Liberty and economics
I read Hayek's Road to Serfdom on the train ride home today. It was... interesting. I was initially a very hostile audience, having only ever encountered his ideas at second hand. I came away from reading his work with a much more positive view of Hayek and his ideas. The versions of Hayek's thought that I've encountered have been very one-dimensional: planning --> socialism --> fascism and then you get shot for trying to be different.
A few points that I found interesting:
- he absolutely does see a role for the state/ government in economic life - primarily, to ensure fairness, transparency, and to limit monopolies.
- he's not opposed to welfare and social safety net programs - roughly, he'd argue that we're wealthy enough that we can and should offer basic protections - food, shelter, health care - to everyone, and only after that leave people on their own in the market.
- he distinguishes between economic planning in those sectors that are, basically, natural monopolies and economic planning in areas that are not - where he argues that planning --> concentrated power in the hands of a few --> loss of freedom. This model makes some sense to me, as he focuses on the potential for state structures to be suborned by private interests - a process that we've clearly experienced (look no further than the incestuous relationship between business and government)
I think that I'll read more of his work, as I was left with the sense that his ideas and those of Keynes are *not* actually so diametrically opposed as one might at first believe (why not have the government work as a counter-cyclical force, but do so by collecting more taxes during prosperous times, and deferring necessary government capital expenditures until lean times - this would serve to balance the business cycle, and would also make more efficient use of labor, since the government would not be competing with the private sector for workers during boom times, when labor is likely to be a limiting factor for development and growth).
Have any of you read Hayek? If so, what do you think of him?
A few points that I found interesting:
- he absolutely does see a role for the state/ government in economic life - primarily, to ensure fairness, transparency, and to limit monopolies.
- he's not opposed to welfare and social safety net programs - roughly, he'd argue that we're wealthy enough that we can and should offer basic protections - food, shelter, health care - to everyone, and only after that leave people on their own in the market.
- he distinguishes between economic planning in those sectors that are, basically, natural monopolies and economic planning in areas that are not - where he argues that planning --> concentrated power in the hands of a few --> loss of freedom. This model makes some sense to me, as he focuses on the potential for state structures to be suborned by private interests - a process that we've clearly experienced (look no further than the incestuous relationship between business and government)
I think that I'll read more of his work, as I was left with the sense that his ideas and those of Keynes are *not* actually so diametrically opposed as one might at first believe (why not have the government work as a counter-cyclical force, but do so by collecting more taxes during prosperous times, and deferring necessary government capital expenditures until lean times - this would serve to balance the business cycle, and would also make more efficient use of labor, since the government would not be competing with the private sector for workers during boom times, when labor is likely to be a limiting factor for development and growth).
Have any of you read Hayek? If so, what do you think of him?