Though I've tried at various times to embrace Libertarianism -- anyone whose read this blog since the beginning will know of my particular fondness for Milton Friedman --, ours has always been an uncomfortable marriage. While I acknowledge that free markets are a force for political freedom, and while the recent financial crisis has lent a great deal of weight to the arguments of anti-regulators the world over, I can't help but cling to the notion that there must be some sense of fairness that ought to order our affairs. Aware of my dismay, a friend recommended this famous work of classical liberalism to me in hopes it might clarify my feelings on the matter. But while Mr. Hayek, a renown 20th century economist, makes a wonderful case against socialism and centralized planning, he offers up no solutions to the question beyond simply letting the chaos of the free market reign. And so I cannot make this journey with him, not all the way. But before I explain why, let's examine Mr. Hayek's arguments.
Writing in the shadow of 1940s fascism, Mr. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which is still in print and has at many points been a best seller, is a dry, analytical but well-reasoned argument against any form of collectivism and collectivist thinking. Pessimistically, he points out that harnessing the economy for the greater good, as communists and socialists would do, necessarily delivers the economy's helm into the hands of the State in hopes that a handful of politicians will act wisely, shrewdly and honestly when it comes to managing the nation's market. But this is the catch. One cannot guarantee that these politicians will act in the best interests of the people. In fact, history shows that the State, as an institution, is an incredibly corruptive influence upon people, giving into their hands power which will change them, little by little, each time it is used. And so, one may set out, under socialism, with the intent of doing good, of re-distributing wealth evenly to everyone, of providing health care and education to everyone, but there is nothing to prevent the socialist government from changing the rules to grant themselves more power over the people, all in the name of further efficiency. Such a system, by its nature, demands that every aspect of the lives of its citizens be scrutinized in the name of greater efficiency. And that will inevitably lead to tyranny.
Socialized medicine is a good example of Mr. Hayek's argument. In every nation, the cost of health care is skyrocketing. These increased costs are no one person's fault; they are down to things like nurse pay, the price of new technology, new surgeries being covered, etc. But while countries practicing privatized medicine simply off-load these costs upon insurers who then hike up their premiums, the Welfare State has only two crappy stopgaps to rising costs, raise taxes on the people to pay the bill, or manage the care of the people. The former is nothing more than an exercise in futility. coss will always rise, but taxes cannot. The latter option is actually worse. It obligates the government to, for instance, crack down on cigarette smoking because it causes lung cancer and fighting lung cancer is expensive. It encourages the government to force people to wear bike helmets because treating concussions and fractured skulls that result from accidents without helmets is expensive. It would even dictate that government define selfish rules for where and how babies are born; there are only so many beds in the maternity ward and hospitals are crowded enough as is. While these policies may seem, individually, to be reasonable interventions, they are restrictions upon personal freedom, upon our right to choose what we can and cannot do with our own bodies. And it is this creeping, institutional control to which Mr. Hayek is refering when he talks about a road to serfdom, mile-markers on a journey to tyranny.
Mr. Hayek's argument against government influence in the free market and the lives of its citizens is air-tight. It is impossible to find honest politicians who will make the right choices all of the time. It's far safer for the people to have the free market rule the day and people set their own prices and their own rules, and save the money they wish to save, and make the choices they wish to make. Where his argument starts to fall apart is when we consider that not everyone is born equally, that some people have to make greater sacrifices to get ahead than other people do, and that the privileged very often succeed where the less privileged fail by dint of advantages endemic only to the wealthy: political connections, the best schools, family influence, etc. The chaos of the free market is fine in theory, but it is fundamentally unfair and he makes no effort here to address that. And he ought to. For there's clearly a desire among people for it to be fair. If not, there would never be socialism anywhere.
This is excellent work for what it is, a coherent, analytical statement against the Welfare State, but it fails to offer up a system more coherent than what American Republicans would have us have, a free market where big businesses have no restraints upon their growth, where they can dominate the market like sharks swimming through chum. And we haven't far afield to look to find examples where that leads to the same kind of institutional arrogance that Mr. Hayek blames the State for possessing. Good, but flawed. Certainly of interest to classical liberals, but it lacks the emotional intensity of Free to Choose which I found far more persuasive. (2/5)
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