I’m trying to find the book and passage were I read a few months ago. I don’t recall whether it was Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, or Hazlitt, though it was probably one of those four.
It described a scenario of an individual worker, and why in a sense it was “easier” for him to justify his lack of success or station, to his wife et.al., in a socialist environment rather than a free-market one. Basically, in a free-market situation he has only himself to blame, but in a socialist environment he always has “the system” to blame, thus retaining face among his family and friends. I’ve tried the website search but the keywords that I use are too general…
Can anyone recall where I might have read about that? Or, is there a different forum in which it would be more appropriate to ask?
In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control. He is a slave because the superhuman powers that determine all becoming had assigned him this rank. It is not his doing, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed of his humbleness. His wife cannot find fault with his station. If she were to tell him: “Why are you not a duke? If you were a duke, I would be a duchess,” he would reply: “If I had been born the son of a duke, I would not have married you, a slave girl, but the daughter of another duke; that you are not a duchess is exclusively your own fault; why were you not more clever in the choice of your parents?”
It is quite another thing under capitalism. Here everybody’s station in life depends on his own doing. Everybody whose ambitions have not been fully gratified knows very well that he has missed chances, that he has been tried and found wanting by his fellowman. If his wife upbraids him: “Why do you make only eighty dollars a week? If you were as smart as your former pal, Paul, you would be a foreman and I would enjoy a better life,” he becomes conscious of his own inferiority and feels humiliated.
The much talked about sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen. The sway of the principle, to each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings.