If I may intervene in this exchange . . . . . .
At 02:39 12/07/2010 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote:
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.
And this is the big fallacy of the left-wing. Just as the feudal lord
needed his serfs (and one or two stewards in between to do the managerial
work), so do corporations need a mass consumer market. Despite the massive
inequalities that arise whenever an innovation hits the fan (financial
derivatives-of-derivatives being the current case) the very rich still need
their symbionts (the fawning professional middle-classes) to help manage
the masses and extract money from them.
Hate the monstrously rich or powerful if you wish but, human nature being
what it is, almost all other individuals (including left-wingers) would
take an opportunity were it to be offered.
Alluding to my other message to Sandwichman, Hirsch explains why this is so
today, and Veblen gives a clue as to how future gross social imbalances may
be moderated.
Keith
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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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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