Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Road to Serfdom

I'm reading The Heritage Foundation edition of The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek. I ran across this passage, which should be of interest to OWS as well as Tea Partiers. According to Friedrich A. Hayek,
Great danger lies in the policies of two powerful groups, organized capital and organized labor, which support the monopolistic organization of industry. The recent growth of monopoly is largely the result of a deliberate collaboration of organized capital and organized labor where the privileged groups of labor share in the monopoly profits at the expense of the community and particularly at the expense of those employed in the less well organized industries.
Hayek also says that it is bad government policy that allows monopolies to develop and flourish. I think OWS is missing part of the picture, and I think some conservatives are in denial about crony capitalism and government. Of course, if our politicians would follow The Constitution, these problems would be much less severe. Unfortunately, politicians being a product of the government education system, know bupkis about the founding principles or The Constitution. So nothing will really change until we fix the ignorance problem.

Hayek wrote this book in 1944, and things certainly appear to be much worse now than they were then.

2 comments :

  1. There is a very simple solution to Hyak's problem of; organized capital, organized labor, crony capitalism and constitutional ignorance, The answer as stated by President Herbert Hoover; "It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well yes. Corruption works both ways. However, politicians and the electorate won't keep government out of business and business (and unions) out of government until we fix the ignorance problem.

    Do you trust government-owned schools to teach anyone about the limited government specified in the enumerated powers? Because I don't. There's a dangerous conflict of interest there, my friend.

    ReplyDelete

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