The Origins of Poverty and Wealth

Asuncion, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Bucharest, Gdansk, Hanoi, Kathmandu, Montevideo, Memphis, New York, Santiago de Chile, Seoul, Tbilisi, Tirana, Ulaanbaatar, Zurich - these are just a few of the stops on Rainer Zitelmann's world tour. The historian and sociologist traveled to thirty countries on four continents in twenty months, covering over 160,000 miles. The author presents an exciting mix of personal impressions, historical research, results of international surveys and, above all, hundreds of conversations with economists, entrepreneurs, journalists, politicians and ordinary people in these countries. This book gives readers far deeper insights into these thirty countries than any tourist visit can, presenting the societies and their backgrounds, exploring each nation with its history and future. From the perspective of an intellectual freedom lover, this book shows how poverty and wealth arise. Zitelmann also meets leading figures from the global libertarian movement in Europe, the United States, Latin America and Asia. Like never before, readers are given an understanding of the ideas and activities of this movement, which recently rose to prominence with the election of Javier Milei as President of Argentina.