The road to serfdom
 

this was a pamphlet published back in 1944, its aims were obvious for the time, but it still holds a few messages that ring true. I will post one of a series of 18 installments daily, for the purpose of information and instilling thought. take what you wish from them.


http://www.mises.org/TRTS/00.jpg

http://www.mises.org/TRTS/01.jpg

Serfs Up!

2Wolves

I'd gladly become a serf, they were protected by the Church from most of what my employer has me do.

Eh? Could you elaborate a little on this?

Ummm if you have a good job you are already worse off then a serf in that a serf gave about 33% of their labor to the lord. We are closer to slaves at 50% of our labor.

these are great, phred!
thanks.

(of course, you know I don't draw any necessary conclusions from them)

I'll pass on that. I like my liberties and have the freedom to do whatever I want, rather than be bound to something.

Fascinating stuff. It's always interesting to see how these ideas have been presented over the years. Also interesting to see that it was published by GM.

Serfs weren't really slaves, they were protected from their owners by the church from doing horrible things like eating the souls of his customers. It was a joke, for those of you who didn't pick up on it.

Thanks Phred, really interesting. Funny to think too that it was GM that destroyed the public transit system in a lot of large cities in order to sell more cars.

I've got a book from the 50's that a friend gave me as a joke called FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. I need to retrieve my scanner from a friend, but I think I'll get it back and post a few pages. It's funny in a similar way.

Serfs paid a lot more in other places. Serfdom is one of the reasons why Northern Europe is very secular today. It's interesting that serfdom is still accepted in some cases; right now many people are trying to help Tibet to return to it's pre-China serfdom system.

As for the pics; they're funny, but I can't wait to see where they are leading. At this stage, a lot could be read into them.
Thanks Phred.

I'm really interested to see these as well. I tried to read the book once, but couldn't get into it. Glad to see it come out as a cartoon :).

I think that wars are dangerous not so much for what they are about, but ideas that come about because of them. Take federal income tax witholding for instance. Look forward to more from this series Phredgreen, thank you for posting it.

yesterday's installment...

http://www.mises.org/TRTS/06.jpg

and today's

http://www.mises.org/TRTS/07.jpg

apoligies all around to those who were reading the series, i became preoccupied with other things and let this slip. i'll continue the series with daily (i hope) updates.

http://www.mises.org/TRTS/08.jpg

This is facinating, phred. I'll comment at the series conclusion (as if we don't know where this is going).

I like to think it isn't going anywhere.
I appreciate the disjointedness of it.
It would be a real come-down for me if it has a point.

I wonder if it does?

So far I think I know where its going.. It has a post WWI Germany feel to it..

I think it portrays the life and death of most empires so far.

Is there any more about the genesis of this pamphlet? The title is the same as the most famous work of Fredrich Heyeck (sp.) an Austrian economist from this period. His work was very free market and Milton Friedman was a disciple