The PBS Series Commanding Heights is now out on DVD. This three-part series is a historical and intellectual survey of the battle of ideas between socialism and the market economy that has taken place over the last 70 years. The series chronicles the rise of socialist thinking in the academy and of socialist and communist forms of government throughout the world, the failure of socialism, and the subsequent rise of market-oriented reforms, deregulation, and privatization. The series features numerous interviews with Chicago-school economists, in particular Milton Friedman (there is a fantastic shot of what must be the interior of Friedman’s apartment in a San Francisco high-rise showing the Russian Hill neighborhood) as well as video footage of an interview with Hayek from 1978. von Mises ismentioned as Hayek’s mentor, and there is a brief mention of his theory that socialism cannot calculate because it does not have rational prices.
