Posted on 03/25/2016 8:58:56 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie
Conservative Economics Ping!
Please let me know if you would like to be added or subtracted from the list. No more than one per day.
Hayek was one of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century. Reagan was a big fan of Friederich Hayek. As were many other conservative thinkers.
5.56mm
“Fear the Boom and Bust” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
Funny how that works. And people “wonder” why the left gravitates to dictators like Castro, Chavez, and the like. To the left, a Che, or a Castro is like Babe Ruth is to baseball fans, the pinnacle of success in their chosen endeavor. They’ve won the game and made the (socialist) system work for them. They are the ‘apex’ totalitarians.
Huzzah (not).
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, 'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.'No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as 'the general welfare'. There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all. - F A Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom (Reader's Digest Condensed Version)
Heidi too is a huge fan of Hayek. In fact, the main desire of her career has been to help other people understand the free enterprise system and their own participation in it.
Out of curiosity, are there quotes from John Maynard Keynes to juxtapose these Friedrich Hayek quotes?
Thanks for posting!
This is a notable passage - it totally invalidates that classic ‘left/right’ political scale where both extremes are socialists. It’s why (one of the only reasons) being a ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist’ looks ‘rational’ :-)
I would bold this part, although the rest gives good context:
“The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type.”
(”old type” of course equals “classical liberal” - libertarian/republican/whig values).
I’ve always considered they (Nazis/socialists) draw from the same ‘gene pool’ of people who want gov’t to solve their problems. And Hayek was one of the first (or one of the best explanations) to show this to the wider public.
Ayn Rand on the same subject:
“Both “socialism” and “fascism” involve the issue of property rights. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Observe the difference in those two theories: socialism negates private property rights altogether, and advocates “the vesting of ownership and control” in the community as a whole, i.e., in the state; fascism leaves ownership in the hands of private individuals, but transfers control of the property to the government.
****”Ownership without control is a contradiction in terms:**** it means “property,” without the right to use it or to dispose of it. It means that the citizens retain the responsibility of holding property, without any of its advantages, while the government acquires all the advantages without any of the responsibility.
“In this respect, socialism is the more honest of the two theories. I say “more honest,” not “better”—because, in practice, there is no difference between them: both come from the same collectivist-statist principle, both negate individual rights and subordinate the individual to the collective, both deliver the livelihood and the lives of the citizens into the power of an omnipotent government—and the differences between them are only a matter of time, degree, and superficial detail, such as the choice of slogans by which the rulers delude their enslaved subjects.”
“The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
****Communism is ownership; Fascism is control; but ownership IS control - therefore they are the same :-)
More quotes:
‘’In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.’’ ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor
‘’The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.’’ ~Alexis de Tocqueville
It’s no wonder that in times of economic hardship more Americans have been willing to give up their freedom in return for bread and security. The Great Depression ushered in the New Deal and the Welfare State.
And the greater the Welfare State, the greater the poverty.
The Subprime Housing Crash of 2008 ushered in Obama for two terms and more socialism, and the result has been more poverty, more unemployment, and therefore more people willing to give up their freedom for bread and security.
Only prosperity will restore Americans’ confidence and desire for more freedom, but how will that happen if our poverty rolls keep increasing due to our increasingly socialistic system?
>> are there quotes from John Maynard Keynes to juxtapose these Friedrich Hayek quotes? <<
Maybe. But perhaps more to the point, Keynes was not so extreme a “Keynesian” as have been some of his disciples. Therefore, it shouldn’t be difficult to find quotes from Keynes that even seem “conservative” by today’s standards.
“While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers”
Bingo!
Probably somewhere, though I do try to stick to principles that WORK.
<>Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark.<>
Most conservatives don’t get far beyond assertions to reduce the size of government. It is no way to fire up our hearts for the cause of freedom.
Well, the real problem is the lack of discourse between me and my erstwhile liberal friends.
They want to make blanket statements but, are opposed to unpacking the garbage they hear and regurgitate.
There is no thought process there and they are outright liars about not reading the news, Huffpo, Kos, etc.
I axe them frequently where they get their sources or where they read their Pushed/Planted opinion.
Apparently they don’t read the news...anywhere.
Osmosis seems to work fine for them..
Social Justice = Covetousness
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