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Socialists push Big Government - YOU will pay for it, sucka!
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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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America's Future, Inc.
Behind The Headlines
October, 1994
SOCIALISTS PUSH "BIG" GOVERNMENT
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Despite the obvious failures of socialism around the world, many
of our liberal academics and other intellectuals still don't get
the message. They could use a refresher course in economics in the
real world.
During the Cold War, it was often said that there were more
Marxists on the faculties of U.S colleges and universities than in
all of Eastern Europe. Hyperbole aside, the collapse of communism
in favor of democracy and free markets has done little to halt
the drive of diehard collectivists for a New World Order.
Not that the pitfalls of such "big-brotherism" went unreported.
It was just 50 years ago that Friedrich von Hayek, the renowned
Austrian economist, warned of the failure of collectivism in his
seminal book, The Road to Serfdom. Arguing persuasively on behalf
of individual freedom, Hayek held out the free market as the only
mechanism ever discovered for achieving participatory democracy.
Over a quarter of a century later, Milton Friedman, the
University of Chicago economist and Nobel Prize winner, wrote an
introduction to a 1971 German edition of Hayek's book. Noting the
failure of socialism in post-war Britain, Friedman wrote:
"Unfortunately, the check to collectivism did not check the growth
of government; rather it diverted its growth to a different
channel." The emphasis now, he added, was on government regulation
and "transfer programs involving extracting taxes from some in order
to make grants to others - all in the name of equality and the
eradication of poverty, but in practice producing an erratic and
contradictory melange of subsidies to special-interest groups." As
a result, said Friedman, government spending has continued to grow
at an accelerating rate.
Concluding his 1971 essay, Friedman said experience had borne out
Hayek's central insight - "that coordination of men's activities
through central direction and through voluntary cooperation are
roads going in very different directions: the first to serfdom, the
second to freedom."
This year, the University of Chicago is publishing a new, 50th
anniversary edition of Hayek's classic work, and once again Milton
Friedman, now 82, is supplying the introduction. The Nobel
laureate's observations are as compelling as ever in their
relevance to today's world. Writes Friedman:
"In 1994, there is wide agreement that socialism is a failure,
capitalism a success. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of
communism behind the Iron Curtain and the changing character of
China have reduced the defenders of a Marxian-type collectivism
to a small, hardy band concentrated in Western universities. Yet,
this apparent conversion of the intellectual community to what
might be called a Hayekian view is deceptive."
Continues Friedman: "While the talk is about free markets and
private property - and it is more respectable than it was a few
decades ago to defend near complete laissez-faire - the bulk of the
intellectual community almost automatically favors any expansion
of government power so long as it is advertised as a way to protect
individuals from big bad corporations, relieve poverty, protect
the environment or promote `equality.' The discussion of a national
program of health care provides a striking example. The
intellectuals may have learned the words but they do not yet have
the tune."
Timely wisdom from one of the Free World's most esteemed
economists and political philosophers. What a pity there are not
more Milton Friedmans on our college campuses.
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Behind the Headlines, written by Philip C. Clarke, is a syndicated
column distributed by America's Future. It is available to
interested newspapers and other
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call Mr. John Wetzel, c/o America's Future
Inc., P.O. Box 1625, Milford, Pa. 18337 (717) 296-2800.
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