Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“That war is of benefit to the business of voluntary exchange to mutual benefit is, as one of the last British bearers of the classical liberal flame, Norman Angell, remarked in 1909, the great illusion. Certainly there were some industries that gained, such as the makers of armaments, but on the whole society as a whole suffered a significant decline in its level of general welfare. Long before Angell made the remark, a critique of the intensifying protectionism, imperialism, and armaments procurement of the period that preceded the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the great classical liberal French economist Frederic Bastiat had articulated the fundamental flaw in the arguments of such advocates of fiscal militarism.” (01/14/25)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-illusion-of-wartime-prosperity