Socialism As A Whole
As I began reading, “Road to Serfdom,” I just had to point out this quote which immediately stole my attention. He says “...in a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation (Hayek et al., 42.) I have never seen it described this way, but this is the brutal truth. The only fault I can find is that their death might not be slow. When the government has total control, opposing them can prove to be fatal, and some countries are so blunt about it that their deaths might not even seem like an accident.
The dislike for socialism is clear as he starts explaining how this type of government affects the individual from the cradle to the grave. How the children are put into schools spewing propaganda and the government's righteousness in all things. I never quite realized how quickly socialism can turn into fascism until reading this. When studying the Holocaust in school it was well known that Hitler was a dictator and that they had a fascist government system, but before they were fascist they started off as socialist. Many of the ideas that were seen in Germany first started under a socialist government. I didn’t realize the true negative effect that socialism had leading up to the Holocaust until it was spelled out for me here.
Utopian Society?
When describing utopia he says, “There can be no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all activity that socialism and individual freedom can be combined” (Hayek et al., 47). This is the first thing he says that I really have to disagree with. Not to get overly political, but when the last election was happening Bernie Sanders was trying to be the main runner for the democratic party and while there are plenty of people out there who love him, I also heard many democrats say that his views were entirely too socialist for them. Then there’s the republican party where many think the democrat party is too socialist as a whole. While I may not know what other countries think, I would say that less than half of the people in the United States would agree with the statement above.
Planners
With government, comes the debate of planning. Who does the planning? Would the planner have total economic power? If the planner is the sole source of power, could it very well lead to a dictatorship? Some say that to give up certain freedoms is to grant yourself others. The designated planner would plan out everything you need, but I’m not sure I quite agree with this, as I personally believe that less government interference is better. The government says that if we give our economic problems to them that they’ll take care of it, but wouldn’t they put themselves in a better economic position than the individual? I think that there’s no one better to look out for my best interest than myself, so I would rather not let the government handle all my affairs. However, I do agree that in times of need our government should intervene to provide food and shelter to those going without. I’m thankful that I’m able to speak from a place of privilege when I say I would like to look out for myself, but everyone needs help now and then and I feel like the government giving out necessities to those who need it would be a very good thing!
Personal Favorite
My favorite part of this reading was the cartoon he had as a summary at the end of this section. I feel like it was the perfect way to put everything he said together and help present a better overall picture of how things would actually play out. In summary, if socialism were to rule, it would begin with giving up many freedoms. As I stated above, they would claim that giving up some freedoms would grant you others and to many it may sound good at the start. This is where the planners come in. How do we plan for war? A planner decides. How will we achieve a utopian society? A planner decides. People love these planners at first, because they get to make the hard decisions, but that’s when things get tricky. A businessman from New York vs a farmer from Kentucky are very unlikely to see eye to eye on many things, so what happens when the planner starts to only benefit the city folk? Well now you have half our population happy and the others are upset. With no middle ground being met, it only makes sense that they bring someone in with a strong personality to make everyone see reason, right? Wrong. Now you have a dictator, where not everyone can freely express their opinions and it’s their way or the highway. Now, everything from your job, to your salary and where you lived is planned out for you without you having any say or choices in the matter. Your freedom has been lost, and you now don’t get to plan anything for yourself.
Now, this may seem extreme, but we have seen this happen time and time again in history. I’m not going to outright claim that it couldn’t work, but I’m very confident in democracy and if I wasn’t already wary of socialism before, I definitely am now.
