Sunday, November 14, 2010

Saving Hayek from the People Who Think They’re Saving Hayek | Cato @ Liberty

CATO has an interesting article about saving Hayek from the left:
Although it’s probably true that most socialists‘ idea of justice would be satisfied if income from private property were abolished, it does not follow that this was Hayek’s idea of justice. Hayek didn’t think it was “okay” to collectivize the entire means of production, whether by the state or by private action.

The ability to accumulate capital and to believe that one held it justly was, for Hayek, a most important incentive for the formation of responsible individuals. If the means of production were collectivized, individual character would suffer, and society would suffer with it.
One of the interesting developments of the Internet Age is the emergence of  the knowledge economy. The idea of "collectivizing the means of production" in the knowledge economy is downright Orwellian.

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