Hayek's Planned Economy

"It is of the utmost importance to the argument of this book for the reader to keep in mind that the planning against which all our criticism is directed is SOLELY the planning against competition — the planning which is to be substituted for competition. This is the more important as we cannot, within the scope of this book, enter into a discussion of the VERY NECESSARY planning which is required to make competition as effective and beneficial as possible. But as in current usage 'planning' has become almost synonymous with the former kind of planning, it will sometimes be inevitable for the sake of brevity to refer to it simply as planning, even though this means leaving to our opponents a very good word meriting a better fate." Hayek, Road to Serfdom, Chap 3

LIFE beyond scope ... IS beyond hope

We look back on medieval theologians arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin while princes and peasants killed one another in the name of God and we marvel at their appalling neglect of the REAL world around them. And yet contemporary neo-classical economists and the corrupt politicians who disingenuously chant their mantras will someday be regarded as engaging in an even more horrifying and destructive feat of existential miscreance.

What has happened to their minds? They have disclaimed metaphysics and are blind to the REAL and PHYSICAL world around them. AN Whitehead explained it well:

"The study of philosophy is a voyage towards the larger generalities. For this reason in the infancy of science, when the main stress lay in the discovery of the most general ideas usefully applicable to the subject matter in question, philosophy was not sharply distinguished from science. To this day, a new science with any substantial novelty in its notions is considered to be in some way peculiarly philosophical. In their later stages, apart from occasional disturbances, most sciences accept without question the general notions in terms of which they develop. The main stress is laid on the adjustment and the direct verification of more special statements. In such periods scientists repudiate philosophy; Newton, justly satisfied with his physical principles, disclaimed metaphysics. The fate of Newtonian physics warns us that there is a development in scientific first principles, and that their original forms can only be saved by [narrow] interpretations of meaning and [pretended] limitations of their field of application ... interpretations and limitations unsuspected during the first period of successful employment."

EF Schumacher affirmed the foolishness of substituting prevailing prejudices for eternal metaphysics:

"All philosophers - and others - have always paid a great deal of attention to ideas seen as the result of thought and observation; but in modern times all too little attention has been paid to the study of the ideas which form the very instruments by which thought and observation proceed. On the basis of experience and conscious thought small ideas may easily be dislodged, but when it comes to bigger, more universal, or more subtle ideas it may not be so easy to change them. Indeed, it is often difficult to become aware of them, as they are the instruments and not the results of our thinking - just as you can see what is outside you, but cannot easily see that with which you see, the eye itself. And even when one has become aware of them it is often impossible to judge them on the basis of ordinary experience. We often notice the existence of more or less fixed ideas in other people's minds - ideas with which they think without being aware of doing so. We then call them prejudices, which is logically quite correct because they have merely seeped into the mind and are in no way the result of a judgment ... ideas that are patently erroneous and recognisable as such by anyone except the prejudiced [wo]man."

And so it is that contemporary neo-classical economists increasingly retreat from the rapidly approaching limits and threatening consequences of the REAL and PHYSICAL world they should be inhabiting to seek intellectualized and financialized comfort by closing their dimming eyes and arguing with one another by imagining life within the theoretical, quantitative confines of collapsing play houses which their noble ancestors [like Hayek] NEVER intended to become castles in which a foolish and immature progeny would hide to avoid and ignore NATURE.

PLAN for the ecosystem's hierarchy first ... then for competition

Those who are sowing uninhibited individualism are reaping an uninhabitable world. They puritanically dismiss ALL planning as coercive and immoral when the ecological system [not to mention the neoclassical economic system they advocate] demands it ... like baseball depends on rules and referees to make the game fair and keep it going. "Survival of the fittest" may be an appealing proverb to the simle minded, but even Mises held it was a flawed strategy for achieving what should be our goal: social cooperation under the division of labor as a legitimate objective of government:

"There is in nature nothing to which the name of liberty could be given. The concept of freedom always refers to social relations between men. True, society cannot realize the illusory concept of the individual’s absolute independence.  ... [but] government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. ... The ultimate end that men aim at by establishing government is to make possible the operation of a definite system of social cooperation under the principle of the division of labor."  Mises, Liberty and Property

Yes, "survival of the fittest" is competition  ... but not the kind that results in "social cooperation". The PURPOSE of competition is to help every actor identify his or her comparative gifts and to promote intelligent interdependence ... not to dominate one another by doling out slavery and death.

"I judge it to be piety, not to sacrifice many hecatombs of bulls to Him and to burn incense of innumerable perfumes and cassia, but first to learn myself, and afterwards to teach others too, how great He is in wisdom, how great in power, and of what sort in goodness. For to wish to adorn in every way possible the things that should receive adornment and to envy no thing its goods—this I put down as the sign of the greatest goodness." Galen, On the Use of Parts

 

 And make CAPITAL compete with LABOR fairly

 

 

Common currency is a scale of values ... a "voting system"

Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of money is not to enable dominion or morally acquit the glutton but to provide a scale of values that reveals the "sorts of goodness" without envy ... just like the rules of baseball. Mises goes even further and describes it as a "voting system":

"The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote."

The Federal Reserve is the fountainhead of anti-competition

It does not take much mental acquity to understand that the US Federal Reserve is the major source of anti-competitive planning in the world. Can the ramifications of this be of minor significance? And yet, when was the last time you heard a "conservative" economist arguing about "appropriate" Fed policy ... instead of concluding that there is NO GOOD REASON for the Fed to exist ... IF you believe in virtuous planning ... period ... end of discussion.

 

 

values of  liberty, responsibility and commitment