By socialists he meant statists and collectivists. So facism, communism and socialism will eventually lead to the government having all the control - no longer will there be free individuals. The government is kept in power by the tricked masses who have chosen to lend its continued support.
Friedrich Hayek
A free society is nothing more than free individuals choosing to live together in a specific geograghical location.
From an economic point of view, the government seizes and controls the means of production - or like in the case of Singapore forms corporations which use tax payer (forcibly confiscated property) to form commercial entities (called GLCs). There is virtually no risk of failure. Why? Because the GLC can just put its hand out and get more (tax payer) funds to continue to run.
A GLC need not face competition. It can sell at below market price if it wants to. It can drive competition out of the market, and then do anything it chooses. Actually, that's it: A GLC has essentially a consequence-less ride down the capitalist road.
Every dollar the government takes out of the marketplace is one less dollar for the private indivdual (the selfish, greed-motivated capitalist - for e.g. ME!) to make for his own needs.
So what does the government do to ensure that the citizens don't bleed to death? It gives hand-outs.
The official line in Singapore is "no welfare state." Really? Not true is it. The government hands out welfare whenever it has a chance to control people's lives. It runs the public housing - and over the years has made huge profits. The same goes for telecommunications, transport, the harbour, insurance, banking, private medical services, private real estate - you name it, they've had a go at in.
The Great Dick Tator
In fact, they are well and truly competing alongside private enterprise. Oh yes, they have a legal system on their side to make sure the Road To Total Domination is clear of competition in the economic AND political spheres.
Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom links below:
Condensed and Abridged version
In Cartoons
Video
Review *Note: this is only one of the many.
Fact file
6 comments:
The Andrew Kuan case. GLCs come out in force to oppose his candidacy for Presidential elections. The true purpose of GLCs?
You should contact the nearest GLC to you and ask them what their purpose is.
I just have an opinion :-)
GLC is just another name for State Capitalism. That is, the State-turned-Corporation and utilising its citizens-turned-employees as fodder for a self-aggrandising venture by a Government-turned-Bourgeois.
See if you subscribe to Hayek, then you should subscribe to his view that there should not be a welfare state--after all, this was the centre of his argument in "The Road to Serfdom."
More that that, is a free market that stable? We should look to what Keynes saw in the Great Depression and how his style of intervention was subscribed by many countries. How about a lesser known person like LKarl Polanyi, who argued for social regulation as the economy is always part of an institutionalised process. Same as Thorstein Veblen, who criticised the neoclassicals or today's free market neo-liberals.
If you want a contemporary economist, look at Joseph Stiglitz, who is neo-Keynesian yet very much is favour of regulation.
You've miss-read me Jez: I am NOT in favour of a welfare state. But I argue that a welfare state ALREADY exixts in S'pore: note how the HDB "upgrading" and "goodies" is tied to whether the particular constituency votes PAP, or not.
I'm not in favour of state regulation. If regulation is to occur, let it be PRIVATE. No, I am no fan of Joseph Stiglitz because he favours central controls. I am against central controls and believe in the Hayekian notion of spontaneous order
"Stability" is not the reason for advocating a free market, although a free market TENDS TO be more stable than centrally controlled command economies. All markets will get the occasional "shocks" like natural disasters—tsunamis, huuricane, earthquakes etc.
Hi, you know who I am. I wish to contact other Singaporean libertarians/classical liberals out there to aggregate some mindshare.
I hope you would consider leaving a comment on my blog with your email address so that we can get in contact.
The Legal Janitor
Post a Comment