18 Essential Classical Liberal Thinkers /

But his views on the world and the economy evolved quickly once he learned of the writings of Carl Menger and Friedrich von Wieser, the founding fathers of the Austrian School of Economics. [...] He claimed to have set as goals to become the best economist in the world, the best horseman in Austria, and the greatest lover in Vienna—and to have achieved two out of the three! Over the course of his life, he worked as a lawyer, a finance minister, a banker, a teacher, and a writer. [...] In Western societies, this rise of anti-liberalism led to the questioning of the benefits of the market economy and the rise of socialism and the interventionist state. [...] The Cost of Doing Business Transaction costs represent the costs incurred for each type of exchange, meaning the costs entailed by the negotiation of contracts 30 and the terms related to the supervision of the said contracts. [...] Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, governments increased the scope of their interventions in the market, guided by the mistaken belief that the crisis had been caused by deficiencies in the capitalist system.