Freedom for the Individual
Friedrich A. Hayek, author of The Road to Serfdom, held quite strong beliefs about what government intervention in lives of individuals will ultimately lead too. Hayek was an outspoken advocator for individual liberty, particularly in regard to government regulations over industries. He argued that economic and individual freedom was the singular most important method for progression and that, without this freedom, the power of a large, organized entity was inevitably going to be condensed and then used forcefully against the people it once promised to protect.
Proposals for Attaining this Freedom
In Hayek’s opinion, the biggest obstacle to freedom for the individual is the desire for a planned economy. Economies that are planned may start out with good intentions, such as the desire to have all citizens of a state hold wealth, but Hayek argues that the path to this desired outcome is impossibly flawed. In order to completely change the established order of wealth there has to be a group in a state that has enough power to force households and the economy in this direction, thus creating a society that has a majority group holding power. Hayek states that this condensed power will inevitably be exploited due to the nature of individuals who crave to control power. This, he argues, will lead to a society where the individual holds no power and therefore is dependent on the ruling government.
In order to prevent this overregulated world from coming a reality, and therefore worsening lives of the individual economically and in a sense of liberty, Hayek proposes that individuals should campaign for “creating conditions favorable to progress rather than ‘planning progress’” (Hayek 1945, p 70). In Hayek’s opinion, these progress conditions include unregulated, competitive industries and minimal government supervision over the lives of individual people.
My Thoughts
I saw a lot of similarities between Hayek’s viewpoint on government intervention and the outlook that Per L. Bylund, author of The Seen, the Unseen, and The Unrealized, held. Both authors argued, in their respective books, that the less government policies intervened in the lives of the individual citizens, the better off and more prosperous society would be.
However, I personally found Hayek’s argument and proposals to be expressed in a more realistic way. Hayek believed that minimal government regulation, especially in a society in which the wealth level is already high, should have some protection for the people living in it provided by the government instead of leaving society at the mercy of unexpected changes. I tend to agree with this way of thinking as no one should be deprived of essential necessities needed to sustain life when there are entities or funds that could help them.
While I still—as I did in response to Bylund’s perspective—have some reservations about how successfully a minimally regulated society would function, I do find Hayek’s arguments about how to reduce the probability of totalitarian states convincing since it does seem rational to argue that where power is less condensed there is less opportunity for an extremely authoritative government to take over and push individuals and markets around, ultimately creating a better society for the little people.
Works Cited
Bylund, P. L. (2016) The Seen, the Unseen, and The Unrealized: How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives. Lexington Books.
Hayek, F. A., (1945). The road to serfdom with the intellectuals and socialism. Reader’s Digest
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