Berlin Wall Speech

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The Economics Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Mises Daily: Friday, November 07, 2014 by Ryan McMaken

Sunday marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like most historical events that are commemorated as if they took place on a single day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was just one of many interrelated events that led to the end of the system of Soviet client states in Eastern Europe, and to the end of the Soviet Union itself, in December of 1991.

 

With the fall of the wall, East Germans, who had lived under severe restrictions on travel and emigration, were able to freely travel to West Berlin, which continued a chain of events already begun earlier that year in which many anti-Soviet dissidents throughout Eastern Europe became emboldened and met with unprecedented success. Meanwhile, East Germans flooded into neighboring countries by the thousands, seeking refuge from Soviet-sponsored oppression in Austria and West Germany

http://mises.org/daily/6956/The-Economics-Behind-the-Fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall

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What A Divided Berlin Still Teaches Us Today

Mises Daily: Thursday, November 13, 2014 by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

 

From A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, first published in 1989, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

The case of West and East Germany is particularly instructive. Here, history provides us with an example that comes as close to that of a controlled social experiment as one could probably hope to get. A quite homogeneous population, with very much the same history, culture, character structure, work ethics, divided after Hitler-Germany’s defeat in World War II.

 

In West Germany, more because of lucky circumstances than the pressure of public opinion, a remarkably free market economy was adopted, the previous system of all-around price controls abolished in one stroke, and almost complete freedom of movement, trade, and occupation introduced. In East Germany, on the other hand, under Soviet Russian dominance, socialization of the means of production, i.e., an expropriation of the previous private owners, was implemented. Two different institutional frameworks, two different incentive structures have thus been applied to the same population. http://mises.org/daily/6964/What-A-Divided-Berlin-Still-Teaches-Us-Today