« August 2011 | Main | January 2012 »
November 2011
11/30/2011
11/28/2011
11/24/2011
It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for years, just glaring at me. Its glare got more...glaring...recently when I discovered Glen Beck recommended it to his audience. I thought smugly “Ha, those cretins won’t read that book.” Meanwhile my only contact has been removing it from the Amazon box, and then transporting it from New York to Los Angeles.
So last night I picked it up.
First impressions: (so far I have read Milton Friedman’s 1994 introduction, and Hayek’s 1956 and 1976 prefaces, and half of chapter 1).
I don’t want to go off on a tangent right from the start, but Friedman's sneering introduction deserves notice:
Friedman,
So last night I picked it up.
First impressions: (so far I have read Milton Friedman’s 1994 introduction, and Hayek’s 1956 and 1976 prefaces, and half of chapter 1).
I don’t want to go off on a tangent right from the start, but Friedman's sneering introduction deserves notice:
Friedman,
“Now as then, the promotion of collectivism is combined with the profession of individualist values. Indeed experience with big government has strengthened this discordant strand. There is wide protest against the ‘establishment’; an incredible conformity in the protest against conformity; a widespread demand for freedom to ‘do one’s own thing’”
When the Reverend Wright thing blew up in 2008, Chris Rock said, “Reverend Wright is a 70-year old black man who doesn't trust white people, is there another kind of 70-year old black man?”
In that spirit, F.A. Hayek is an early 20th century Austro-Hungarian with a mortal fear of centralized power. Is there another kind? Hayek fought in WWI and lived during and after Hitler, his fear is justified.
Friedman’s taunting introduction, however, clocks in well after that. Friedman is snide, and his position is incongruous with what we have learned from mixed-socialist societies like France, Great Britain, Finland, and Sweden (and indeed the US).
Chapter 1
As I said above, I’m only halfway through chapter 1, so I’ll reserve final judgement. That said, so far I find Hayek's arguments dated and shrill.
From chapter 1:
“If in the long run we are the makers of our own fate, in the short run we are the captives of the ideas we have created.”
The underlying idea being that we’re easing imperceptively into socialism (slouching toward Gomorrah, as it were) and only when it’s too late will we realize that, bummer, we’re totally Nazis.
Hayek’s is a pithy line, but at its essence, it’s shrill and reads like a genteel Freeper post: WE”RE TURNUING INTO TEH CCOMMIEZ111!!!1
I also found him rich with strawmen, he says this for example:
“If it is no longer fashionable to emphasize that “we’re all socialists now” this is so merely because the fact is too obvious”
Followed by...no evidence.
I accept this is very early in the book, and perhaps he’ll provide supporting evidence of this obviousness. I’ll also stipulate that this book (written in 1944) comes on the heels of the New Deal and the US Government’s means-of-production commandeer (related to the war effort). 2 facts that would understandably lead Hayek to foresee increased power centralization.
However, this the central theme of the book (i.e. we’re on this road you see, and it’s to a place called serfdom) and he can’t very well defend his position without hard evidence.
More to come as I complete sections.
