F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom - Book Report/Review Example

The author’s thesis is that a single intervention unavoidably leads to another. The accidental outcomes of every market intervention are economic misrepresentations, which produce further interventions to set them right. In this sense therefore, the very interventionist approach leads the entire society down the road to serfdom. Chapter 10 of this book seems to be the most of all the writing as it details “Why the worst get on top” in many totalitarian communities. Hayek starts off the chapter by quoting the Lord Action that goes, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

” He then goes further to explain the Actonian insight. Hayek makes it clear that within the interventionist dynamic, freedom is lost gradually, that is, one freedom at a time, often in the name of expediency and necessity. Central planning does not only rob people of their fundamental liberties but ruin their economics. Tragically, Hayek and other scholars patiently elaborated not only the economical, but also the political results of central planning. The system disregarded its unfeasible informational requirements.

It necessitated that all knowledge fragments existing in various minds be gathered in one mind, an act requiring that one mind to own knowledge far in surplus of what any person could ever understand (Hayek 56). What motivated Hayek to write this book was the shocking swiftness which so many Europeans, particularly in Germany had simply overlooked all that they had experienced over the years about the benefits of a free society, the risks of centralizing power, the need for limited government power, and the workings of capitalism as a universal network of mutually beneficial exchange.

It simply took some few years of socialistic sloganeering to convince Germans to discard their classic-liberal causes and have Big Government ever experienced. Hayek was strongly concerned that similar tyrannical concepts were also being expanding more and more in America, England and related nations. The central arguments in the book The Road to Serfdom is split into sixteen brief chapters that include intellectual history, theory, and historical observation. The central focus of the book was to show the social consequences of concepts.

The author envisions ideas as the driving force in history. Backward ideas are undesirable because they allow the authority of the advantaged interest over the majority interests (Hayek 15). Good ideas offer a social communication within which people pursue their individual interests. To shun away from political tyranny as well as fiscal servitude, such ideas must limit the self-seeking habit of persons appropriately. In order to get an understanding of the theoretical element of Hayek’s proposals, one has to consider the examples he gives in the book.

In simple terms, sensible economic calculation cannot be achieved without private assets in the means of production. Under institutional powers that try to do away with private ownership in production means, decision makers will not be in the light on how best they can allocate resources. In the current world, economic decision makers experience many probable programs and economic calculations offer a guide for choosing the best program from an economic view. When there are no well-defined rights to owning property in a given means of production, it will be difficult for decision-makers to decide on