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Originally Posted by hawtdog
Well it doesn't 'have' to be better than this.
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Easy for you to say. Tell that to someone without insurance, who has lost a home, who had a child die in a senseless war fought under false pretences.
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Educated idealism is what lead to Stalin and Hitler. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom nicely illustrates how the "educated idealism" of the Germans led to the socialist policies that wrecked most of the world and took away most people genuine freedoms.
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Who was in charge in Nazi Germany? Workers? I didn't think so. Was Stalin in charge in the Soviet Union, or workers? Where was the socialism?
As one of the theoretical forebearers of Reaganism, we have Hayek to thank for the huge fucking mess we're in now. Take a look at this little Hayek-inspired gem from the Cato crowd:
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Glass-Steagall is a six-decade-old plan, which still blocks competitive adaptation and responses to clients' needs. The good news is that Glass- Steagall reform is afoot. The bad news is that the process is driven, at least in part, by those who cannot let go of the planning idea. What is needed is a Hayekian vision of competition in financial services. Otherwise, we may end up tinkering with the titles of Glass-Steagall without addressing the bill's inner contradictions.
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The Meaning of Hayek
Putting aside the issue of market fundamentalism, the Road to Serfdom was to become Cold War propaganda eagerly spread by Readers Digest, GM, & the University of Chicago. It therefore contributing greatly to Unfreedom by providing the grounding legitimation for Cold War repression. What freedoms you now enjoy are products of resistance to that regime. I don't recall whether Hayek ever answered to this. I suspect that he would have said that McCarthyism was a temporary expedient, a state of exception, a necessary evil -- which was more or less the way he dealt with right wing dictatorships like Pinochet's. That's also how today's laissez-faire capitalists explain away your civil rights.
Thanks, Freddy, you were really full of shit.