Why Libertarianism?

A book review of The Road To Serdom.

Why I read this book.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

As many of you already know, I’ve been getting really contemplative during this lockdown. I see the trends we are about to embark on; I see the changes that await us; but even more so do I see the things that brought us here.

I’ve been studying how various countries globally have dealt with this pandemic. The one thing I learned early on, is that great competent government is a necessity. But even more necessary, is a population that trusts its government.

I’ve been truly disappointed by the US’s response to this. Heading into the pandemic, there were rankings that had the US outperforming others in regards to readiness. But when the exam came, the US flunked hard.

There was a need for coordination and yet there was none. It was a mess in every way possible. Circumstances like these reveal quite a bit. They reveal faults, problems, etc, that are merely ignored because many of us have no time to think.

I was particularly interested in the culture that had led to this terrible response. Naturally, I saw America’s near-invisibility of governance as a problem. The incompetence exhibited by its leaders was in full display.

As someone that leans towards the left-libertarian side of the political spectrum, I had come to despise the inequality, and the sheer inability of neoliberalism to provide for even the most basic needs of the populace. I needed to go deep. I needed to find out the origins of modern neoliberalism. Not surprisingly, it was in many ways a product of a renewed classical liberalism that had come to define the post-World World 2 world.

I stumbled into The Road To Serfdom by accident honestly, but in it, I found clarity. I found that the classical liberalism that underlay neoliberalism wasn’t as terrible as I thought. Most importantly, however, that the world had drastically moved away from the original vision Hayek had.

A deep dive into the origins of Nazism.

I felt I was heading into a book that was going to justify crony capitalism. A book that would merely justify an incompetent government even in the face of crises.

I found very little of that.

In this book, Hayek takes a deep dive into the socialist origins of the Nazi movement.

I had encountered oft a terrible argument online. It would usually go like this.

1. Nazi means National Socialism.

2. It has the word Socialism in it.

3. Since it has the word socialism in it, it was a left-wing movement.

It was such a bad argument I would immediately leave conversations that brought it up.

But there was some truth to that argument. It wasn’t necessarily that Nazism was a left-wing movement. It was, however, that Nazism and the ascendance of Hitler had its roots in central planning. This central planning Hayek lays out, preceded Hitler’s rise.

From the vast bureaucracy of Bismark, the socialist movement post-Bismark, and to the second World War, Germany prided itself on Big Government. Central planning was popular mainly because it allowed the resourceful institution that is government, to basically tackle very specific problems at scale. But in doing so Hayek notes, the individual gives up their freedoms; one gives up their abilities to choose which problems they themselves would much rather tackle; one gives up their ability to choose what matters to them. Everything is done for the sole purpose of the state.

This affinity for central planning and more specifically socialism was very engineer-like in nature. It was also always, people of technical and scientific competence that sought this model of economic governance. But the world isn’t a lab experiment and if it became as such, it would be terrible living like rats.

The infrastructure that led to Hitler’s rise, was as such very much present already. And although as Hayek noted, may have brought about economic growth, we saw evidence that people had no choice of their own.

If not for the benefit of the state, there is no use for something.

We do not see this tendency for authoritarianism even in the most libertarian-socialist movements, but as Hayek notes whenever people set up a certain collective vision, a movement will oppose anything that runs contrary to this opposing vision. And so what becomes of an individual’s personal dreams, goals or ambitions is rarely relevant. All that matters in a centrally planned environment, is the individual’s relevance to the state.

In his description as such, Hayek lays out the strongest support of the Market I have seen. It isn’t as a means of making money to Hayek. It is a complex marker used to identify necessities and complex problems and spurn action towards these. In short, it is a tool for decentralization.

This book is RIGOUROUS!

Spanning 256 pages, one could easily mistake it for being a small book. It isn’t, and its contents are far from small either. It’s a book that is as rigorous as it comes. The arguments are cohesive and well referenced.

I’ve always believed a good book to be capable of doing one thing well:

Reading the audience’s mind.

I remember having many counter-arguments already setup in my head, mainly based on what I thought the book was going to be. When I initially started out, I felt like I was basically going to be dismissing your average Reddit libertarian. I wasn’t, and Hayek was far from the average Reddit Libertarian. He was the OG himself.

As I went through passages where he argued the relevance of a reliance on a market-based system, I would easily note But what if the market can’t help with this, thinking about sky-high medical costs in the US or the general rise in inequality everywhere.

This is where I found out rather sharply, that Hayek wasn’t arguing AGAINST government intervention in times of social necessity. But that in fact, he advocated government intervention at times where the market:

1. Can’t solve a problem.

2. Can’t provide for basic necessities.

3. Creates problems for consumers.

4. Couldn’t solve major catastrophes like wars and natural disasters.

In many ways, it reminded me of a Nassim Taleb quote, where he says:

“The state should not smooth out your life, like a Lebanese mother, but should be there for intervention in negative times, like a rich Lebanese uncle”.

It made me realize how far modern Libertarianism has strayed from this vision. The fact that we are seeing government incompetence on side of those meant to secure freedoms, lies not in the principles laid out by Hayek, but have come from cronyism and corruption.

The strongest aspect of the book as such is definitely the strength of its arguments. I looked through the internet to find criticisms of the book. I simply couldn’t find any strong ones.

They ended up either:

1. Being misinterpretations of the content of the book.

2. People’s assumptions of a book they had never read.

By the end of the book, I was in awe with how much I agreed with Hayek.

I still have some disagreements.

But just because I couldn’t find some random disagreements by some strangers online, didn’t mean I didn’t have my own.

For example, Hayek defined privilege in terms of property but not in terms of culture. In an age where we see blatant racism of black people globally and material inequality that exists as a result of historical preconditions, it is pretty much obvious that certain unspoken rights and benefits are far harder to achieve as a black person. Hayek himself, however, was far from racist though.

There’s also the fact that Hayek tends to have a view of poverty as being something easily manageable. That one can merely escape it if one chooses to. But we see in poverty a decrease in intelligence and an increase in chances and likelihood of mortality. Increasing one’s standard of living as such, is difficult.

Another error, I doubt Hayek saw coming, was Singapore. It manages to be both Centrally Planned and extremely market-oriented at the same time. By many measures of freedom, it ranks really high and shows some of the least levels of corruption in the world. Much can be said about Freedom Of Speech, however.

The last error lies in the fact that Hayek does not define the role of government as much. He writes in protest against centralization but never argues out the main point depicting the role of government. In so doing, Hayek may have accidentally paved the path for the lack of government prowess we have in America today.

Many of Hayek’s failings in this book can be attributed to the lack of technological prowess we have today in collecting data. Had these pieces of data been more evident, it would be far more clear where his failings lay. But that can be said of every ideological framework. A bit of his impassivity towards poverty I believe lies in the fact that he was brought up in an aristocracy. But even in that light, Hayek writes often with compassion and a sense of moral righteousness in defense of liberty.

Through it all, Hayek still has a really well-argued book.

Conclusions.

In this book, many will find the reason for the existence of modern libertarianism. They will see a framework, even though he himself claimed it not to be one. But even more importantly will one see for themselves that the absence of what is supposed to be competent governance, lies far more in Crony Capitalist resolve, than from the warnings against totalitarianism that had spawned from Hayek.

Rating: Read it Now.

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