“Von Hayek was wrong. In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness.”
EDIT: Just realized how old the article was. Apologies if you have seen this, or feel that it’s too dated to matter. I saw it floating around online and thought it might be of interest to you folks.
It irks me to read a title or a statement that ends in a question mark. I find it snoody and passive aggressive, and I don’t enjoy seeing it on the television, like in most Fox News headlines, nor do I like it on forums.
What determines what is “fair” is subjective. It is not a matter that can be determined by “science,” be it through tangible, theoretical, or hypothetical reasoning. This is based on the assumption that a metaphysical being does not exist to determine what is or is not fair, and that the right to enforce welfare, law, and order is not bestowed onto an individual or an institution. These assumptions, be they accepted or denied, reflect the positions of Archism vs. Anarchism, Theism vs. Atheism, perhaps Keynesian vs. Austrian Economics, etc.
Hayek didn’t necessarily disagree with welfare or other minor stuff, but said that central planning like war planning led to serfdom. Which is correct: the military industrial complex and a lot of crap left over from world war 2 and the cold war are a menace. The Road to Serfdom actually has a statement from Orwell, a Fabian socialist, at the beginning saying that he agreed with much of it.
“in the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.”
I think a lot of liberal academics like to strawman Hayek, because they don’t want to see the not so great activities of the state. They just focus on small and more benign aspects like the welfare state and say that was what he was against. To make him seem like he was really petty and wanted steal bread out of people’s mouths. Maybe he liked the welfare state or maybe he didn’t, but his work is about the bigger picture. Not the morality of welfare.
Sachs is claiming that the Scandinavian countries are prosperous because of their high taxes and safety nets. This myth has been thoroughly exploded here (url: The Myth of Scandinavian Socialism). Most Scandinavian countries have significantly less regulations and lower corporate taxes than the US. Norway just happens to be located on some of the best real estate in the world.
If the guy is a Keynesian, why does he point to Nordic democracies?
Keynesianism is itself an Anglo-American concept with Anglo-American implementation. Nordic democracies resemble neither the classical liberal state nor the traditional Keynesian state, and have the goals of neither the large expansive pervasive states like France or the positive non-interventionism of Hong Kong.
Those are ultimately just small countries where the democratic process is not large enough to cause as much collective harm to people as they have in large federations like United States, but workable enough to keep them happy. These Keynesians really shoot themselves in the foot whenever they idealize European states, because they are anything but Keynesian in principle.
Yup, and not to mention that at the time Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, he was NOT talking about a welfare state. He was using “socialism” in the old definition of “government/public ownership of the means of production.” In the most recent edition of the book, there is a foreward or whatever by Hayek where he explains this. A welfare state, while it does have problems, doesn’t have the exact same problems of central planning.
I remember a friend of mine told me a while back to be weary of this journal alleging it often published pseudoscience. I’m glad I followed his advice, though to be fair Nude Socialist isn’t much better either.