fully underway. All around the world, governments had organized their economies to work in harmony for the war effort. This lead to such precipitous drops in poverty, crime, and unemployment that many people began to say that a planned economy might not be so terrible a thing to have around even in peacetime. In response, famed German economist and theoretician Friedrich August von Hayek published his magnum opus, The Road to Serfdom, in which he explained why government intervention in the economy - especially of the kind touted by John Maynard Keynes – would inevitably lead to fascism and totalitarian government.

people like Milton Friedman and Margeret Thatcher liked the book, but they found it had far too many ‘words’ and ‘pages’; they wanted something simpler. Finally, a new illustrated edition of The Road to Serfdom was released, explaining the natural progression from high government spending to Nazism. Some highlights:

Ooh! The man with the plan!

Oh no, Socialist Hand-to-Hand combat!

I think it would be more effective if the newspaper didn't say 'Controlled Press' right on the cover.

Hey, it's That Guy.  Subtle.

Not only is the world flat, but global warming is a hoax.

'When golf clubs are broken, people will be broken in the end.' - Heinrich Heine

Oh, I get it... you've been 'fired'. LOL!


Well, it was better than Mallard Fillmore.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kill Bill was bloody but I am afraid Sin City completely blows it away in both quantity of violence and the graphic nature of the Violence. Hard to believe now but when you see the movie youll know. And damn Kill Bill was a violent movie too lol

Anonymous said...

Is it good though?

Barba Roja said...

OK, no off-topic discussion of violent movies on my blog. Stay to the subject at hand.

And who the hell are you, 'despot dom'?

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure that Milton Friedman didn't need a picture book.

But where did you find that? No joke, it is fascinating that they would make "Serfdom" into a comic book.

Kid, I'll never take point away from you for not being well read and off the charts intelligent. But c'mon. Mallard Fillmore kills!

Barba Roja said...

I first heard about there being an illustrated version from a PBS documentary called 'Commanding Heights' at(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/index.html (plety of good clips). The comic is totally online; click on the headline of this post to get a link.

Barba Roja said...

Pardon me, it's:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/index.html

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I'll check it out.