The Illustrated Road to Serfdom (Short Cartoon Describing Planned Economies)

Mises.org ^ | 1944 | Friedrich Hayek

[GOPJ]

Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed, but infinitely heightened. By uniting in the hands of some single body power formerly exercised independently by many, an amount of power is created infinitely greater than any that existed before, so much more far-reaching as almost to be different in kind.

It is entirely fallacious to argue that the great power exercised by a central planning board would be ‘no greater than the power collectively exercised by private boards of directors’. There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would posses. To decentralize power is to reduce the absolute amount of power, and the competitive system is the only system designed to minimize the power exercised by man over man. Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?

Ping

[FARS]

Politics now a crime

http://noiri.blogspot.com/2009/02/islamic-regime-officially-making.html

Obama hating the British and wishing he could be more ike th eMullahs

http://noiri.blogspot.com/2009/02/winston-churchill-on-islam.html

[GOPJ]

There is no justification for the widespread belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; it is not the source of power which prevents it from being arbitrary; to be free from dictatorial qualities, the power must also be limited.

I've read books that had less to say than the paragraph above...

[longtermmemmory]

BUMP!
email to all

[supercat]

I've read books that had less to say than the paragraph above...

Truth-tellers desire to be understood. Liars don't. Thus, liars often require more verbiage to hide their true meaning.

[GOPJ]

Truth-tellers desire to be understood. Liars don't.

You've got a great tagline there...

[wastedyears]

I personally can’t stand to read any philosophy, along with anything by Shakespeare.

[wastedyears]

I don’t understand why people are interested in the Peace Corps. They’d be better off enlisting in the Marine Corps.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[FARS]

More on resistance to Obama building nationwide

http://noiri.blogspot.com/2009/02/nationwide-opposition-to-obama-being.html

[PureSolace]

"If you're fired from your job, it's apt to be by a firing squad. What used to be an error has now become a crime against the state."

Best quote of the comic. :)

[Gigantor]

Hayek ping

[Loud Mime]

Great Post!

I’m reading Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit - the Errors of Socialism” this week. I have another on the stack. He had a GREAT mind.

Again, a very good post.

[Loud Mime]

quotes ping

[gondramB]

[Loud Mime]

Good cartoon. But, I would have the infant visible with a horrified look on its face.

[kalee]

place marker

[zeugma]

BFL

[blackie]

Be Ever Vigilant!

Molon Labe!

[GOPJ]

ping — this backs you up too, central va