ricketyclick

Or maybe it’s the off-ramp, I dunno. Depends on if you’re talking about socialism, the actual road to serfdom, or F.A. Hayek’s explanation of how to avoid it.

Anyway, Thomas J. DiLorenzo of The Mises Institute has an excellent introduction to the ideas and history of Hayek’s clear-eyed refutation of the myth that the state can direct the economy, even intimate personal lives of its citizens, without falling into despotism.

When Friedrich A. Hayek published his classic book, The Road to Serfdom, in 1944 he was loudly denounced by academic statist apologists in England, where he resided at the time, and in America. In the preface to the 1976 edition of the book Hayek noted that a prominent philosopher even denounced the book despite admitting that he had not read it! But average citizens did read it. The book was a gigantic success in America, quickly selling over half a million copies. Millions of copies of a condensed Reader’s Digest version of the book were also sold and widely read.

The court historians in academe were not concerned about Hayek’s age-old warnings about the dangers that centralized political power posed to liberty and prosperity, for they intended to be beneficiaries of that power as well-paid advisers to the state. Millions of average citizens were not as enthusiastic, especially Americans who, during the war, had experienced oppressive and confiscatory taxation, the slavery of military conscription, government-imposed product rationing, pervasive shortages of basic staples, and endless bureaucratic bungling.

[My emphasis.]

Galvanizing, isn’t it? All that rationing we hear about in the histories wasn’t just the heroic sacrifices of patriotic citizens; it was the direct result of FDR’s ham-handed control of the economy and society itself.

It’s often said that Stalin won the war on the Eastern front despite his best efforts to lose, by purging his best generals and foolishly sending his subjects to die in the German Wehrmacht meatgrinder to no good result.

Here we see Stalin’s ally, FDR, presented in the same light. Economic historians are beginning to understand that FDR didn’t rescue America from the Depression, he worsened it, lengthened it. Then he used the war as an excuse to tighten the straps even further.

How quickly might the war have been over had FDR unleashed the American economy? Would our enemies have dared to attack or harass the American powerhouse of the 80s and 90s?

We’ll never know. But we’re in another war right now, and our Commander in Chief is more interested in fighting American industry and business, and in controlling the lives of we citizens, than he is in defeating America’s enemies.

That cannot end well. Hayek explains exactly how far down the road we’ve gotten.