The Club That Changed The World
A group of just 39 white men shaped modern life as we know it.
A group of white, Western-educated men formed a club back in 1947 that has since shaped everything about our modern society.
Friedrich Hayek invited a handful of his friends and mentors along with other economists, philosophers, and historians to a conference in Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland to discuss concerns about “the central values of civilization” being “under constant menace” from the policies of post-war Europe.
Specifically, they were worried about our newly globalized, post-colonial society experiencing “a decline of belief in private property and the competitive market.” The group, a total of 39 people hand-selected by Friedrich Hayek, would go on to form one of the most influential thought collectives in history: The Mont Pelerin Society.
The main guys alongside Hayek were Ludwig von Mises, Karl Popper, George Stigler, Frank Knight, and Milton Friedman. Their goal from the beginning was to hegemonically sculpt the global phase space of economics to favor a very particular brand of capitalism.
In the classically liberal approach to capitalism, actions like increasing the minimum wage, eliminating tuition for higher education, banning harmful chemicals from household products…
