Posted on 12/22/2006 5:15:05 PM PST by shrinkermd
IN the past month, Australian intellectual life has been made somewhat livelier by a sideshow featuring the ideas of Austrian-born Nobel prize-winning economist and social philosopher Friedrich Hayek. It would not matter much for most people except that those slugging it out are the nation's two political leaders, John Howard and Kevin Rudd. What would Hayek have made of all this?
...Rudd claims that Howard is in thrall to this mysterious Austrian and that government policy is marching along the free-market road Hayek surveyed.
...Two great economists had the better of the argument in the 20th century, the best known being Milton Friedman who died last month. The other was Hayek, who died in 1992. Both won the Nobel prize for economics and both lived into their 90s.
Friedman was also a great populariser and Hayek unexpectedly became one. His 1944 book The Road to Serfdom sold millions of copies, much to his surprise. His book gave voice to concerns about planning by governments and intervention in markets and their consequent effect on individual freedoms, concerns shared by many others. This understanding that markets were likelier to reach positive outcomes for a society than the imagined genius of a bunch of bureaucrats with political objectives to satisfy had become, by the 1980s, conventional wisdom...
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Among his conclusions are:
"...Australia now has, it seems, two big-government conservative political parties vying for the affections of voters. Hayek worried for most of his life about this particular problem and tried to devise all sorts of constitutional means to put curbs on unlimited democracy. Democracy, he believed, was the best way of ridding a country of an incompetent or unpopular government, but it was also, potentially, a path to economic ruin and demagoguery if not constrained.
"...It would be more useful for Howard and Rudd to reconsider Hayek on some of these important issues. I am not for a minute suggesting that a Hayekian world is utopia or that nobody should contest his ideas. Neither would he. But caricaturing the ideas of the man The New Yorker magazine - among others - declared the winner of the 20th century's ideas contest serves nobody's interest and makes its protagonists look pretty foolish. We have higher expectations of our leaders
I can't recommend The Constitution of Liberty and The Road to Serfdom highly enough.
Serfdom is not an easy read.
Good Lord, she starved herself. She was cuter before.
"Good Lord, she starved herself. She was cuter before."
The best example of that is Lindsay Lohan. She used to be really cute, then she became an anorexic skank in look and deed.
Well, I hope Selma hasn't been acting like a skank. (If she has, please don't tell me.)
No, she's been pretty good (if a bit out of the public eye for a while).
Whoa dude, she's Ann Coulter skinny in most places [not that that's at all bad - ;-)]
A wonderful idea.
I don't think "Serfdom" is necessarily a difficult read, but you definitely have to pay attention when you're reading it. Not "beach reading" in any case. I've given a copy to everyone I care about. "Serfdom" is the one book that truly opened up my eyes about what has been going on in the world.
Ronald Reagan was a propronent of Hayek, as was Margaret Thatcher, I believe.
The whole book ought to be required reading in schools. Never going to happen, though, as it completely destroys the arguments for socialism.
I enjoyed how Hayek mentioned that this was his purpose. He wasn't going to use high flown phrases about things like the nobility and dignity of man, since the Left could do that too. What Hayek intended to do was to destroy the arguments of socialism with logic. Which is exactly what he did, and with elegance.
BTW and slightly off topic, I recall that Hayek never resorted to insulting the left at all. Never. While I know the demorat leadership is traitorous and deserves to be called so, I do not think the rank and file democrats are. For instance, the Hildebeast knows that national healthcare will kill our economy and likely the Constitution. For the guy on the street, at first blush national healthcare sounds like a good idea. While the beast cannot be reasoned with, joe blow voter can. Theoretically at least.
It is a distinction that we freepers may wish to keep in mind. My two cents.
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