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Friday, February 6th, 2015

Big Economic Theory Underpinning Libertarian Economics Is Total Baloney

Author:     Michael Coblenz
Source:     Alternet (U.S.)
Publication Date:     February 2, 2015
 Link: Big Economic Theory Underpinning Libertarian Economics Is Total Baloney
Stephan:   When I was at university I was required to read Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Even though Hayek was a Nobel Laureate his writing reminded me more than anything else of Ayn Rand's work, which a friend had just read, nagged me into reading, and which he was constantly quoting. I thought both books were  pretentious and sophistic, although I was intimidated by Hayek's prestige, and my own sense my understanding of economics was inadequate. History has proven that my original impression was correct. In spite of the obvious evidence of the wrongness of both Rand and Hayek, I am constantly counseled by Rightists that if I would just read their work I would see the revealed Godly truth, and it would drive my "indulgent socially progressive delusions away like a fog," as a Rightist reader recently wrote me. And his is not an isolated perspective, if you go to almost any Theocratic Right website you will still find their thinking quoted or paraphrased. Representative Paul Ryan does it all the time.
Friedrich A. Hayek Credit: www.britannica.com

Friedrich A. Hayek
Credit: www.britannica.com

Since the 2014 midterm elections, Democrats have been trying to figure out what happened. There are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of reasons for the Democratic bloodbath. But one reason, in my opinion, is that Democrats never discuss, much less analyze, the fundamental theories of modern conservatism. As a result, erudite-sounding nonsense is passed off as wisdom, and sways an electorate grasping for answers. Republican calls for limited government find fertile ground with workers whose wages are stagnating.

One of the intellectual foundations of this idea of limiting government comes from an Austrian émigré economist named Friedrich A. Hayek, in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom. Conservatives use that term as shorthand for the idea is that socialism and centralized economic planning don’t work and ultimately lead to totalitarianism, which ends up enslaving the people and impoverishing a nation. That idea taken alone isn’t necessarily wrong, but the theory actually takes a step back and says that any form of centralized economic planning, including government regulation of […]

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