Very powerful defense of classical liberalism (laissez-faire capitalism) and insightful explanation of the two warring social/economic systems that seem to recycle endlessly from one generation to the next, re-branded as the latest and greatest "Great Leap Forward." Oh that this book was able to be distilled into the bottles of newborns, or at the very least, required reading in every economics or government class! The only fault I can find with this book is my own; namely, that this brain of mine does not possess enough neurons sparking in its empty corridors to fully comprehend Hayek's train of thought at times. Perhaps re-reading the print version (I listened to an audiobook) would be better. It's well worth wrestling through, but as some parts can be a bit dry for the average (read: slightly attention-deficient person), it does take a degree of concentration.

Notable quotations ~

"We have no intention, however, of making a fetish of democracy. It may well be true that our generation talks and thinks too much of democracy and too little of the values which it serves. It
cannot be said of democracy, as Lord Acton truly said of liberty, that it "is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for the security in the pursuit ofthe highest objects of civil society, and of private life." Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain."

"A true"dictatorship of the proletariat", even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done. The fashionable concentration on democracy as the main value threatened is not without danger. It is largely responsible for the misleading and unfounded belief that so long as the ultimate source of power is the will of the majority, the power cannot be arbitrary. The false assurance which many people derive from this belief is an important cause of the general unawareness of the dangers which we face. There is no justification for the belief that so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; the contrast suggested by this statement is altogether false: it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary."

"Where the precise effects of government policy on particular people are known, where the government aims directly at such particular effects, it cannot help knowing these effects, and therefore it cannot be impartial. It must, of necessity, take sides, impose its valuations upon people and, instead of assisting them in the advancement of their own ends, choose the ends for them. As soon as the particular effects are foreseen at the time a law is made, it ceases to be a mere instrument to be used by the people and becomes instead an instrument used by the lawgiver upon
the people and for his ends. The state ceases to be a piece of utilitarian machinery intended to help individualsin the fullest development oftheirindividual personality and becomes a “moral” institution—where “moral” is not used in contrast to immoral but describes an institution which imposes on its members its views on all moral questions, whether these views be moral or highly immoral. In this sense the Nazi or any other collectivist state is “moral,” while the liberal state is not."

"If we want to test the usefulness of the principle of “fairness” in deciding the kind of issues which
arise in economic planning, we must apply it to some question where the gains and the losses are seen equally clearly. In such instances it is readily recognized that no general principle such as fairness can provide an answer. When we have to choose between higher wages for nurses or doctors and more extensive services for the sick, more milk for children and better wages for agricultural workers, or between employment for the unemployed or better wages for those already
employed, nothing short of a complete system of values in which every want of every person or group has a definite place is necessary to provide an answer.
t In fact, as planning becomes more and more extensive, it becomes regularly necessary to qualify legal provisions increasingly by reference to what is “fair” or “reasonable”; this means that it becomes necessary to leave the decision of the concrete case more and more to the discretion of the judge or authority in question....There can be no doubt that planning necessarily involves deliberate discrimination between particular needs of different people, and allowing one man to do what another must be prevented from doing. It must lay down by a legal rule how well off particular people shall be and what different people are to be allowed to have and do. It means in effect a return to the rule of status, a reversal of the “movement of progressive societies” which, in the famous phrase of Sir Henry Maine, “has hitherto been a movement from status to contract.” "

"Unfortunately the assurance people derive from this belief that the power which is exercised over economic life is a power over matters of secondary importance only, and which makes them take lightly the threat to the freedom of our economic pursuits, is altogether unwarranted. It is largely a consequence of the erroneous belief that there are purely economic ends separate from the other ends of life. Yet, apart from the pathological case ofthe miser, there is no such thing. The ultimate ends of the activities ofreasonable beings are never economic. Strictly speaking there is no "economic motive" but only economic factors conditioning our striving for other ends."

"Economic planning would not affect merely those of our marginal needs that we have in mind when we speak contemptuously about the merely economic. It would, in effect, mean that we as individuals should no longer be allowed to decide what we regard as marginal."

Фридрих фон Хайек, Лауреат Нобелевской премии по экономике, разбирает в этой небольшой книге экономические основы тоталитаризма и его производных форм – нацизма и социализма. Для начала надо понимать разницу между демократией и социализмом. «Демократия, будучи по своей сути индивидуалистическим институтом, находилась с социализмом в непримиримом противоречии. Лучше всех сумел разглядеть это де Токвиль. "Демократия расширяет сферу индивидуальной свободы, — говорил он в 1848 г., — социализм ее ограничивает. Демократия утверждает высочайшую ценность каждого человека, социализм превращает человека в простое средство, в цифру. Демократия и социализм не имеют между собой ничего общего, кроме одного слова: равенство. Но посмотрите, какая разница: если демократия стремится к равенству в свободе, то социализм — к равенству в рабстве и принуждении».
Фон Хайек со ссылкой на труды других экономистов и ученых других специальностей утверждает, что национал-социализм и марксизм – одно и то же, а демократический социализм – это невозможная утопия. Разбирая различие основ демократии, базирующейся на индивидуализме и ценности каждого человека в обществе, и социализма, базирующегося на коллективе и ценности организации (соответственно, ценность человека снижается в сравнении с ценностью общества), Хайек приходит к выводам о конкуренции, которая эти две системы отличает друг от друга. Он размышляет о важности конкуренции, которая должна функционировать беспрепятственно и является лучшим способом управлять действиями индивидов. При социализме этого не происходит, поскольку идет активное государственное вмешательство и планирование. Вместо планирования он предлагает координацию, которая представляет собой не вмешательство государства, а предоставление информации для согласования действий. Тоталитаризм несовместим с индивидуалистическими ценностями демократии. Если общество или, вернее, государство, поставлены выше индивида, то есть члены общества, которые «равнее, чем остальные», то есть ближе к государству или управлению, поэтому тоталитарное общество всегда ищет внутреннего врага, а иногда и внешнего. Этим же объясняется необходимость пропаганды и ограничение свободы мысли в тоталитарном обществе.

Если до 1970-х годов в мире преобладало увлечение Кейнсом, то в 1980-е труды фон Хайека приобрели бОльшую популярность. Именно основываясь на его рекомендациях ограничить государственное вмешательство, проводили свои экономические курсы Тэтчер и Рейган. Сейчас в моей стране и на пост-советском пространстве нарастают тенденции государственно-монополистического капитализма с чрезмерно раздутым государственным сектором. В некоторых странах результат уже налицо. Нужна экономическая свобода, конкуренция, борьба с монополиями (про монополии актуально и для развитого мира тоже, например, в сфере интернет-технологий). Если Тэтчер лично читала труда Хайека, могут ли хотя бы наши министры похвастаться этим, я уже не говорю о первых лицах? На мой взгляд, главный вывод из книги в следующем: поскольку различие в ценностях – на первом месте должен быть человек, индивид и он должен быть поставлен в условия справедливой конкуренции (в знаниях, профессионализма, иных качествах) и свободы, экономической, политической, а не управляем или ограничен системой.

It is quite shocking to read a text from the 1950s describing a Eastern European economy in the 1980s.

This book is a well written statement of classical liberalism. It is also a waste of time, poor theory and not slightly worth considering. That politicians and philosophers take Hayek seriously is a sad testament and black spot in the Western philosophical tradition. Hayek is better forgotten and this book unread. If you want to read something politically fertile and theoretical worthwhile then you would be better served reading Bertrand Russell, Louis Althusser, John Stuart Mill or Karl Popper. Do not read Hayek, it will only be wasting time.

If I could summarise this work in a few words, they would be archaic, misrepresentation, conflation and displacement. This book is an outdated piece of political propaganda that goes to great lengths to fail to insert much intellectual credibility or practicable theory between the covers.

There is first the elephant in the room: Hayek's intellectual dishonesty. On page 123 of the Routledge edition, Hayek places two quotes together under the heading 'Security and Freedom.' One is by Lenin, the other Trotsky. They are so framed to give the impression is was the desire of the Soviet revolutionaries (and all Marxists by extension) to have the State as the absolute centre of trade and employment - rather, obviously, than what they actually desired which was democratic collectivism of the means of production. Unfortunately, the Trotsky quote is from a thorough-going critique of Stalinist Russia and the various ways in which the "Worker's State" had degenerated. Hayek is a sharp man, so he cannot be forgiven for simply misquoting. It seems he has deliberately misrepresented his opponents to better make his argument. Strawman is a fallacy that Hayek utilizes in abundance, particularly when conflating his myriad oppositions into one category.

Hayek's opposition is collectivism. For Hayek, collectivism is central planning and State totalitarianism. He categorizes all non-liberal positions as possessing this tendency towards totalitarian suppression of the individual and their freedom. This claim is baffling as Hayek wrote the work after the CNT-FAI had collectivised the means of production in Spain and, for a short 3 years, produced more individual freedom, instituted workplace democracy and increased wages, production while lowering working hours - during a civil war against fascists, I might add - than any liberal system could dream of (See Andy Durgan The Spanish Civil War). Hayek conflates Nazism, Socialism and all collectivisms under one simple label. He then critiques relentlessly this strawman with poor arguments and bad theory; all for nothing as his conclusion as shaky at best - even in their basic premises.

These arguments are based on an account of history that is plainly and demonstrably false. Hayek argues that Nazism in Germany and Soviet Communism in Russia are basically analogous. Both ideologies - as it is ideas that drive history for Hayek - lead to totalitarian planning. But, as Arendt put it:

Although today it is so conveniently overlooked, the fact that the Nazi version of totalitarianism could develop along lines similar to that of the Soviet, yet nevertheless use an entirely different ideology, shows at least that Marx cannot very well stand accused of having brought forth the specifically totalitarian aspects of Bolshevik domination.

It was not ideology, but material conditions and cultural tradition that led to the development of two systems Hayek takes as the same. What Germany and Russia did share was an unstable democracy that could not answer the crisis of the day, long standing disillusionment, a long and recent history of authoritarian governments and crippling economic crisis. Each country also had institutional and social externalities that Hayek makes no effort to understand. It just so happens (argued in a book edited by Andrew Vandenberg) that when severe economic crisis occurs, countries have a tendency towards autocratic rule. One need only look at contemporary Greece to note this. Further, modes of being, acting and thinking that are developed under socio-political conditions tend towards the tradition which satisfies said thinking and acting. Countries where leaders and every day persons are normalised into autocratic forms of organisation tend towards those forms of organisation when structural stress and crisis create uncertainty. Thus, it was not ideology, but political and economic problems, as well as traditions, that led to the totalitarian systems Hayek attempts, and fails, to explain. Just the same could occur in a liberal country with a long tradition of rule over, hierarchical power structures and probable economic crisis. Say, a capitalistic economic system with no mediated and democratic social regulation to check and diffuse power networks, invisible tyranny and the concentration wealth (and therefore autocratic power) in the hands of a few. But Hayek refuses to accept this and his conflation of the two different cases under the one strawman weakens the already poor theory in this book.

Hayek's arguments from ideas are also relatively weak. He argues from a collection of obscure German philosophers who are supposed to have influenced the course of history. But as shown above, it is the structural, and the normalised modes of being, that are the real driving force. Ideas are important, certainly; they are not the central driving force as Hayek would have one (wrongly) believe.

Hayek's dismissal of robust class analysis, and misunderstanding of how social pressure and institutional ideological reproduction functions, means this book is severely outdated. His conception of the subject is that of a rational, isolated and ends driven (in exclusion to all other influences) individual; and this person must have absolute freedom. Yet this individual nowhere exists, and never has. As Foucault and Althusser, and most social theorists after them, have shown, power and social structures, normalization and discipline, affect a person. Rationality and common sense are structured and shaped by society, and ends are often only valuable because of social power. Hayek's moral basis does not exist and is a poor and archaic starting point. While the political freedom, and the social liberty, of the individual is important, the isolationist and outdated view that Hayek takes is better left to the history books rather than taken seriously.

The last thing that Hayek does, one of the worst of his mistakes, is displacement. He suggest that creativity is innate and that markets are the best location and expression for it. This is simply not true. At best, it can be said markets are helpful for creativity, but according everything a monetary value removes from existence the potential (as social power shapes value) for creativity to vanish. Removal of capitalist markets, and collectivisation of means of production (to do away with hierarchy which is dangerous and leads down the road to authoritarianism and serfdom) so that a guaranteed means of subsistence and universal healthcare is available to everyone is a much better way of expressing freedom and creativity. Persons become free to choose how they deploy their time and express their creativity (with subsistence you can create as you please without drudging to work every hour of the day and coming home tired) and innovate (education being freed from market viciousness is more likely to expand and introduce new ideas. It is a sad fact that the fewer persons who have education, the smaller the range of ideas and possibility - see Catholic Europe, Greek Athens, Rome etc.). Hayek's displacement of creativity to the capitalist and repressive market is both wasteful and archaic, as well as just one possible and not especially good expression and vehicle for allowing creativity to flourish.

This book is not worth reading. It is a colossal waste, outdated, poor theory founded on non-existant subjects with a metaphysics that just is not worth taking seriously. One would better understand human freedom by putting this book away. Place it back on the shelf and read Polanyi, Orwell, Mill or Popper. They will offer you an actual book worth reading with well formed arguments and less outdated and less irrelevant claims.

The highest praise I would want to offer Hayek is that his theory is more flexible and open than Milton Friedman's dogmatic devotion to capitalism.

That being said, Hayek's work proceeds from several logical fallacies which then become the basis for his entire theoretical framework. The most prominent fallacy is his reduction of socialism to a central planning scheme. In point of fact, many socialists and communists are fundamentally opposed to central planning and in fact favor democratic control of the means of production, which would probably take the form of a much more flexible web of workers communes and locally run production cells. But Hayek takes Stalinism to be the only possible form of socialism, whereas many modern historians and political theorists would argue that Stalinism was in fact a form of state capitalism.

The other big problem with Hayek's work is that he takes classical Liberalism at face value, accepting its claims that Liberal principles lead to individual freedom. The problem of course is that empirically Liberal societies have expanded the realm of political and cultural power to the bourgeoisie, but they have done so through the implicit or explicit enslavement of workers, agricultural laborers, miners, and so on (remember that no less a person than John Locke argued in favor of slavery). Hayek asserts that by 1900 workers had unprecedented prosperity, but he provides no real evidence to support this, and in fact there is myriad evidence that under Liberal capitalism workers suffered horrendous working conditions and it was only through the collective action of (generally socialist inspired) union organization that working conditions improved. But Hayek ignores all the political economic problems raised by Marx and Engels, ignores the realities that made the trade union movement necessary, and ignores the wide variety of political theories that comprise the broad sphere of socialism.

I also find it ironic that many of the things Hayek fears under central planning (like a technocratic economy, and centralized dictatorial coercion) have become realities under the neoliberal movement that he founded. Take, for instance, the IMF and the World Bank. These are technocratic institutions not subject to the rule of law, democratic control, and which are not publicly accountable, yet they have become instruments to enforce economical Liberalization throughout the global south, which is almost always at the expense of the global south by allowing global north based corporations to basically steal wealth and resources.

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom presents a compelling critique of socialism and centrally planned economies, highlighting their potential for unintended and catastrophic consequences.

1. **Economic Misguidedness:** Socialism redefines freedom from coercion into freedom from want. This resulting economy abolishes competition and fails to effectively balance competing interests. Instead, it targets vaguely defined “common good,” which Hayek asserts is not only vaguely defined, but impossible to define. He also criticizes the assumption that greater complexity necessitates government intervention, emphasizing that market mechanisms are better suited to managing complexity. Hayek’s argument exposes socialism’s economic naivety and reveals its tendency to inadvertently create privilege and inequality. While this depiction of naivety may be accurate for some socialists (perhaps those in England during the 1940s), I’m not sure if it captures socialism as practiced by Lenin, Mao, and Xi. In these cases, “pure evil” seems a much simpler and equally successful theory.

2. **Loss of Freedom:** Hayek warns that the transition from market-based independence to state-provided security comes at the expense of individual freedom. In socialist systems, rank and privilege become tied to government favor rather than merit or achievement, reversing the historical trend (in 19th century Europe) from status to contract. This shift leads to a society where choices are restricted, and individuals lose control over their destinies, paving the way for totalitarian rule. (This is spot on. However, if you ask me, to Leninists, this is a feature, not a bug.)

3. **Power Leads to Perversion:** Centralized authority creates conditions where the worst individuals rise to power. Hayek explains why this happens:
* - Numerous groups can only be formed from the (unthinking) mass.
* - Negative hatred is easier to agree on.
* - The desire to belong to a group often stems from feelings of inferiority.
* - “The good of the whole” justifies means.
* Again, spot on. This nicely explains why Xi’s fomenting of nationalism, suppression of freedom, and control over information make him appear to gain even more loyalty from a certain inexplicable segment of the populace (subject might be a better word).

Hayek’s prescription is that we should insist on certain tests before committing ourselves to a course of action that may be difficult to withdraw from. This might be a relatively easy sell in Britain, and perhaps his book did help forestal socialism in England. However, how can this principle be practiced? The story from the book’s introduction is worth repeating: John Maynard Keynes read the book on his way to the Bretton Woods conference and delighted Hayek when he wrote him, saying, “It’s a grand book. Morally and philosophically, I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it, not only in agreement but in a deeply moved agreement.” “You admit it’s a question of knowing where to draw the line. But you give us no guidance whatever as to where to draw it.” Moreover, in the case where socialism is imposed, not a choice of the populace, what can the people do? Unfortunately, Hayek provides no solution.

(going to make an exception to my only-radicals rule. It's always important to know your enemies. It comes recommended by Perry Anderson.)

The principles remain the same, untarnished by time. How many times do we have to learn this lesson? In 2008, I read The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes and Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. In 2009, I read The Tyranny of Dead Ideas by Matt Miller and End the Fed by Ron Paul, and in 2010, I read Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture by Thom Hartmann. I learned more from The Road to Serfdom about the problems with central planning, collectivism, socialism and the path they take us down than I did from all of those other books combined. I also learned much about true liberalism, freedom, democracy, and capitalism. Hayek is generally very clear in his writing; his reasoning is logical and backed up by firsthand observation and experience. There are more books I need to read on all sides of this issue—I'm sticking with original sources from now on. They are harder to read, but so much better. For me, Hayek will be hard to beat. If you are interested or concerned with the course your government is taking, regardless of what country you live in, this is a must read. I read the Definitive Edition edited by Bruce Caldwell. His introduction, footnotes and other related documents were beneficial in understanding this book.

Una obra que desafía las expectativas: más interesante de lo que sugieren sus críticos, aunque no alcanza el entusiasmo de sus seguidores más fervientes. Ojalá el liberalismo criollo mirara con más atención en las páginas de Hayek, explorando los matices de su obra y su forma de argumentar. El libro ofrece perspectivas valiosas y despierta la reflexión sobre los fundamentos de la libertad, y tiene sangre: Hayek está vitalmente implicado con sus argumentos.

I could be wrong, but surely not even the greatest fans of Hayek could believe this is a particularly nuanced book. The central thesis is that everyone that disagrees with Hayek is either a totalitarian or someone who is inadvertently leading society down the road towards totalitarianism. This doesn’t only include Marxists and Fascists – who Hayek equates as identical – nor even members of the Labour party in Britain who might be considered ‘fellow travellers’, but even many of the younger members of the Conservative party too. You see what I mean about ‘nuance’ then perhaps? Not only is everyone else wrong, but any differences between them are as nothing when compared with what binds them in common. There literally can be no nuance.

Decades later Maggie Thatcher would flung down a copy of Hayek’s ‘The Constitution of Liberty’ during a meeting with members of her party and yell, “This is what we believe”. It fits, of course. Both held that there was no alternative and that any deviation from the one true path inevitably leads to destruction and serfdom. ‘Freedom’ is somewhat oddly defined if there is, ultimately, only one available choice.

The later preference for forced choices by radical free market types is perhaps one of the most potent current criticisms of this book. Worth reading in this context is William Davies’ ‘The Limits of Neoliberalism’, particularly in relation to Nudge theory. As the book Nudge makes clear, while it takes free market ideas very seriously, it also believes that people might make better decisions if they were nudged towards them. This ought to otherwise seem problematic if you really believed what Hayek says here. You see, central to his thesis is that such an understanding of what is best for others isn’t possible, in fact, it is fundamentally impossible. The thing that makes capitalism, and radical free market capitalism in particular, such a fantastic system is the fact that ‘experts’ are kept away from decision about what might make the lives of others better. It is hard to no think that Hayek would view these ‘nudges’ as little more than a further step down the road to serfdom.

There are infinitely better criticisms of this book than I’m going to provide in this little review. Some of those include ‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste’ and ‘Capitalist Realism’. Why I find this book particularly terrifying is that it really has a distasteful understanding of what ‘freedom’ means. Freedom here is the elimination of every kind of safety net, it means dog eat dog, it means the war of all against each, it means an almost ludicrous extreme of competition, because only in this is the purity of individualism able to be assured. Any restrictions on individualism is understood as inevitably leading to fascism/communism/social democracy, all of which are seen as basically identical – he literally says as much here.

Society is understood as a kind of information exchange where money is the chief form of data and therefore money needs to be protected from any distortion (say, imposed inflation) since money (or prices, rather) allow everyone in society to know which choices they should make that will best suit their needs. The reason why any form of planning is ineffective (and ultimately evil), is because the whole system is so insanely complex that any form of centralised planning inevitably introduces inefficiencies to the entire system. This makes the whole system worse for everyone – but since the planners benefit by keeping their own jobs regardless of the poor outcomes of their plans, those inefficiencies compound. People then are forced to accept products they do not want and this leads to further distortions in the proper price signals within the system which then further multiplies inefficiencies. And because there is no way of seeing what a more efficient system would look like outside the plan, the plan is still held to be the most efficient organisation of the system.

Rather than planning, a system based on the anarchy of economic activity is the only system capable of meeting the needs of the whole of society and of producing freedom at the same time. Since there is no central planner, individuals are able to understand the messages contained in the highly situated contexts they live within and from within the prices of good they observe, and that means they are able to act in ways that meet their needs from within those circumstances. The system is self-regulating, because competition ultimately leads to a situation where the people who are most efficient and best at meeting the needs of those around them are the only people who will succeed. The system also can only exist on increased freedom – to the extent that freedom can be equated with economic anarchy – since any restriction on this freedom will necessarily be imposed upon it from outside (by the dreaded planners who we have already decided will lead us to fascist-communist-collectivism).

Any individual may end up crushed under the driving wheel of progress, in fact, this is inevitable and necessary – for risk cannot be mitigated in the system without distorting the system as a whole. And since competition is the engine of progress, and competition means ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ – then the economic equivalent of Darwinian natural selection is, however regrettable, inevitable.

Thus Hayek presents his vision-splendid of unfettered free markets. His expectation, of course, is that although some people will inevitably be crushed under foot – overall, most people will be better off under this system than under any other system capable of operating. There are occasional nods to the benefits of democracy, but it isn’t at all clear how ‘democracy’ can be exempt from also being seen as yet another collectivist project that undermines his radical individualism. Thatcher’s ‘there is no society, only individuals’ rings in your ears while reading this. Certainly, Hayek imposes stringent limitations upon democracy – democracy clearly can’t place any limits on the radical free market he proposes.

Part of me wants to say that after four decades of living in lock-step with Hayek’s ideal of laissez faire capitalism, and the gross inequality that has produced, and the ecological suicide we are gormlessly heading toward, that perhaps some of those who yelled the loudest that radical free market economics would lead to the promised land should be a little embarrassed now. That certainly has not proven to be the case. As Capitalist Realism makes all too clear – the GFC only proved to his followers that Hayek’s ideas were not implemented stringently enough. And that is the beauty here. Hayek’s ideas are so over-the-top, so utopian (or dystopian, rather) that it is impossible for them to ever be fully implemented – even in Chile under a dictator – and so there will always an escape clause. Even after the Thatcher nightmare there was an escape clause that said, ‘if only his ideas had been more consistently followed…’

I doubt we will move on from these ideas any time soon – they form a solid plank of our current received wisdom, our axiomatic truths. Those who benefit from such ideas are rich beyond imagining and they hold so much power with their wealth that it isn’t in the least bit clear to me how an opposition to these views would be possible to be sustained. And so, we will continue to march proudly over the cliff, each in turn proclaiming our freedom even as we begin our descent under the iron clad laws of gravity. As someone or other much wiser than me once said, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. I guess therein lies Hayek’s greatest legacy.

I tried to read this several times, beginning back when I almost convinced myself I might be able to understand (read: respect) what Republicans were thinking. I'm sorry to say that is over, at least for now. If we can lie, cheat, and steal our way to power, what difference does it make what is just?

I made some notes before I gave up. Putting them here in case I ever get back to this in time to challenge Paul Ryan personally.

This book has gone through so many editions, it is worth noting which one is referenced. Bruce Caldwell, Professor of Economics at Duke University, wrote the introduction to this 2007 edition, published, as ever, by the University of Chicago Press. It is said current Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan gives out copies of this book to his staff when they begin working for him The staff must discuss the book in small groups like bible study because—I guaran-f-ing-tee you—a young and busy staff in D.C. will not know what the heck Hayek is talking about, much less apply it to the U.S. economy in the context of the world.

The ideas in this book began as a memo to the director of the London School of Economics in the 1930s, which then became a magazine article, and then, during WWII, became a monograph of its own. When it was published in the United States—was it 1944?—it became a surprise popular hit, though hated by the intelligensia.

I skimmed the book only. Words like “freedom” are bandied about with great earnestness—freedom from coercion—and I can’t believe we are still talking about this in 2017. No, I am not going to go back and fight these arguments all over again. We spent much of the twentieth century watching one insufficiently great man after another tell us they’ve got our backs.

In the end, after a lifetime of hard knocks, we find that, no, in fact, corporations took care of themselves and cared about us only insofar as we needed enough money to buy their product. We discovered that corporations really needed rules and regulations to do the right thing because they defined their responsibility more narrowly than we did. After all, they were responsible to shareholders, not customers, not citizens who give them space, water, energy, raw materials.

I’m tired of replaying this argument over and over because over and over we discover that corporations don’t actually do the right thing.

p. 20 “If you have any comprehension of my philosophy at all, you must know that one thing I stand for above all else is free trade throughout the world.”

p. 28 “A final criticism has sometimes been called the “inevitability thesis” or the “slippery slope” argument: Hayek is claimed to have said that, once a society engages in a little planning, it is doomed to end up in a totalitarian state….Any departure from the practice of free enterprise, any joke that reason and science may be applied to the direction of economic activity, any attempt at economic planning, must lead us remorselessly to serfdom…”

There is an old cartoon (found here) which summarizes the logic of this work rather perfectly. Essentially, the government gets involved in your life, they dictate how you live, then they kill you.

The notions in this text are trifling at best.

Hayek never confronts the fact that a lack of some centralized body somewhere making decisions for you does not mean an end to governance. Clearly, businesses govern. They also plan. To take this power away from a centralized and (at least ostensibly) publicly accountable body and to diffuse this power throughout the business community is not to rid oneself of governance. It simply means that businesses are the government.

If we are to acknowledge the quite obvious tendency for capital to move toward those with the most capital, that is, for businesses to develop into monopolies and oligopolies, then one might see that Hayek's model accomplishes nothing less than the restoration of the same feudal structures he's supposedly warning against.

His argument, if taken to the same disparate conclusions as the one's he takes communism and socialism to, would result in the ownership of all land by a handful of oligarchs. We would then tend their land for a pittance. We would be serfs.