One of the
greatest thinkers of all time was Austrian economic Friedrich Hayek, and his
work The Road to Serfdom is an absolute must-read.
Hayek’s
writings are incredibly powerful in these times. In light of the countless
recent examples of governments changing the rules whenever/wherever it suits
them (from the Troika nonsense in Europe to the Fraudclosure settlement in the
US), I’d like to share a few key passages with you today.
“Nothing
distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a
country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the
great principles known as the Rule of Law.”
“[U]nder the
Rule of Law the government is prevented from stultifying individual efforts by
ad hoc action. Within the known rules of the game the individual is free to
pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of
government will not be used to deliberately frustrate his efforts.”
“The
important question is whether the individual can foresee the action of the
state [based on the government following its own rules] and make use of
this knowledge as a datum in forming his own plans…”
On
the nature of legislative or judicial favoritism, Hayek says:
“It is the
Rule of Law… the absence of legal privileges [or favoritism] of particular
people designated by authority, which safeguards that equality before the law
which is the opposite of arbitrary government.”
“[A]ny
policy aiming directly at a substantive ideal of distributive justice must lead
to the destruction of the Rule of Law.”
There
is a “belief that, so long as all actions of the state are duly authorized by
legislation, the Rule of Law will be preserved… [But just because] someone has
full legal authority to act in the way he does gives no answer to the question
whether the law gives him power to act arbitrarily.”
“It may well
be that Hitler has obtained unlimited powers in a strictly constitutional
manner and that whatever he does is therefore legal in the juridical sense. But
who would suggest for that reason that the Rule of Law still prevails in
Germany?”
“The Rule of
Law thus implies limits to the scope of legislation: it restricts it to the
kind of general rules known as formal law and excludes legislation either
directly aimed at particular people or at enabling anybody to use the coercive
power of the state for the purpose of such discrimination.”
On
the consequences of the decline in the Rule of Law in a free society, Hayek
says:
“By giving
the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and
in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.”
“It is
important to point out once more in this connection that this process of the
decline of the Rule of Law had been going on steadily in Germany for some time
before Hitler came into power and that a policy well advanced toward
totalitarian planning had already done a great deal of the work with Hitler
completed.”
We
unfortunately live in an era where the Rule of Law means nothing; where
contracts are irrelevant and people can no longer make plans based on rules and
agreements; where the government exists above the law; where the benefits of
one group are quickly sacrificed for the benefit of another.
Writing
during World War II during the fight against Nazi Germany, Hayek describes this
system as a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Any thinking,
rational person should look around at the world today and see:
Hundreds of
thousands of mortgage contracts abrogated by the federal government;
Suspension of
gun rights by several local governments;
The continued
criminalization of protest and free assembly;
Increased
surveillance and police state tactics;
Authorization
of military force and detention against the citizens;
Seizing and/or
voiding pension systems into which workers have paid lifelong contributions;
Rejection of
long-standing senior debt positions in favor of labor unions;
Executive and
police agencies ruling by regulation and policy, not by legislative process;
It’s
hard to argue that Hayek’s vision hasn’t come true.
No comments:
Post a Comment