The Road to Serfdom
By Barbara OBrien Thursday Aug 30, 2007 9:58amToday’s Paul Krugman column is a must read. Shorter version: We are all New Orleans now.
Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects — an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.
On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama’s football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.
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Paul Krugman gets it, but he doesn't "get" it.
The USofA has been a corporate-fascist state for far longer than most people even realize. Fascism took root here before it did in any other country. It wasn't born here, of course, but it was refined and retooled here, taken over by mega-industrialists such as Mellon and Rockefeller and used to their (and their heirs') advantage.
Elections (especially rigged elections or those lacking truly inspiring candidates) alone won't save us. The USofA needs to be torn apart and rebuilt from scratch. Nothing currently in place should be left standing.
How many of us are willing or prepared for such a massive undertaking, outside of myself? I not only WANT it to happen, I'm cheering for it.
Serfs up!
Yeah, but FOOTBALL in the Southeast is sooooooo important...more so than rebuilding
a devasated area where "humans" reside.
Frist? (That would be a first!)
How about Krugman for Prez?
it shows you the government is happy to destroy the lives of a lot of people. perhaps they have a deal with the chinese to run the city as a for profit company? If you think they will help you, you are dreaming
Krugman is the best. He and Frank Rich are the only antidotes to David Brooks' hackery on the Times' op-ed page.
Re-building New Orleans should be both an economic and military imperative for America.
Old a country unused to being attacked on it's own soil would let the gateway to it's heartland lay vulnerable.
What utter foolishness!
excuse me.
that should be "Only a country".
My basement's flooded. Can I get $250,000,000 from the U.S. government to buy a tract of land nearby and put up a condo complex?
9 L&P: No. Don't you know that "To those who have shall be given and from those who have not shall be taken away even that which they have"?
Liberal AND Proud @ 9:
Sure. Just get in line behind the loyal Bushies. Something will trickle down to you ... and it might even look like gold.
Ironic that Hayek's most devoted followers are bringing about his worst fears. This speaks to the shadow nature of the conservative movement - they fear their own authoritarian impulses which they can't control, or even acknowledge, and then project those impulses onto the left, which they then label "totalitarian." This has been going on for quite some time - a number of decades (see, e.g., Richard Hofstadter).
Movement conservatives (and their lackeys in the corporate media) are liars and cowards of the highest order and they should have no political power whatsoever. The conservative movement needs to go back to the drawing board, discard its goal of eliminating liberals altogether (from which all of its actions derive), and figure out how to be partners with the rest of America instead of self-proclaimed enemies. Of course they wont do this voluntarily, so the rest of us have to force them off the stage. They know this, which is why they tried to rig elections on a massive scale.
Paul Krugman is MY American Idol.
He hits this nail squarely on the head as to where we are heading as a country. I am afraid it will take a second American Revolution to get this scum out of our government and put it back in the hands of the people.
Also I recommend everyone in Alabama who have been displace to commandeer those luxury condos and such. After all it is YOUR money that paid for them.
Hey! Shut up and eat your cake. .......Uh! Yessir.
It's been straight out of the magicians handbook for the Republic party...slight of hand, get them distracted with the big hand gesture while you do the trick with the other hand....
Look over here, middle class folks!
Welfare Driving Cadillac Mothers! Gay Marriage Mandatory! Confiscate your Bible! Socialized Medicine! Terrorist in your local neighboodhood!
Booga-booga!
All the time, THE REAL AGENDA was, dismantle the "New Deal", roll back social progress, and free up the wealthy and the super wealthy from any tax burden what-so-ever!
Like Dick Cheney ever gave a rats-ass about Abortion or Gay Marriage?
I CONTINUE to be astounding by the utter stupidity of a vast segment of the population, who get their pocket picked everyday, but keep voting these clowns back into office because of some irrational fear of Gay people!
15 WSB-- you forgot the War On Christmas!!!!!!!!
JudyLou @ 16:
Oh Yeah, LOL! It's so seasonal I forgot, but it's about time for Billy'O-Falafel to bring out the yearly diatribe!
Faux might have to run it out early this year, if ONE more Republic Politician get's caught with his WIDE STANCE on display, they will need to plenty to distract the base!
A number of "conservative" repugs have complained that Bush is not really one of them, that he's really a "big government liberal' in disguise. Actually, they're just pissed at him for exposing their con game. He is just true "conservatism" on steroids. Screw you,I got mine, screw the poor, con the middle class, enrich the wealthy. Hopefully, many "Reagan Democrats" will finally see the light about the Republics.
the slow, but certain, inglorious collapse of neoliberalism is nigh (i made myself laugh, the neoliberalists, the corporatists and the neofascists will put yolks on the people before they admit their c. montgomery burns-esque [see, shield to block the sun] scheme has failed everyone--the uber-wealthy excluded, they are doing great, thank you).
the same war profiteers in iraq are also profiting off the tragedy that is NOLA. i hereby dub thee disaster profiteers.
watch out blackwater, CACI, KBR, Halliburton, etc, execs; the day will come when you are run out on a rail--literally. sleep tight for now, as all good things must come to an end.
The Economics Of Sisyphus
Roll the rock of peoples dreams up the hill, then make it roll back down again crushing the average American.
"Elections (especially rigged elections or those lacking truly inspiring candidates) alone won’t save us. The USofA needs to be torn apart and rebuilt from scratch. Nothing currently in place should be left standing.
How many of us are willing or prepared for such a massive undertaking, outside of myself? I not only WANT it to happen, I’m cheering for it."
Hold that thought for a few more years. Until then, I agree that our current governmental philosophy and practices do need to be fundamentally changed. Bipartisan is an oxymoron. Why don't we demand nonpartisans? Reform isn't going to happen through a bunch of back-patting and handshaking, it's going to piss off a lot of entrenched interests.
It is going to happen, however. We really have a choice right now. Do we change course BEFORE we have another civil war in this country, or do we put back the pieces afterward.
It sure would be a shame to get reset after such a short time in the game.
Dude, amazing. Nicely worded.
"The Economics Of Sisyphus
Roll the rock of peoples dreams up the hill, then make it roll back down again crushing the average American."
This would be what I was complimenting, as opposed to my own poorly worded screed.
Barbara,
Your article title is either HIGHLY ironic, or incredibly uninformed.
"The Road To Serfdom"...do you even know who coined this phrase and what the significance of it is? I don't think you do.
For "The Road to Serfdom" was coined by F.A. Hayek, a FREE MARKET economist. In his book of the same title, he showed how central economic planning, or at least the belief in its alleged benefits, will lead any country to ruin.
The reason for this is because central planners cannot know all the changes which occur in the market on literally a daily basis. Therefore any social system that institutionalizes this belief is doomed to fail. This is why the USSR failed. Any attempt of an individual or small group of people in trying to forcibly direct the market in an authoritarian manner, will cause massive misallocations of resources, low productivity and hence people will live the lives of "serfs".
The fact that you are using this phrase in the context of the government not doing ENOUGH economically is extremely hilarious and pitiful. Indeed, the road to serfdom can also be travelled along if we stay ignorant of both our history and our knowledge of valid economic laws.
Shame...
Wanderer @ 24:
Not having read the book I can only rely on what others report and oddly enough there is a bit of a difference in their take on it. As per wikipedia:
Hayek’s central thesis is that all forms of collectivism lead logically and inevitably to tyranny, and he used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries which, in his view, had gone down “the road to serfdom” and reached tyranny. Hayek argued that within a centrally planned economic system the distribution and allocation of all resources and goods would devolve onto a small group which would be incapable of processing all the information pertinent to the appropriate distribution of the resources and goods at the central planners’ disposal. Disagreement about the practical implementation of any economic plan combined with the inadequacy of the central planners’ resource management would invariably necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved. Hayek further argued that the failure of central planning would be perceived by the public as an absence of sufficient power by the state to implement an otherwise good idea. Such a perception would lead the public to vote more power to the state, and would assist the rise to power of a “strong man” perceived to be capable of “getting the job done”. After these developments Hayek argued that a country would be ineluctably driven into outright totalitarianism. For Hayek “the road to serfdom” inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom.
Hayek argued that countries such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had already gone down the "road to serfdom", and that various democratic nations are being led down the same road. In The Road to Serfdom he wrote: "The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
You state:
"Therefore any social system that institutionalizes this belief is doomed to fail. This is why the USSR failed. Any attempt of an individual or small group of people in trying to forcibly direct the market in an authoritarian manner, will cause massive misallocations of resources, low productivity and hence people will live the lives of “serfs”."
But if the Wikipedia authors are correct... it is centralized planning that will lead to poor asset allocation, which then necessitates coercion, and ultimately leads to an authoritarian strongman and tyranny.
As to it being the cause of the down fall of the Soviet Union I suspect that a long, costly, protracted war in Afghanistan which was preceeded by the economic isolation policies by the Administrations of five US Presidents in a row had a great deal to do with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
No doubt top down centralized planning is a recipe for extinction. The Good Dr. Deming more than made his case for that by revolutionizing the industries of Japan when corporate leadership in the US said his ideas of bottom up planning by the workers who did the jobs would never work. Enjoy your Toyotas, Nissans and the like!
Still have no fear... Communist China is alive and booming and owns our economic soul and we have a very strong Decider!
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