The Road To Serfdom

The Road To Serfdom helps you keep your freedoms and individuality by taking a stand against socialism, identifying its risks to turn into totalitarianism, and why this was especially important after WWII.

The idea behind socialism is that if everybody pools their money and resources and lets a government distribute it then everyone will be better off. It’s proponents taut that it enables freedom and equality. Unfortunately, history proves that these utopian ideas are just too idealistic.

One component of this worldview is that the government should have total control over the economy. This is especially dangerous to personal freedom.

Liberalism, in contrast, allows the economy and scientific advancements to move forward uninhibited by the hand of an aloof bureaucracy.

Although socialism attempts to uphold equality, security, and social justice, it cripples nations by eliminating private enterprises, like production.

Compare this to liberalism, which lets companies compete and become better because of it. The market governs the prices to be what is best for people and businesses alike, and not some uninformed government agency.

In a more collectivist situation, competition is smothered and leads to a loss of choice. That’s because monopolies arise and take over the market when industries become centralized. To curb this problem, socialist nations would have to control them, eliminating their ability to choose the best way they see forward.

In other words, socialism means the less-intelligent government takes over sectors of life and the economy that would be much better run by those who know about it, like actual business owners.

When the author wrote this book in 1944, he argued that awful people would end up in power in a socialist government. Today, we see that even in more democratic systems, awful people still end up in power. While we love the utopian ideal that people leading us will always be benevolent, this just isn’t realistic for any system. The best form of government is when it’s run by the people. This happens through a smaller group of representatives in charge that speak for everyone. However, people differ more in their views as they become more educated. In other words, it’s easier to unite a large group if they all think the same way. This means it’s less difficult to control people if they’re less educated and propaganda has more of an influence on them. Corrupt officials can use indoctrination to push people to get behind a cause that actually limits their freedoms. Another problem is that the dictator in charge of a socialist government will want to focus on the greater good. That means inhibiting the freedoms and rights of minorities. Enforcing an equal distribution of wealth causes such leaders to make decisions…