The 'inevitability' of planning

The movement for planning owes its present strength largely to the fact that, while planning is in the main still an ambition, it unites almost all the single-minded idealists, all the men and women who have devoted their lives to a single task. The hopes they place in planning, however, are not the result of a comprehensive view of society, but rather of a very limited view, and often the result of a great exaggeration of the importance of the ends they place foremost.

..says Hayek, in Chapter 4 in his great classic, The Road to Serfdom. And how true!

Health experts want the State to "plan" cigarettes out of society of law-abiding citizens. Architects want cities demolished and rebuilt after their drawings (Icelandic example). Farmers demand State protection and subsidies to protect their current way of life and keep harsh competition away. Economists preach the need for powerful State central banks and data gathering institutions so they can play with interest rates (the price of money) and see how the real life reacts compared to sophisticated computer models.

The list is endless. Everywhere, "experts" and "specialists" in various studies talk about the need for some great State plan on their favorite subject, with themselves in control (of course). The inevitable result: A central command economy of some sort. Is that what we want?

Market Prices Versus “Make It So”

The free market is not an ideology or a creed or something we’re supposed to take on faith, it’s a measurement. It’s a bathroom scale. I may hate what I see when I step on the bathroom scale, but I can’t pass a law saying I weigh 160 pounds. Authoritarian governments think they can pass that law—a law to change the measurement of things.

Quote taken from here (which took it from here). And how true it is!

Liberty, Freedom or just plain Tolerance?

Says Hayek in Road to Serfdom (page 14):

"Freedom" and "liberty" are now words so worn with use and abuse that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood during that period [the Renaissance]. Tolerance is, perhaps, the only word which still preserves the full meaning of the principle which during the whole of this period was in the ascendant and which only in recent times has again been in decline, to disapper completely with the rise of the totalitarian state.

Perhaps something to keep in mind in todays political climate where "freedom" has begun to mean "slavery" and vice versa? Tolerance for the free activities of men is on huge decline. Everywhere, some planner has an idea on how to "revise" the free actions of humans, to obtain some socialist ends (e.g. equal distribution of wealth or equal access of all to the property of few).

Why both fascism and socialism lead to tyranny

Many socialists consider their ideals to be somewhat "just" or "fair", and that they have nothing in common with the terrors of Nazism of Fascism. But there is a strong resemblance. Hayek explains:

"Planning", therefore, is wanted by all those who demand that "production for use" be subsituted for production for profit. But such planning is no less indispensable if the distribution of incomes is to be regulated in a way which to us appears to be the opposite of just. Whether we should wish that more of the good things of this world should go to some racial élite, the Nordic men, or the members of a party or an aristocracy, the methods which we shall have to employ are the same as those which could ensure an equalitarian distribution.

...says Hayek in his Road to Serfdom (pages 34-35 in this edition).

Stimulators vs. Austerians

In a commentary about a month ago, I described how the economic world seemed to be drifting into two opposing camps: the Washington-based "Stimulators," who insist that more government debt is the best means to end the financial crisis, and the Berlin- and London-based "Austerians," who argue that debt is the crisis itself. If recent economic data and currency movements can be considered votes of confidence, then the Stimulators should be sweating. Moreover, these recent signals should provide economic analysts and investors with a road map for the future.

...says Peter Schiff. Something to remember when one "camp" spirals down to an inflationary depression, and the other one maintains and perhaps a little more.