In his Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek brings up very interesting points, centering around how governmental control of planning or decision making can lead to disastrous consequences, oppression, and loss of freedom.
As it stands currently, I can't say that I particularly agree with most people who propose socialist ideas. My personal political and economic tendencies lean towards more of a decentralized method of governance. I generally believe that capitalism has the greatest chance to bring the greatest good to the highest number of people. I do recognize that no system will ever be perfect, because human nature is just that - imperfect.
However, while I certainly lean away from socialism most of the time, I had never really considered the idea that socialism was actively working to destroy the economic freedoms that I appreciate in my country.
This is more or less Hayek's position. He states that "socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom". What a bold statement! I wouldn't typically go up to one of my more socialist friends and call them the gravest threat to my freedom. Where I'm from, those would be fighting words. Realistically, I have always considered people who support socialism as simply someone who believes in something I don't. I haven't thought further about the implications that the system they support would end up causing such drastic outcomes. Despite this, upon further examination, I believe that Hayek has some ground to stand on.
Hayek goes on to suggest that socialism will ultimately lead to dictatorship which will lead way to fascism. The reason for this is that no other type of government can actually support this type of system. In a democracy, we fundamentally lack the capability of group decision making that would be required in order to implement a socialist planning system. We would not be able to get enough people to agree with what we wanted to do in order to implement it. We are too different.
Thus, for socialism to work, we would need to consolidate the decision making process into the hands of a few. Doing so would cause us to cease to be a democracy, and leads way for those few to quickly exhibit ultimate control over the population. Soon they would consolidate even more until only one person is making all of the planning decisions, because that is the most efficient. When only one person's opinion matters, you don't get caught up in the lengthy bureaucratic red tape that bogs down a democratic system of government. At the end of it all, when one person contains all the decision making power, there is none that can oppose them. They are the ultimate power, which is always inherently dangerous within society.
However, does the modern supporter of socialism support this idea of the centralization of all decision making power into the end goal of dictatorship, oppression, and fascism? I doubt it.
At the end of the day I don't believe that most people who claim to support socialism have given it this level of thought, or at least they certainly don't think that socialism would lead to this inevitable end of socialism that Hayek posits. My peers who all claim to support socialism all tend to be caught up in the camp of believing that they are democratic socialists, whether that term is legitimate or not, they believe themselves to be just that. Likely this boils down to people my age being fed up with bureaucratic red tape, feeling like capitalism has let them down as most of them are young and poor, and wanting free stuff, like healthcare. While I don't believe they are malicious, I do think that it provides a good exercise in looking down your chosen path to think logistically about what the consequences are, whether good or bad.
If we start early and look at the consequences of our chosen forms of economic governance, maybe we would see that Socialism isn't the best option, as Hayek claims. Maybe we would be able to have the foresight that eventually, we would all end up giving up all of our fiercely protected freedoms to a new government promising a new utopia, only to later abandon the utopia by giving all power to one who promises to make it right.
At the end of the day, representation and freedom is key. Our society works because you and I have a voice. We are allowed to make choices that we believe are in our best interest. If we don't like something, we can vote to change it, or relocate to somewhere it can't impact us anymore. Through the exercising of these freedoms, we ensure that no matter the situation we never slip into a socialist, communist, dictatorship, or fascist way of living in which our freedoms are stripped away.
