Robert Higgs on the "Ratchet Effect" and World War I

Here is an audio of Scott Horton's interview of Robert Higgs, senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government.

According to the description, Higgs discusses the legacy of Woodrow Wilson’s Cheney, Edward Mandell House, House’s rise to power and links to big money men, Philip Dru Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow – the blueprint for a fascist America written by House in 1910-11, how House took advantage of Wilson’s narcissism to get America into World War I, the consequences of American intervention in that war, the concept of the “ratchet effect” of government expansion explained in Crisis and Leviathan, why most perceived governmental “failures” are really successes if you understand the intentions, the true character and beneficiaries of the American empire, the economics of the world’s oil market and the buried truth that all of state power is rooted in fear.