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Food for Thought and Consideration: The Road to Serfdom (Including Cartoons) -- Friedrich A. Hayak -- Written over 60 Years Ago!

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Real Estate Agent with Realty ONE Group Mountain Desert DRE #SA554748000

This work is getting a lot of attention lately. Here is an excerpt from that document.

Anyone who has observed how aspiring monopolists regularly seek the assistance of the state to make their control effective can have little doubt that there is nothing inevitable about this development. In the United States a highly protectionist policy aided the growth of monopolies. In Germany the growth of cartels has since 1878 been systematically fostered by deliberate policy. It was here that, with the help of the state, the first great experiment in ‘scientific planning’ and ‘conscious organization of industry’ led to the creation of giant monopolies. The suppression of competition was a matter of deliberate policy in Germany, undertaken in the service of an ideal which we now call planning.

Great danger lies in the policies of two powerful groups, organized capital and organized labour, which support the monopolistic organization of industry. The recent growth of monopoly is largely the result of a deliberate collaboration of organized capital and organized labour where the privileged groups of labour share in the monopoly profits at the expense of the community and particularly at the expense of those employed in the less well organized industries. However, there is no reason to believe that this movement is inevitable.

The movement toward planning is the result of deliberate action. No external necessities force us to it.

The document is available in several forms. Get the condensed (Readers’ Digest) version of Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom. The book is a classic critique of the political dangers inherent in economic central planning. “The more the state "plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”

If you want a summary, skip to the cartoons starting on Page 63 of the downloaded document.

I see MUCH wisdom in this writing. It is absolutely profound! It is well worth the time to read it.

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