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A review by verdunbeach
The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek, Bruce Caldwell
4.0
Despite the constant comparisons to Nazi Germany, t’s easy to forget that Hayek wrote over 70 years ago. He is incredibly prescient about issues and debates that have raged in the decades since - and most incredibly - often rightly predicts the outcomes of these debates.
About early 20th century socialism - “Attempts will no doubt be made to rescue the names for movements which are less dogmatic, less doctrinaire and less systematic.” At the time socialism meeting unambiguously the nationalisation of the means of production and the central economic planning which made this possible and necessary.
And this one rings incredibly true in the US today “‘Freedom’ and ‘liberty’ are now words so worn with use and abuse that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood.”
Despite his thesis against socialism, a strong early advocate of centralised spending for the common good plus environmental and social accounting in the 40’s! “Thus neither the provision of signposts on the roads nor, in most circumstances, that of the road themselves can be paid for by every individual user. Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation."
Again, a great point against the modern surveillance state “We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes.”
Hayek just gets it.
About early 20th century socialism - “Attempts will no doubt be made to rescue the names for movements which are less dogmatic, less doctrinaire and less systematic.” At the time socialism meeting unambiguously the nationalisation of the means of production and the central economic planning which made this possible and necessary.
And this one rings incredibly true in the US today “‘Freedom’ and ‘liberty’ are now words so worn with use and abuse that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood.”
Despite his thesis against socialism, a strong early advocate of centralised spending for the common good plus environmental and social accounting in the 40’s! “Thus neither the provision of signposts on the roads nor, in most circumstances, that of the road themselves can be paid for by every individual user. Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation."
Again, a great point against the modern surveillance state “We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes.”
Hayek just gets it.