Posted on 02/11/2007 3:21:26 AM PST by Jacquerie
Here are further excerpts from F. A. Hayek’s incredible little book, The Road to Serfdom .
Quotes from Chapters I & II can be viewed here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775089/posts
Chapter III: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778528/posts
The Road to Serfdom (Ch IV)
The “Inevitability” of Planning
We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become. Benito Mussolini
Most (planners) affirm that we can no longer choose but are compelled by circumstances beyond our control to substitute planning for competition. The myth is deliberately cultivated that we are embarking on the new course not out of free will but because competition is spontaneously eliminated by technological changes which we neither can reverse nor should wish to prevent.
The tendency toward monopoly and planning is not the result of any “objective facts” beyond our control but the product of opinions fostered and propagated for half a century until they have come to dominate all our policy.
What planners generally suggest is that the increasing difficulty of obtaining a coherent picture of the complete economic process makes it indispensable that things should be coordinated by some central agency if social life is not to dissolve in chaos. This argument is based on a complete misapprehension of the working competition. Far from being appropriate only to comparatively simple conditions, it is the very complexity of the division of labor under modern conditions which makes competition the only method by which such coordination can be adequately brought about.
It is no exaggeration to say that if we had had to rely on conscious central planning for the growth of our industrial system, it would never have reached the degree of differentiation, complexity, and flexibility it has attained. Compared with this method of solving the economic problem by means of decentralization plus automatic coordination, the more obvious method of central direction is incredibly clumsy, primitive, and limited in scope. That the division of labor has reached the extent which makes modern civilization possible we owe to the fact that it did not have to be consciously created but that man tumbled on a method by which the division of labor could be extended far beyond the limits within which it could have been planned.
Any further growth of its complexity, therefore, far from making central direction more necessary, make it more important than ever that we should us a technique which does not depend on conscious control.
There is yet another theory which connects the growth of monopolies with technological progress. It contends not that modern technique destroys competition but that, on the contrary, it will be impossible to make use of many of the new technological possibilities unless protection against competition is granted, i.e., a monopoly is conferred. No doubt in many cases it is used merely as a form of special pleading by interested parties.
While it is true, of course, that inventions have given us tremendous power, it is absurd to suggest that we must use this power to destroy our most precious inheritance: liberty. It does mean, however, that if we want to preserve it, we must guard it more jealously than ever and that we must be prepared to make sacrifices for it.
While there is nothing in modern technological developments which forces us toward comprehensive economic planning, there is a great deal in them which makes infinitely more dangerous the power a planning authority would possess.
We all think that our personal order of values is not merely personal but that in a free discussion among rational people we would convince the others that ours is the right one. The lover of the countryside who wants above all that its traditional appearance would be preserved and that the blots already made by industry on its fair face should be removed . . . know that (his) aim can be fully achieved only by planning.
The movement for planning owes its present strength largely to the fact that, while planning is in the main still an ambition, it unites almost all the single minded idealists, all the men and women who have devoted their lives to a single task.
It (planning) would make the very men who are most anxious to plan society the most dangerous if they were allowed to do so – and the most intolerant of the planning of others.
From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a single step.
Hayek ping! Freepmail me if you would like to be added or removed from the Hayek ping list.
OUTSTANDING! Thank you for posting, Jacquerie.
Quotes from Chapters I & II can be viewed here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1775089/posts
Chapter III: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778528/posts
Can't wait until Dhimmicrat primaries when they "have a conversation", "chat".
I browsed though this book in my high school library 30 years ago and I should read it in full.
Must reading for everyone.
This would be absolute truth if the words "the complete economic process" are replaced with "government"; also, replace and the words "some central agency" with "the people".
Therefore, "What the planners generally suggest is that the increasing difficulty of obtaining a coherent picture of government makes it indispensible that things should be coordinated by the people if social life in not to dissolve in chaos."
Please add me to this list.
Bookmark for later reading.
http://www.reference.com/go/http://one.revver.com/watch/10904/format/flv/affiliate/5157
THE ROAD TO SERFDOM in movie form, 5 minute cartoon
Deja bumpus....
However, I have to put in a word for how it used to be. I live in a city in Canada that had a local medical insurance plan run by the doctors themselves. It started after the war. It was cheap as heck and provided everyone who was enrolled (which included everyone) with all that 1950's medicine provided.
Of course, it was a different time. X-rays were just about the only diagnostic test that was available beyond the doctor's hands and his experience. Medical care was really primitive by today's standards, but everyone was cared for. Our city was not full of third world refugees and their exotic and communicable diseases. TB patients, and others with communicable diseases, were quarantined so they could not spread the disease. Think how this would reduce the spread and treatment costs of a disease like AIDS. The system really worked well.
Of course, it couldn't last. The local medical insurance co-op was bought out (it was hugely profitable) by a newly formed provincial agency in the 1960's. The federal government helped to fund the system on a national basis. The bureaucracy grew, the refugees flooded in, new expensive techniques sent costs through the roof, and you can guess the rest.
There is absolutely no doubt that "government medical care" in the 21st century means more expense, waiting periods, and less choice for the consumer. I just want freepers to understand that it was not always like that.
It's a great way to create bread-lines though...
A very dangerous situation, considering that corporate leaders like Lee Scott of Wal-Mart now endorse it.
National healthcare would move us back towards the dark ages in medical care, no doubt.
The problem we face is that too many of our contemporaries positively yearn for the dull certainties of serfdom.
Hmph. Chat. Yeah right. More like a lecture on why we are wrong, and they are right (with the implied message that we are too stupid to think and act for ourselves).
The problem is that they perceive serfdom as "freedom" - because they want it to be so.
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