He inspired Milton Friedman. There´s nothing to add to that, it´s just making one speechless.

As soon as abstract, not measurable, highly abstract, not concrete concepts and words such as freedom, justice, right, etc. are used, it´s often a highly alarming sign, signal, and warning that something is going terribly wrong, that the author has left reality and entered the spheres of speculation, guessing, or just doing as if subjective, in the best cases just eccentric, DIY creative problem solving ideas can be implemented in larger systems or even the world.

It reminds me of playing Chinese whisperers, silent post, for two reasons. First, because those pseudo fringe science wannabe intellectuals are as arrogant as possible while behaving like stubborn kids and second, because one begins with a stupid idea that gets copied and modified and mutates to more and more idiotic, tragically real-life appliances.

It´s also a bit like a brainstorming, a creative technique, an idea constructing session completely getting out of control. I´ll give it a try. Let´s say that I am biased and hate capitalism such as Hayek hated socialism without any reason, mixed it with pseudo psychology and constructed his crude and inhuman theories.
So I want anything in the property of the state, ban private companies, install a system such in China or with communism. Does one see how stupid and onesided that is, this black and white, good and bad, evil economy and friendly economy? But wait, if we instead say that our economic system is as onesided and stupid as communism, that´s, of course, unacceptable treason.

One could produce thousands of stupid fringe theories while misusing social sciences and humanities. Oh wait, that´s permanently done, my mistake.

I´ve said most about this topic in my reviews of Roslings´ Factfulness
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Pinkers´ Enlightenment Now
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
and Friedmans´ Capitalism and Freedom.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

These books are just a repetition of the same yada bla without any accuracy or legitimacy.

Some facepalm quotes:
“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”
“Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.”
„Wir verdanken den Amerikanern eine große Bereicherung der Sprache durch den bezeichnenden Ausdruck weasel-word. So wie das kleine Raubtier, das auch wir Wiesel nennen, angeblich aus einem Ei allen Inhalt heraussaugen kann, ohne daß man dies nachher der leeren Schale anmerkt, so sind die Wiesel-Wörter jene, die, wenn man sie einem Wort hinzufügt, dieses Wort jedes Inhalts und jeder Bedeutung berauben. Ich glaube, das Wiesel-Wort par excellence ist das Wort sozial. Was es eigentlich heißt, weiß niemand. Wahr ist nur, daß eine soziale Marktwirtschaft keine Marktwirtschaft, ein sozialer Rechtsstaat kein Rechtsstaat, ein soziales Gewissen kein Gewissen, soziale Gerechtigkeit keine Gerechtigkeit – und ich fürchte auch, soziale Demokratie keine Demokratie ist.“

Because of much talk and discussion about the replication crisis with friends and in general, I will add these thoughts to all following nonfiction books dealing with humanities in the future, so you might have already seen it.

Sorry folks, this is one of my last rants, I am sick and tired of this and want to focus on true science and great fiction instead, not this disturbed fairytales for adults who never had the chance to built a free opinion because most of the media they consume to stay informed and get educated avoids any criticism of the current economic system.

Without having read or heard ideas by Chomsky, Monbiot, Klein, Ken Robinson, Monbiot, Peter Singer, William McDonough, Ziegler, Colin Crouch, Jeremy Rifkin, David Graeber, John Perkins, and others, humans will always react to people like me, condemning the manipulation Hayek was practicing with terrifying success, with anger and refusal.

These authors don´t hide aspects of the truth and describe the real state of the world that should be read instead of epic facepalms like this. They don´t predict the future and preach the one only, the true way, ignoring anything like black swans, coincidences or the, for each small child logical, fact that nobody knows what will happen, and collect exactly the free available data people such as Hayek wanted to ignore forever.

Some words about the publication crisis that even have some positive points at the end so that this whole thing is not that depressing.

One could call the replication crisis the viral fake news epidemic of many fields of science that was a hidden, chronic disease over decades and centuries and has become extremely widespread during the last years, since the first critics began vaccinating against it, provoking virulent counterarguments. I don´t know how else this could end than with nothing else than paradigm shifts, discovering many anachronisms, and a better, fact- and number based research with many control instances before something of an impact on the social policy gets accepted.

A few points that led to it:

I had an intuitive feeling regarding this for years, but the replication crisis proofed that there are too many interconnections of not strictly scientific fields such as economics and politics with many humanities. Look, already some of the titles are biased towards a more positive or negative attitude, but thinking too optimistic is the same mistake as being too pessimistic, it isn´t objective anymore and one can be instrumentalized without even recognizing it.

In natural sciences, theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, physicians… that were friends of a certain idea will always say that there is the option of change, that a discovery may lead to a new revolution, and that their old work has to be reexamined. So in science regarding the real world the specialists are much more open to change than in some humanities, isn´t that strange?

It would be as if one would say that all humans are representative, similar, that there are no differences. But it´s not, each time a study is made there are different people, opinions, so many coincidences, and unique happenings that it´s impossible to reproduce it.
Scandinavia vs the normal world. The society people live in makes happiness, not theoretical, not definitive concepts.
One can manipulate so many parameters in those studies that the result can be extremely positive or negative, just depending on what who funds the study and does the study wants as results.

One could use the studies she/ he needs to create an optimistic or a pessimistic book and many studies about human nature are redundant, repetitive, or biased towards a certain result, often an optimistic outcome or spectacular, groundbreaking results. Do you know who does that too? Statistics, economics, politics, and faith.

I wish I could be a bit more optimistic than realistic, but not hard evidence based stuff is a bit of a no go if it involves practical applications, especially if there is the danger of not working against big problems by doing as if they weren´t there.

A few points that lead away from it:

1.tTech
2.tNordic model
3.tOpen data, open government,
4.tBlockchains, cryptocurrencies, quantum computing, to make each financial transaction transparent and traceable.
5.tPoints mentioned in the Wiki article
6.tIt must be horrible for the poor scientists who work in those fields and are now suffering because the founding fathers used theories and concepts that have nothing to do with real science. They worked hard to build a career to just find out that the predecessors integrated methods that couldn´t work in other systems, let's say an evolving computer program or a machine or a human body or anywhere except in ones´ imagination. They are truly courageous to risk criticism because of the humanities bashing wave that won´t end soon. As in so many fields, it are a few black sheep who ruin everything for many others and the more progressive a young scientist is, the more he is in danger of getting smashed between a hyper sensible public awareness and the old anachronism shepherds, avoiding anything progressive with the danger of a paradigm shift or even a relativization of the field they dedicated their career to. There has to be strict segregation between theories and ideas and applications in real life, so that anything can be researched, but not used to do crazy things.

The worst bad science practice includes, from Wikipedia, taken from the article about the replication crisis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica...

1.tThe replication crisis (or replicability crisis or reproducibility crisis) is, as of 2020, an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or reproduce. The replication crisis affects the social sciences and medicine most severely.[
2.tThe inability to replicate the studies of others has potentially grave consequences for many fields of science in which significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work. The replication crisis has been particularly widely discussed in the field of psychology and in medicine, where a number of efforts have been made to re-investigate classic results
3.tA 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).[8] In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did.
4.t„Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power."
5.tFirstly, questionable research practices (QRPs) have been identified as common in the field.[18] Such practices, while not intentionally fraudulent, involve capitalizing on the gray area of acceptable scientific practices or exploiting flexibility in data collection, analysis, and reporting, often in an effort to obtain a desired outcome. Examples of QRPs include selective reporting or partial publication of data (reporting only some of the study conditions or collected dependent measures in a publication), optional stopping (choosing when to stop data collection, often based on statistical significance of tests), p-value rounding (rounding p-values down to 0.05 to suggest statistical significance), file drawer effect (nonpublication of data), post-hoc storytelling (framing exploratory analyses as confirmatory analyses), and manipulation of outliers (either removing outliers or leaving outliers in a dataset to cause a statistical test to be significant).[18][19][20][21] A survey of over 2,000 psychologists indicated that a majority of respondents admitted to using at least one QRP.[18] False positive conclusions, often resulting from the pressure to publish or the author's own confirmation bias, are an inherent hazard in the field, requiring a certain degree of skepticism on the part of readers.[2
6.tSecondly, psychology and social psychology in particular, has found itself at the center of several scandals involving outright fraudulent research,
7.tThirdly, several effects in psychological science have been found to be difficult to replicate even before the current replication crisis. Replications appear particularly difficult when research trials are pre-registered and conducted by research groups not highly invested in the theory under questioning.
8.tScrutiny of many effects have shown that several core beliefs are hard to replicate. A recent special edition of the journal Social Psychology focused on replication studies and a number of previously held beliefs were found to be difficult to replicate.[25] A 2012 special edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science also focused on issues ranging from publication bias to null-aversion that contribute to the replication crises in psychology.[26] In 2015, the first open empirical study of reproducibility in psychology was published, called the Reproducibility Project. Researchers from around the world collaborated to replicate 100 empirical studies from three top psychology journals. Fewer than half of the attempted replications were successful at producing statistically significant results in the expected directions, though most of the attempted replications did produce trends in the expected directions.
9.tMany research trials and meta-analyses are compromised by poor quality and conflicts of interest that involve both authors and professional advocacy organizations, resulting in many false positives regarding the effectiveness of certain types of psychotherapy
10.tThe reproducibility of 100 studies in psychological science from three high-ranking psychology journals.[44] Overall, 36% of the replications yielded significant findings (p value below 0.05) compared to 97% of the original studies that had significant effects. The mean effect size in the replications was approximately half the magnitude of the effects reported in the original studies.
11.tHighlighting the social structure that discourages replication in psychology, Brian D. Earp and Jim A. C. Everett enumerated five points as to why replication attempts are uncommon:[50][51]
12.t"Independent, direct replications of others' findings can be time-consuming for the replicating researcher"
13.t"[Replications] are likely to take energy and resources directly away from other projects that reflect one's own original thinking"
14.t"[Replications] are generally harder to publish (in large part because they are viewed as being unoriginal)"
15.t"Even if [replications] are published, they are likely to be seen as 'bricklaying' exercises, rather than as major contributions to the field

Continued in comments

The poor rating isn’t because I disagreed with the content; I agreed with a majority of it when I was able to stay awake while reading.

Wow! This book from 1944 is a great discussion of the relationship between individual liberty and government authority. Anyone who is enamored with Bernie Sanders and collectivism needs to read this book. Actually, everyone should read this prophetic book. I wish I could hear what Hayek would say about Chairman Mao and communist China.

Quotes worth remembering:

A former member of the Labour party said, “from the point of view of fundamental human liberties there is little to choose between communism, socialism, and national socialism. They all are examples of the collectivist or totalitarian state...in its essentials not only is completed socialism the same as communism but it hardly differs from fascism.” -pp. xlii-xliii

"The movement for centralized planning is a movement against competition, while the individualist position believes that an individual’s own views ought to govern his actions.” -p. 66

DeTocqueville said, “Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” -p. 29

"This process of the decline of the Rule of Law had been going on steadily in Germany for some time before Hitler came into power and... a policy well advanced toward totalitarian planning had already done a great deal of the work which Hitler completed." -p. 87

"Even a good many economists with socialist views ... advocate planning no longer because of its superior productivity but because it will enable us to secure a more just and equitable distribution of wealth... But the question remains whether the price we should have to pay for the realization of somebody's ideal of justice is not bound to be more discontent and more oppression than was ever caused by the much-abused free play of economic forces." -pp. 108-109

"It is often said that political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom... The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialists promised us and which can be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power-of-choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right." -pp. 110-111

“Inequality is undoubtedly more readily borne, and affects the dignity of the person much less, if it is determined by impersonal forces than when it is due to design...However bitter the experience, it would be very much worse in a planned society...Once government has embarked upon planning for the sake of justice, it cannot refuse responsibility for anybody’s fate or position...And all our efforts directed toward improving our position will have to aim, not at foreseeing and preparing as well as we can for the circumstances over which we have no control, but at influencing in our favor the authority which has all the power.” -pp. 117-8

“The striving for security tends to become stronger than the love of freedom.” -p. 141

“Few catch-words have done so much harm as the ideal of a ‘stabilization’ of particular prices (or wages), which, while securing the income of some, makes the position of the rest more and more precarious. Thus, the more we try to provide full security by interfering with the market system, the greater the insecurity becomes; and, what is worse, the greater becomes the contrast between the security of those to whom it is granted as a privilege and the ever increasing insecurity of the underprivileged.” -p. 143

“Nothing is more fatal than the present fashion among intellectual leaders of extolling security at the expense of freedom. It is essential that we should re-learn frankly to face the fact that freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifices to preserve our liberty..’Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.;” -p. 147

“The contrast between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’, the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action...The enemy, whether he be internal, like the ‘Jew’ or the ‘kulak’, or external, seems to be an indispensable requisite in the armory of a totalitarian leader.” -p. 153

“To act on behalf of a group seems to free people of many of the moral restraints which control their behavior as individuals within the group.” -p. 157

“Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarian regimes which horrify us follow of necessity. From the collectivist standpoint intolerance and brutal suppression of dissent, the complete disregard of the life and happiness of the individual, are essential and unavoidable consequences of this basic premise, and the collectivist can admit this and at the same time claim that his system is superior to one in which the ‘selfish’ interests of the individual are allowed to obstruct the full realization of the ends the community pursues.” -p. 164

“Yet while there is little that is likely to induce men who are good by our standards to aspire to leading positions in the totalitarian machine, and much to deter them, there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous...The readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power.” -p. 166

“The moral code of a totalitarian society is not likely to appeal to us, that even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality-- an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order-- and that most of the humanitarian elements of our morals, the respect for human life, for the weak, and for the individual generally, will disappear.” -p. 169

“‘Freedom’ or ‘liberty’ are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to ‘justice’ and ‘law’, ‘right’ and ‘equality.’ The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use.” -p. 174

“The labor leaders who now proclaim so loudly that they have done once and for all with the mad competitive system are proclaiming the doom of the freedom of the individual. There is no other possibility than either the order governed by the impersonal discipline of the market of that directed by the will of a few individuals; and those who are out to destroy the first are wittingly or unwittingly helping to create the second.” -p. 219

“A movement whose main promise is the relief from responsibility cannot but be antimoral in its effect, however lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth...There is much to suggest that we have in fact become more tolerant toward particular abuses and much more indifferent to inequities in individual cases, since we have fixed our eyes on an entirely different system in which the state will set everything right...The passion for collective action is a way in which we now without compunction collectively indulge in that selfishness which as individuals we had learned a little to restrain.” -pp. 232-3

“The virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which Anglo-Saxons justly prided themselves...independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority. Almost all the traditions and institutions in which democratic moral genius has found its most characteristic expression, and which in turn have molded the national character and the whole moral climate of England and America, are those which the progress of collectivism and its inherently centralistic tendencies are progressively destroying.” -p. 235

Germans in WW2 “have learned that neither good intentions nor efficiency of organization can preserve decency in a system in which personal freedom and individual responsibility are destroyed. What the German and Italian who have learned the lesson want above all is protection against the monster state-- not grandiose schemes for organization on a colossal scale, but opportunity peacefully and in freedom to build up once more their own little worlds.” -p. 238

“It is only where...the awareness of one’s neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people guides action, that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows. Where the scope of the political measures becomes so large that the necessary knowledge is almost exclusively possessed by the bureaucracy, the creative impulses of the private person must flag.” p. 258

“Free Market” Liberalism 101…

Preamble:
--I’m addressing my past self in this review, in hopes that others find this process insightful…
--Believe it or not, but I started with “free market” economics:
i) Growing up in an immigrant family seeking assimilation, we obviously lacked sociopolitical/cultural ties, so “economic freedom” was a priority and an easy sell.
ii) Despite seeking assimilation, there was still some recognition of Western imperialism from where we left.
...So, the first politician I read was Republican “libertarian” Ron Paul, whose 2008 US presidential campaign featured anti-intervention foreign policy rhetoric. Paul blamed “the state”/“the government” for imperialist crimes, another easy sell when the state happens to be an empire.
...Paul’s alternative was a peaceful and prosperous “free market”, introducing me to the first economist I read, “Austrian school” economist Ludwig von Mises (even more market fundamentalist than Hayek). I still remember reading (with conviction) Mises to my dad, and his feedback: you should probably do more reading…

…Fast forward 17 years:
--My geo-political economy prof, Jim Glassman, refers to Antonio Gramsci’s insistence that the strongest arguments require directly confronting your opposition’s strongest arguments.
…The inverse of this, be it only picking the lowest-hanging fruits or making extreme caricatures of your opposition or using sneaky evasions (ex. “straw man fallacy”), etc. are signs of incompetence (of your content and/or delivery).
…So, I will start with:
i) charitability: assume Hayek is very much sincere in his love of individual freedom (and specifically equality of opportunity) and hatred of oppression.
ii) agreement: parts where I have shared concerns (even if my diagnosis differs)
iii) direct quotes: to avoid distortions
--“What is Politics?” video series reveals the confusion caused by debates where foundational definitions are not established. So, I will next test Hayek’s presumably-sincere assumptions to consider their tragic implications.

Shared Concerns:

1) Anti-Fascism:
--Hayek’s book was written during WWII (1940-43, published 1944) as a warning to British socialists for their supposed misdiagnosis of fascism. Socialists diagnosed fascism as a capitalist reaction to capitalist crisis/threat of socialism rather than blaming themselves.
--Obviously, I also prioritize accurate diagnoses of fascism in order to oppose it. We’ll return to fascism at the end, as we need to first walk through Hayek’s assumptions of capitalism/liberalism, socialism, etc.

2) Critiques of Conservatism:
--Hayek writes:

Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege. The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights to some which are not available on equal terms to others. […]

That the advances of the past should be threatened by the traditionalist forces of the Right is a phenomenon of all ages which need not alarm us. But if the place of the opposition, in public discussion as well as in Parliament, should become lastingly the monopoly of a second reactionary party [i.e. socialists], there would, indeed, be no hope left. […]

The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual [liberalism] is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.

…well, I obviously agree with Hayek’s critique that conservatism is often a barrier to progress (“some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place”).

3) Critiques of State Central Planning:
--Hayek’s definitions:
i) “socialism”: synonymous with state central planning/collectivism.
ii) “liberalism”: the inverse, i.e. competitive free markets/individualism (19th century Classical liberalism).
--I agree there are some socialists who prioritized state central planning, although Hayek omits the other motive of centralization: defense against capitalist reaction, i.e. “siege socialism”: ex. Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
--I agree there are many valid critiques of state central planning and its crude assumptions (technological determinism due to complexity/economies of scale); indeed, many critiques come from socialism/leftism, which Hayek omits entirely:
-Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
-The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

4) Uses of Markets:
--I agree competitive markets have their uses, as a mechanism for relatively-decentralized instantaneous-exchange between strangers. Indeed, Varoufakis’ Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present takes Hayek’s liberal priority of decentralized competitive markets and uses this to dismantle capitalist property rights.

Conflicting Diagnoses:

1) Binary: Markets vs. State?:
--I'll now quote Hayek extensively to give a fair representation of his single hammer (competitive markets), although in his attempt to see a world of nails he still has to acknowledge exceptions. Once again, Hayek's binary definitions (liberal markets vs. socialist state) leaves only one fallback option (state planning):

The liberal argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are. It is based on the conviction that, where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other. It does not deny, but even emphasizes, that, in order that competition should work beneficially, a carefully thought-out legal framework is required and that neither the existing nor the past legal rules are free from grave defects. Nor does it deny that, where it is impossible to create the conditions necessary to make competition effective, we must resort to other methods of guiding economic activity. […] And it regards competition as superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority. […]

This is precisely what the price system does under competition, and which no other system even promises to accomplish. It enables entrepreneurs, by watching the movement of comparatively few prices, as an engineer watches the hands of a few dials, to adjust their activities to those of their fellows. […]

It is necessary in the first instance that the parties in the market should be free to sell and buy at any price at which they can find a partner to the transaction and that anybody should be free to produce, sell, and buy anything that may be produced or sold at all. And it is essential that the entry into the different trades should be open to all on equal terms and that the law should not tolerate any attempts by individuals or groups to restrict this entry by open or concealed force. […]

To believe that the power which is thus conferred on the state is merely transferred to it from others is erroneous. It is a power which is newly created and which in a competitive society nobody possesses. So long as property is divided among many owners, none of them acting independently has exclusive power to determine the income and position of particular people—nobody is tied to any one property owner except by the fact that he may offer better terms than anybody else.

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not [Hayek omits the history of capitalism, where state violence's dispossessions created and maintain capitalist markets]. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. […]

This is no less relevant because in a system of free enterprise chances are not equal, since such a system is necessarily based on private property and (though perhaps not with the same necessity) on inheritance, with the differences in opportunity which these create. There is, indeed, a strong case for reducing this inequality of opportunity as far as congenital differences permit and as it is possible to do so without destroying the impersonal character of the process by which everybody has to take his chance and no person’s view about what is right and desirable overrules that of others.

The fact that the opportunities open to the poor in a competitive society are much more restricted than those open to the rich does not make it less true that in such a society the poor are much more free than a person commanding much greater material comfort in a different type of society. Although under competition the probability that a man who starts poor will reach great wealth is much smaller than is true of the man who has inherited property, it is not only possible for the former, but the competitive system is the only one where it depends solely on him and not on the favors of the mighty, and where nobody can prevent a man from attempting to achieve this result [well, if it's only between markets vs. state...]. [...]

This is not necessarily true, however, of measures merely restricting the allowed methods of production, so long as these restrictions affect all potential producers equally and are not used as an indirect way of controlling prices and quantities. […] To prohibit the use of certain poisonous substances or to require special precautions in their use, to limit working hours or to require certain sanitary arrangements, is fully compatible with the preservation of competition. The only question here is whether in the particular instance the advantages gained are greater than the social costs which they impose. […]

[…] the destruction of stocks of raw materials [famously portrayed in The Grapes of Wrath] or the suppression of inventions, for which competition is blamed, though they are precisely the sort of thing which could not happen under competition and which are made possible only by monopoly and usually by government-aided monopoly. […]

An effective competitive system needs an intelligently designed and continuously adjusted legal framework as much as any other. Even the most essential prerequisite of its proper functioning, the prevention of fraud and deception (including exploitation of ignorance), provides a great and by no means yet fully accomplished object of legislative activity. […]

Nothing, indeed, seems at first more plausible, or is more likely to appeal to reasonable people, than the idea that our goal must be neither the extreme decentralization of free competition nor the complete centralization of a single plan but some judicious mixture of the two methods. Yet mere common sense proves a treacherous guide in this field [Hayek is insisting on laws for free competition]. […]

There are, finally, undoubted fields where no legal arrangements can create the main condition on which the usefulness of the system of competition and private property depends […]. Where, for example, it is impracticable to make the enjoyment of certain services dependent on the payment of a price, competition will not produce the services; and the price system becomes similarly ineffective when the damage caused to others by certain uses of property cannot be effectively charged to the owner of that property. […] some method other than competition may have to be found to supply the services in question. Thus neither the provision of signposts on the roads nor, in most circumstances, that of the roads themselves can be paid for by every individual user. Nor can certain harmful effects [pollution] 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. In such instances we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism. But the fact that we have to resort to the substitution of direct regulation by authority [note: binary options!!!] where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function.

--Curiously, the end of the book shifts to the international scale, where Hayek lets slip:

Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where it is the awareness of one’s neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take a real part in public affairs because they concern the world he knows.

…This passage is funny because Hayek is referring to “small countries like Holland and Switzerland”, so he is still assuming national state planning and omitting the obvious alternative of Commons/consensus/direct democracy (as opposed to electoral democracy) which are foundational to human sociability:
-The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
-Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

…see comments below for rest of the review…
2) “Socialism” and Fascism?
3) “Western Civilization” vs. History of Capitalism
4) Colonialism and Fascism

This was utter garbage. This was the lowest point of intellectual history; it combined selfish morals with so-called 'logic' and used distorted arguments to justify libertarian capitalism that whenever tried has led to starvation and the deaths of thousands. What is clear from his writings is that Hayek was a dick. He was even worse than his successor Milton Friedman and that is saying a lot! All these so-called libertarian economists prove by their stupid books and arguments is that they just want to justify with any means their insatiable desire for money. I am not supporting communism or socialism for that matter by expressing my hatred of this book; in fact any one who actually cares about people should rightfully hate this literal piece of trash. Unfortunately the publishers of this book failed to recognise this and now this piece of trash is out in the world and sadly it will influence people to support these crooked 'ideas' of the political economist Hayek.

Like a lot of people interested in libertarian and classical liberal ideas, I read Hayek's Road to Serfdom pretty early in my intellectual journey. As time went on, I read more of Hayek's lengthier and more technical works - The Constitution of Liberty, his trio on Law, Legislation, and Liberty, and many of his articles (those included in the collection Individualism and Economic Order were especially important and influential on my thinking). As I read more Hayek, I guess I came to unconsciously think of Road to Serfdom as an "introductory" work - a simplified presentation suitable for getting people started in thinking about complex ideas, but not really worthy of attention from those already initiated.
Recently, I came back to this book, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it holds up *very* well. It's much more sophisticated than I remember, and re-reading it shows that a lot of the most important ideas in Hayek's later work are already here, at least in nascent form. The knowledge-based critique of central planning, the philosophical critique of rationalism, the broadly republican conception of freedom, and lots more. And of course, near and dear to my heart, there's his concession that the provision of a "given minimum of sustenance for all" falls within the realm of legitimate activity for a liberal state.
After re-reading the book, I took a look at the Reader's Digest condensed version, made available via the Institute for Economic Affairs. Of course as a snooty academic I had dismissed that too as unworthy of serious consideration. But, as Hayek himself said repeatedly throughout his life, they actually did a pretty terrific job! If you want just the essence of RtS without the long historical digressions and copious illustrations, the Reader's Digest version actually does the trick quite well. I would even recommend it for those who want to use a short bit of Hayek in an undergraduate class.
(I'm still snooty about the cartoon version of Road to Serfdom though. General advice: if you don't want critics to dismiss a cartoon version of your sophisticated political philosophy, don't encourage your supporters to make a *literal cartoon version of your political philosophy*).

What a fine book. What a timely book. Those who want to understand Obamonomics need to read this. Those who have read it already should probably read it again. The political world is divided into two main groups -- those who think controlling everything from the center is a good idea and those who do not. Each side of that divide has its variations, but those are the basic options. Those on the fascist side (control) have the hard totalitarians and the soft totalitarians, but that is basically a difference between those who want to hang you by the neck and those who want to smother you with a feather pillow. At any rate, those who love freedom need all the intellectual ammo they can get these days, and this book has plenty.

ستاره کمتر دادم بخاطر ترجمه افتضاح

Absurd Pamphlet! This is a very silly book, deliberately deceiving... if you read it, don't take it literally.

Review incoming

A passionately felt and forcefully argued--and prescient--defence of liberalism, the doctrine of individual freedom that is opposed by all collectivists, whether of the left or right.

Lacking a liberal education, I was slow to come to an appreciation of political science and economics. To me, "political science" seemed like a contradiction in terms, like "military intelligence"; and economics seemed like a field that used jargon and equations to study the least interesting aspects of life: employment and finance. I never dreamed that economics could be exciting until I read Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs in 1986, when I was 27, on the recommendation of a coworker. And I didn't really come to be excited by political theory until I got myself a set of the Britannica Great Books of the Western World in 2010, and discovered that a number of the Great Ideas that the editors had identified were political ideas: Aristocracy, Citizen, Constitution, Democracy, Government, Law, Monarchy, Oligarchy, Revolution, State, Tyranny, and, possibly, War & Peace. Now in my 50s, I started digging in.

Friedrich Hayek, born in Austria-Hungary in 1899, was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics in 1974, but his two doctoral degrees were in law and political science, and he states in his preface to The Road to Serfdom that his book is a work of politics. It was written and published in Britain, where he was now a subject, while World War II raged. Hayek had witnessed the rise of Nazism first hand, and so was in a stronger position than most of his fellow Britons, even apart from his educational background, to perceive the parallels in thought between the UK and other Allied countries of that time and in Germany in the years leading up to and following World War I.

For, strange and shocking though it may sound, Hayek saw strong and troubling similarities between the most popular currents of political and economic thought in wartime Britain and in the Germany of 25 years earlier. Starting in the late 19th century, Germany was the first country to fall under the spell of socialism. And by socialism Hayek means the application of large-scale planning to economic life. In the 19th century, the tremendous success of the factory system of production led people to consider the idea of applying factory methods to larger segments of the economy: whole sectors, or even the entire economy itself. Why not? Why not make the economy as a whole as productive as a factory? There would be huge gains in efficiency and wealth. There would be maximum production, full employment, and the end of poverty. What's not to like?

The experience of war and the wartime economy seemed to give a taste of what is possible. Under the pressure of World War I, a vast and highly mechanized conflict, the state took on ever more powers of directing economic activity in order to win. It set quotas and prices, rationed goods, and deployed capital where it was needed. The result was a great sense of common purpose and tremendous productivity. Germany went on to lose that war, but for many the takeaway was that victory could perhaps have been gained if they had had more unity, more fixity of purpose, and more central control. Such thinking was already well along the way to forming the seedbed of Nazism.

Hayek is at pains to show that the issue is not one of the politics of left and right. Nazis and fascists are on the right, and socialists and communists are on the left, but what they all share is the ideology of collectivism: the idea that the "common good" trumps the preferences or rights of the individual. So, while Nazis, fascists, socialists, and communists might all hate each other, in fact they draw upon the same pool of potential members, who not infrequently switch from one of these parties to another. And they all share a common enemy: liberals. For the belief in individual liberty cannot be reconciled with collectivism. Liberalism had come to be perceived by most intellectuals as an obsolete, bourgeois, elitist leftover of the 19th century, something that any right-thinking person must strenuously oppose, a monster that was not quite dead yet but whose death was long overdue.

Hayek observes how it is no accident that the states in which central planning had taken the greatest hold--Germany, the USSR--were the most monstrous tramplers of individual rights. He shows how a consistent pursuit of collectivist aims necessarily leads to nationalism, the destruction of truth, and the rise of thugs to the most powerful positions in the state. It was not the innate barbarity of Germans or their special proneness to hero worship that propelled Hitler to power; it was the inescapable internal logic of collectivism itself, which necessarily destroys individual morality as it seeks to utilize the human resources that are now directed at the will of the state.

I think of these words by Loren Eiseley:

The group ethic is whatever its leaders choose it to mean; it destroys the innocent and justifies the act in terms of the future.

Hayek treasures freedom, but he does not glorify liberalism; he acknowledges that there were many abuses and injustices perpetrated in the name of 19th-century laissez-faire liberalism. He puts this down to the fact that the idea of radical freedom, both political and economic, for every individual is something new in history, and that the difficulties with it have still to be worked out. There are aspects of liberalism that many people find hard to accept, such as the great inequalities of wealth that occur under a capitalist economic system. Apart from the fact that rulers of collectivist societies simply seize large fortunes for themselves, creating large inequalities of their own, Hayek does not believe that an economic or political system should be built around envy. In a liberal economic system, rewards--sometimes very large ones--can be gained by those who take risks; more often, they take losses. There is nothing fundamentally unfair about this. Those who wish relative predictability and safety have the option of working for wages. Those who wish to stake their fortune on a chance of big success are free to do so.

Wealth is a measurable good, but how do you put a price tag on personal freedom? It's a priceless thing that we tend to take for granted until it is gone. The poorest citizen of a liberal society might look with bitter envy at his rich neighbors, but Hayek notes that he lives in a society that places no political obstacles to his advancement. His position in society is not decreed by the state, as it is under a collectivist regime. The American Dream consists exactly of the idea that a man can improve his material circumstances through his own efforts, that there is nothing fundamentally to stop him except the limits of his own initiative, creativity, talent, and industry.

But does that mean we should just watch our fellow citizens starve if they fall on, or have been born into, hard times? Hayek sees no need for this. The great abundance produced by a liberal economy should be well able to look after the basic needs of the poorest people. There are difficult questions about how to do that, but there is no fundamental obstacle. It's a practical matter to be worked out. It's no reason to ditch freedom in favor of slavery.

Collectivism, whether of the right or left, seduces us with a siren song of justice, equality, and plenty. But the implementation of central planning necessarily means the concentration of power at the center, and that power must decide what the priorities will be--what the "social good" is. The central power will decided how many teachers there shall be, and whether they shall be paid more or less than doctors or plumbers or field hands. This need for total control in order to execute a comprehensive plan means that a collectivist society must necessarily move toward totalitarianism. Anything less will frustrate its efforts at some point. And as for plenty, well, Cuba, North Korea, and now Venezuela are countries whose citizens are starving.

One of the most chilling sentences in the book concludes that

the one decisive factor in the rise of totalitarianism on the Continent, which is yet absent in this country, is the existence of a large recently dispossessed middle class.

I think about the observation that there is growing inequality in our Western countries, that the middle class is shrinking or imploding. This would appear to be a serious danger sign. It brings to mind another forceful book, this one about mass movements, written by the American thinker Eric Hoffer and published in 1951: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Hoffer shows how mass movements gain an unstoppable momentum of their own, how large sections of society can revert to what amounts to mob psychology in their zeal to overthrow the existing order. I think Hoffer's book would make an excellent, if chilling, companion volume to The Road to Serfdom.

Hayek is no firebrand. Although he writes with strong conviction, he comes across as reasonable, respectful, and mature. Liberalism, the greatest form of social organization yet discovered by man, deserves advocates, and Hayek has stood up to be one. He is an excellent champion of it. Now it's down to us: what kind of a society do we want to live in? If you are a socialist or a fascist, or are tempted to become one, I urge you to read this book, and honestly answer for yourself the points that Hayek raises. Can you rebut him? To me, there's no choice to be made. I'm sad to think that it may be made for me by people who do not realize what they're getting us all into.

Friedrich Hayek, a 20th century economist and social scientist, chose to wrote The Road to Serfdom (1943) at a time when the Allied forces were still battling the totalitarian force of Germany, Italy and Japan. As Hayek mentions in the preface, he wrote this book not because he was the most qualified person to do this, but because a book like this was necessary while nobody else seemed to realize this.

In fact, The Road to Serfdom is one big essay in which Hayek criticizes socialism and pleads for a return to 19th century liberalism. He sees liberalism as the only remedy to avoid another disaster like the earlier world wars and the rise of totalitarianism.

Why does Hayek see socialism as the biggest threat to humanity? Well, socialism is the first step on the inevitable road to totalitarianism - serfdom. How does this work? Socialism is a reactionary movement which takes a stand against capitalism and liberalism; it sees in these developments the collapse of society. In other words: socialism battles the individual freedom to choose and buy whatever we want in our lives (within practiable, personal limits, of course). So in essence, the socialist wants to abolish individual freedom - "freedom without economic and political equality isn't worth having".

According to socialism, the remedy to these liberal depredations lies in taking control over the economic power. Socialists see economic power as the means to obtain their ends: radical equality. This means, in effect, the collectivization of all means of production - one group or party determines who shall get what, and when. According to Hayek, this collectivist thinking leads to Central Planning (see for example, Hitler's Five Year Plan and the plans of the infamous Soviet Plan Bureau). But to make a planned economy possible, it is necessary to control all the variables in the economic system. In other words, the government has to ensure that all its citizens do what it wants, and when - and voila, we have arrived at the totalitarian state which proactively stifles all criticism and personal freedom of movement.

(This, by the way, is exactly what happened in practice. Hitler put the German intelligentsia, as soon as he was able to, in concentration camps; he also made sure that all the intellentsia of occupied countries were the first ones to go. Stalin did something similar in his continuous purges, in which millions of people were killed. Totalitarian regimes cannot afford criticism to surface; it has to control peoples' minds via indoctrination and propaganda.)


The above mechanism - totalitarian control of peoples' lives via economic policy - is, according to Hayek, the true origin of the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia (among others). And the danger lies in the fact that Hayek, writing in 1943 England, sees the socialist ideology being worshipped (and followed) by intellectuals, politicians, scientists and civilians alike. In other words: he sees England moving along the same path that Germany in the 1920's took. This is, ultimately what he means with 'The Road to Serfdom' and what he warns his audience for.

The strength of Hayek lies in the fact that he not only offers a critique on contemporary society and that points out the inherent dangers of socialism; he also offers a remedy to the collectivist danger. According to Hayek, we should look back to 19th century liberalism (the British version) - with its emphasis on intellectual honesty, personal freedom, competition of thought, and capitalism - for a solution to the totalitarian crisis.

Why should we do this? Well, simply because in a capitalist and liberal democracy, all the people have the individual freedom to do and choose whatever they want - within their natural and practical limits. Even though in such a society bad things will still happen to individual people, these bad things are at least - sort of - random and impersonal. In a socialist state, the party determines who gets what and who doesn't. This is injustice, since this will inevitably lead to the oppression and suffering (not to mention death) of the masses. Not so in a liberal democratic society, in which the government is limited by the rule of law, and in which justice applies in general and not to particular cases. What Hayek means with this, is that liberal democracy and capitalism are impersonal and inarbitrary, whereas socialism is personal and arbitrary (not to mention boundless).

Hayek is the first to admit that liberal democracy and capitalism have their own inherent ills, but he also (correctly, in my opinion) points out that in all the alternative systems, individuals are much worse off - in materially, jurdicially and politically. As Churchill once said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have tried from time to time." In socialism the party determines what you will do (even free time was completely determined in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia), and what you will eat, and where you will work. The party knows it all - how much shoes should be produced, how much wheat should be harvested. This, of course, is an illusion - with devastating practical results (it is calculated that, for example, 8 million Ukranians were starved to death by Stalin's economic policiy).

A free market, says Hayek, ensures the impartiality of the system regarding each individual. So does a democratic rule of law. You are judged on your own merits in a democratic, liberal society. A lot of people mistake such a view (as Hayek portrays brilliantly in this book) with a libertarian society, in which the government only upholds the law, enforces order and leaves its citicizens to look after themselves. This is not what Hayek has in mind. He argues for a liberal government, which intervenes strategically (and scientifically informed!) in economics to ensure each and every citicizen a minimum ammount of subsistense (in food, clothes, shelter), without destroying the incentives of people to try to make a living and in doing so, earning money, improving the lives of themselves and their children. It is the interaction of a society of such individuals, all trying to earn money to improve their lives, that slowly and gradually uplifts itself - without any (arbitrary) Central Planning taking place.

So in short, Hayek's central message: collectivism leads - inevitably - to immense suffering, total control of peoples' lives by the state and war; individualism leads to material wellbeing, personal freedom and peace.

To finish this review, I'd like to add two personal remark on The Road to Serfdom.

1. I find it amazing that in 2017, many people still believe in the collectivist myth - namely the myth that everyone should be made equal to all others, in all respects. It is really worrying that many people - including young people, no, especially young (and bright) people - vote (extreme) leftist and call themselves socialists, marxists, neo-marxists, etc.

To paraphrase Hayek, we live with many totalitarians in our midst, and it seems they have found a way - this time by using culture, instead of economics - to enforce their collectivist ideology on us. The radical equalization that Stalin and Hitler dreamt of, is taking place before our very eyes: biological differences are pronounced to be social constructs, created by white men; sexual preference is pronounced to be culturally determined; ethics has been radically relativized (all cultures are equal, even the ones that practice female genital mutilation or that enforce religious views on the non-believers); truth (and thereby science) is pronounced to be not absolute, anything goes (by dialectically deconstructing every statement made).

In short: each and every individual is pronounced to be like all the rest. Individual differences should be destroyed: no gender, no nationality, no race, no nothing. The marxist ideology, which was in its origin an economic one, has been put into practice via the collectivization of culture, and it is very ironic that this happened with the help of the capitalists (i.e. the multinationals who profit by international immigration and globalization, in order to ensure low wages, low taxation, and the evasion of national, democratically made laws).

The point I want to make is that we - at least this seems to me to be the case - that we have fallen into the trap that Hayek sketches in this book: the toleration of socialists in our midst and thereby the gradual taking over of society by socialism (political, cultural, etc.). I think we should immediately retreat to our reading rooms and study Hayek some more. Tolerance of individual freedom and difference is the key to a happy life; all tries to enforce equality is doomed to failure and will lead to oppression and suffering!

2. As for my second remark, I want to commend Hayek for his gifted foresight. In the last chapter of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek dares to look forward - to a time when the war is finished - and he sees major economic difficulties. People have to submit to lower peace-time wages (during the war they artificially earned more than they were used to), which means, in effect, submitting to a (former) lower standard of living. He deems it likely that the Unions will block the attempts of the government and the companies to lower the wages, and I cannot help but wonder if the later crises - for which Margaret Thatcher is so well-known - are the delayed result of the second World War.

Another problem Hayek foresees, is the problem of keeping the peace in Europe. His remedy for this problem is a federal international organization, which has the power (according to the rule of law) to intervene in attempts of countries showing international agression. So Hayek sees a federal organisation, endowed with negative powers (i.e. prevention), as the solution for Europe's perpetual state of war. In a sense, this is exactly what the European Union - in an economic and political sense has become: an international organization that tries to find compromises when a conflict of interests between two or more of her member states surfaces. And in a sense, NATO is the military federal and international organization that Hayek promotes - as is the United Nations (maybe even more so than NATO).

Truly amazing to read someone in 1943 advocating international cooperation as a means to keep the peace. One more reason to read Hayek in these Euro-skeptic times.