Serfdom and freedom, part 7
Jun. 30th, 2024 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellPart III is the best of The Road to Freedom and the most frustrating.
Page 209 and suddenly the book I was hoping to read has arrived:
Chapter 11: And the answer is... wait, first let's talk about how neoliberalism is terrible some more.
This chapter includes a handy table going on for pages and pages where the author lists the failures of neoliberalism, and the more enlightened approach he calls "progressive capitalism". (Ironically, Hayek was also calling his economic vision "progressive" at the end of The Road to Freedom.)
Chapter 12 moves on to discussing international institutions, particularly the terrible advice given out again and again by the International Monetary Fund.
Chapter 13 lays out a general description of progressive capitalism through the principles it should respect and the results it should achieve.
Chapter 14: Odds and ends leading up to the conclusion, including finally a direct reply to The Road to Serfdom:
But The Road to Serfdom was written while Hitler and Mussolini were current, and it does identify as sense that the government hardly does anything as a key factor in the rise of fascism. In Hayek's world it comes about by the government handing over too much power to a central planning board.
The main problem with The Road to Serfdom, in this light, is the author's failure to imagine that companies could take over functions that in his time would have been purely governmental: Uber and Lyft as the taxi board, Google as the advertising regulator, and so forth. One notes that the idea of perfection through scientific planning which led to planned economies and eugenics in Hayek's time now lives in techbro land too.
Anyway, back to Stiglitz: democracy good, captialism good if done the right way, time for the acknowledgements.
I feel like part III is the beginning and ending of the book I wanted to read. I'd like to have seen specific actionable suggestions from getting from where we are to where he's like to see us being.
Page 209 and suddenly the book I was hoping to read has arrived:
The basic question of this book, which drove me to study economics in the first place, is, what kind of economic system is most conducive to a good society?
There is a long history of failed answers. Feudalism was marked by a high concentration of power and wealth, low economic growth, and slow social progress. Communism succeeded in generating greater security and more equality in material goods, but failed on other accounts, including low economic growth, an absence of freedom in all dimensions, a concentration of power, and a greater inequality in standards of living than Communist rulers would admit.
Neoliberalism, the dominant economic system in the West over the past forty years, is increasingly viewed as an economic failure because it brought slower growth and more inequality than in earlier decades.
Chapter 11: And the answer is... wait, first let's talk about how neoliberalism is terrible some more.
This chapter includes a handy table going on for pages and pages where the author lists the failures of neoliberalism, and the more enlightened approach he calls "progressive capitalism". (Ironically, Hayek was also calling his economic vision "progressive" at the end of The Road to Freedom.)
Chapter 12 moves on to discussing international institutions, particularly the terrible advice given out again and again by the International Monetary Fund.
Chapter 13 lays out a general description of progressive capitalism through the principles it should respect and the results it should achieve.
Chapter 14: Odds and ends leading up to the conclusion, including finally a direct reply to The Road to Serfdom:
We can't help but reach conclusions that are just the opposite of Friedman's and Hayek's. They misread history-- I suspect deliberately. The severe bout of authoritarianism-- Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin-- from which the world was recovering at the time Hayek and Friedman were writing was not caused by governments having played too large a role. Instead these heinous regimes were brought about by extreme reactions to government not doing enough.
But The Road to Serfdom was written while Hitler and Mussolini were current, and it does identify as sense that the government hardly does anything as a key factor in the rise of fascism. In Hayek's world it comes about by the government handing over too much power to a central planning board.
The main problem with The Road to Serfdom, in this light, is the author's failure to imagine that companies could take over functions that in his time would have been purely governmental: Uber and Lyft as the taxi board, Google as the advertising regulator, and so forth. One notes that the idea of perfection through scientific planning which led to planned economies and eugenics in Hayek's time now lives in techbro land too.
Anyway, back to Stiglitz: democracy good, captialism good if done the right way, time for the acknowledgements.
I feel like part III is the beginning and ending of the book I wanted to read. I'd like to have seen specific actionable suggestions from getting from where we are to where he's like to see us being.
