The Road to Serfdom Valid Today as it Was in 1944 Essay

The Road to Serfdom Valid Today as it Was in 1944 The following paper will explore the book, The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek. I challenge that many of Hayeks assumptions are still valid today even though his book was written in 1944. Hayeks assumptions regarding 1) the governments rule of the law, 2) the concept of government-directed economic activity that includes artificial separation of economics and politics, and 3) the notion that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful, are still true in today. Hayek was anti-central planning yet not anti-welfare state, and he was a libertarian. As a libertarian he believed that the emphasis of the government should be on individual freedom.†¦show more content†¦(Hayek, p. 92) The most recent example of this locally involves the Port of Olympia. The port discriminates against individual businesses that it believes are not consistent with the plan for the area. Lack of controls allows for government control of industries that can lead to discrimination based on individual beliefs and values. There is no doubt that the Olympia government maintains enormous power over good and evil. One has only to look to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport as another prime example. The Port district has imminent domain allowing it to take private property for the good of the people. It appears to be more for the good of the Port. The Port is currently acquiring property under the pretense of needing to build a third runway. It is not relevant that the permit for the runway will be held up in the court system for many years. Of the property acquired, much is from individual homeowners. The Port acquired these properties at residential property zoned prices and then land bec ame industrially zoned. The individual property owners lost not only their homes but also a great deal of money. The Port also decided what businesses would remain within theShow MoreRelatedAdministrative Law, Red and Green Light Theories5307 Words   |  22 Pagesexcept as the expression of an economic system of which it was designed to serve as a rampart.1 By this he meant that the machinery of government was an expression of the society in which it operated; one could not be understood except in the context of the other. In 1941, Sir Cecil Carr made a similar point in a series of lectures on administrative law given at Harvard University, in the course of which he said: We nod approvingly today when someone tells us that, whereas the State used to be merelyRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 Pagesrecession of 2008) when one could quite plausibly argue that a new era had begun. A compelling case can be made for viewing the decades of the global scramble for colonies after 1870 as a predictable culmination of the long nineteenth century, which was ushered in by the industrial and political revolutions of the late 1700s. But at the same time, without serious attention to the processes and misguided policies that led to decades of agrarian and industrial depression from the late 1860s to the