Sandwichman <[email protected]> wrote:
> NY Times Sunday Book Review July 11, 2010
> Hayek: The Back Story
> By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
>
> Last month, a funny thing happened on the way to the best-seller list.
> A 66-year-old treatise by a long-dead Austrian-born economist began
> flying off the shelves....The economist was Friedrich von Hayek, the
> book was "The Road to Serfdom"
>
> [snip]
Thank you, Tom.
I have RtS, have tried to read it a couple of times over a decade or
two. Never managed to get very far. My reaction was "Life is too short
to wade through this polemic." Jennifer Schuessler's piece catches me
up, I think, as far as I need to be caught up.
I was particularly taken by Orwell's remark, that Hayek "does not see,
or will not admit, that a return to 'free' competition means for the
great mass of people a tyranny probably worse . . . than that of the
state." The serfdom attendant on unrestrained corporatism cheerfully
does away with one part of traditional feudalism , the obligation of
the lord to provide the basic needs of his peasants. Of course, many
feudal lords didn't honor that obligation but the canon of corporatist
lordship explicitly denies any even vaguely similar obligation in the
words of The Prophet:
Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations
of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of
a social responsibility other than to make as much money for
their stockholders as possible. -- Milton Friedman
upon which I've remarked at greater length before.
BTW, welcome back, Ray.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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