OBAMA’S ROAD TO SERFDOM

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lloyd-billingsley/obamas-road-to-serfdom/print/

Barack Obama has his pen and his phone and as this report notes, the President of the United States is poised to bypass Congress and “use his control of federal agencies to impose his progressive agenda on the economy and society throughout 2014.”

This is more evidence that Barack Obama has not read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, the 1944 book endorsed by John Maynard Keynes “in deeply moved agreement” both philosophical and moral. Hayek’s book nevertheless remains enlightening about president Obama and his administration in several ways.

Last year in a piece on Obamacare Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson cited Hayek on the challenge of technocratic planning: limited information. The knowledge, Hayek wrote, “never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”

According to Hayek, a Nobel laureate in economics, the dispute is not about “whether planning is to be done or not.” Rather, the key question is whether the planning is to be conducted “centrally, by one authority” or “divided among many individuals.” Obamacare purports to plan health care for an entire nation. By any standard, that has not worked out well.

The federal website was dysfunctional but Obamacare bosses opted to roll it out anyway. Federal officials remained uncertain how many people had “enrolled” and whether enrollees had in fact secured a policy. Among other technical and economic problems, the federal website remains insecure and state exchanges have troubles of their own.

“So maybe the problem is not Obama or Sebelius,” Gerson wrote, “but rather a government program that requires superhuman technocratic mastery.” That validates Hayek on the information problem. Another section of his “grand book,” as Keynes called it, may be even more relevant.

That would be Hayek’s chapter on “Why the Worst Get on Top” in societies trending toward central control. In those, the dominating element is “the general demand for a quick and determined government action.” Therefore it is “the man or party strong enough to ‘get things done’ who exercises the greatest appeal.” But for such a man and his party, the problems range far beyond the lack of information.

“Where there is one common all-overriding end,” Hayek notes, “there is no room for any general morals or rules.”

The principle that the end justifies the means is in fact “the denial of all morals.” The leader who really wants to get things done will “soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.” The necessary practices for such a leader include “cruelty and intimidation, deliberate deception and spying.”

Likewise, the “democratic statesman” determined to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of “either assuming dictatorial power or abandoning his plans.” That is why, Hayek says, in a society trending toward central control, “the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful.” Examples abound on the current scene.

The president is mounting a surge in his practice of legislating from the White House, a clear violation of the Constitution. This is precisely the kind of power grab outlined by Friedrich Hayek, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush in 1991.

The Obama administration has deployed the IRS to intimidate groups the president dislikes. His NSA continues to spy on ordinary Americans, strip-mining their private lives beyond any legitimate security needs. Deception also abounds.

“If you like your health care plan,” the president said repeatedly, “you can keep it.” This was not, as the New York Times wrote, an “incorrect promise.” It was the sort of deliberate deception that, as Hayek noted, even democratic statesmen must indulge if they believe the end justifies the means. Barack Obama, President of the United States, is up to the task, and the results are evident. His signature plan strips Americans of their health care policies and steers them to a dysfunctional and insecure website whose “navigators” can be convicted felons. If Americans decline to participate, the IRS will fine them. Millions of Americans are now in dire straits but Barack Obama says as long as he is president Obamacare will never be repealed.

Embattled Americans can doubtless find other evidence that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are already on top, and the nation progressing down the road to serfdom. But could this happen in the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave? Consider Hayek’s warning:

“Even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.”

THE ROAD FROM SERFDOM

By Bill Steigerwald

FrontPageMagazine.com | August 30, 2005

More than 60 years ago, when the world was at war and government planning of economies was held in the highest esteem by the Western democracies, the great libertarian economist F.A. Hayek wrote “The Road to Serfdom,” a provocative work that quickly became one of the century’s most important manifestoes for economic, political and personal freedom.

Hayek warned that giving governments more and more control over the economies of free societies was not going to lead to socialist utopias but to totalitarian hellholes like Nazi Germany. “The Road to Serfdom,” one of those masterpieces of liberty that rocks the lives and awakens the minds of many who read it, is as influential and relevant today as it ever was.

Ed Feulner, the president of the Heritage Foundation public policy think tank in Washington, knew Hayek personally and is something of an expert on the “The Road to Serfdom’s” ideas and its enduring influence.

Q: Why should everyone who is serious about politics, government policy and freedom still read “The Road to Serfdom” today?

A: I think “The Road to Serfdom” is essential for understanding the modern political landscape, wherever you live. The point Hayek makes in an educated but not supercilious way is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You’ve got a lot of people who see a problem, whether it’s a social problem or some difficulty afflicting some part of the body politic, and the immediate suggestion or thought is, “Gee, somebody ought to do something about that” and the second thought is, “It ought to be the government.”

As Hayek points out, different government bureaucracies operate different agendas. The legislators, when they put things in terms of central control, remove options to people. So “The Road to Serfdom” really is a set of guideposts for what the individual citizen’s relationship is to government. The basic principles outlined there are as relevant today as they were 60 years ago.

Q: What did Hayek mean by “serfdom” in 1944?

A: His fundamental belief was that during wartime, when you have a concerted effort and everyone is pulling together to defeat a common enemy, you’re willing to give up certain freedoms. But, when the war leaves, it is very hard sometimes for the government to go back to the way it used to be. Instead, they think, “Hey, this is efficient. This is the way it ought to continue to be and let’s keep it that way.” So what you have is an individual controlling less and less of the decisions in his private life.

Basically, what he’s talking about is that the more decisions are made by somebody else about where you live, what kind of job you have, how much taxes you pay, what you can do with your own property – whether it’s real estate property or other things like a car — the less real freedom you have. The more of a serf you are. The more subservient you are to government.

Q: The book’s central message was that the difference between Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and communist Soviet Union is not that great when you are the individual and you’re looking at big government.

A: Right. The notion in all three cases that you just cited was the idea that it could very easily happen in a democratic structure like ours, where if we just give up a little more freedom, somehow we’re going to be more ——. Government will be able to provide this for us, whether it is cradle-to-grave health care or whatever other desirable sounding program it might be. The next thing you know, you’ve got the government fundamentally making decisions like who goes to the head of the line to get a gall bladder operation or to have their cancerous prostate removed.

Q: In America was Hayek seen as a dangerous radical nutcase by the establishment?

A: Oh, yeah. The establishment, especially in Washington, which had the levers of power and which had built up boards and commissions and control groups here for virtually every part of the economy, didn’t like to hear what Hayek had to say.

But at the same time, there was a residue of sufficient popular belief that man’s destiny is not to be controlled, rather it is to be free and to expand freedom. That you could actually have a book of this intellectual content be run in a condensed version of the monthly Reader’s Digest, as it was, is unbelievable, when you think about what’s in every current magazine today.

Q: Who were some of the powerful people who would eventually read “The Road to Serfdom,” love it and put its ideas, lessons and values into practice?

A: In the political arena, probably the most prominent one who immediately comes to mind is Ronald Reagan. But even today Hayek’s book has a continuing influence. When I visited former Gov. Jim Gilmore of Virginia in his offices in Richmond he asked me, “Who is the most important person in terms of ideas that you have dealt with, since Heritage is involved in ideas?” And I said, “Oh, probably Hayek” and he reached behind his desk and pulled out a thumb-worn, paper-bound version of “The Road to Serfdom.” He said, “This is one of the most important books I ever read.

I read it in my freshman year in college and it changed my life.”

I was at a new-members of Congress conference in Baltimore a year and a half ago. I was sitting next to a brand new member from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn, and we started talking about influences on our lives. The first person she mentioned was Hayek and “The Road to Serfdom.” Who would think a first-term congresswoman from Tennessee would come up with an answer like that?

Q: The book is a classic, but 99 percent of the college kids in America have never heard Hayek’s name or been introduced to his ideas.

A: No, they haven’t. But that goes back to the notion of how does the influence of an idea spread. It’s there. A lot of the faculty who have their heads more or less screwed on straight at some point or another have, if not been influenced by him, at least been exposed to Hayek.

Is it is as widely taught as it should be, or as widely influential as it should be? No. But it is probably more so than John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, who was his great intellectual nemesis in the late 1930s, through the ‘40s and into the ‘50s, and who was then infinitely more popular and people would say more influential than Hayek, is no longer considered mainstream. His economic theories no longer hold. Hayek, on the other hand, has still got the fundamentals right. They’re still as relevant as they were back then.

Q: What would Hayek think about the size, scope and power the federal government has today?

A: He’d be dismayed, for a couple of reasons. First of all, he’d be staggered by the shear size of the federal government and the size of the tax bite, both in —— numbers and also in terms of the percent of GDP. But he’d be more concerned about the regulations coming out the government.

Q: Have today’s conservatives forgotten Hayek’s lessons and principles?

A: No. I don’t think so. They’re probably not as visible in terms of our day-to-day activities as they should be… But the bottom line is, Hayek is there to remind us of the longer-term truths. He doesn’t operate in two-year election cycles. That’s why Hayek is important.

Q: Milton Friedman in the 50th anniversary of “The Road to Serfdom” said it’s not overstating it to say on both sides of the Atlantic that we preach individualism and competitive capitalism and practice socialism.” Do you agree?

A: I’d say it is mixed. It is true to a large extent. Milton was right then and it still would be right now. But at the same time, you’ve got Tony Blair – a self-admitted socialist Labor Party leader as prime minister – and he is not undoing the Thatcher economic reforms. He has not tried to re-socialize housing or unscramble the privatized steel mills or the gas companies or anything because the privatized systems are working so much better. So there are mixed signals on both sides.

The fact is, it’s very easy to get depressed day-by-day and say, “Boy, it’s going the wrong way.” But there are some hopeful signs out there. It takes a long time for these ideas to become both popularized and to have really the fundamental impact on the system.

From the writing of Marx to the rise of Lenin, you had 50 years. Now I guess that’s about where we are now with Hayek. We did have Reagan and Thatcher and we did have the most obvious version of state serfdom pulled down, in terms of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. So we’ve come a long way positively. At the same time, yeah, there’s a lot still to be done.

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