Authoritarianism Is Not Compatible with Economic Progress: Freedom Is Indivisible; Woke Egalitarianism and the Elites
Authoritarianism Is Not Compatible with Economic Progress: Freedom Is Indivisible
[An important article to read. - JRD]
“The belief that a free market economy needs an authoritarian state to support it is mistaken. Mises said it best when he wrote that "freedom is indivisible.”
“Is it possible, or even desirable, for economic freedom and progress to be compatible with authoritarianism? Although some may believe so, this is a fallacy. Freedom is indivisible. Political and economic freedom cannot be separated.
This is the position of Ludwig von Mises himself. In Planning for Freedom, he says, “Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.” Regarding a citizen’s reaction to such tyranny, he writes in Planned Chaos that“If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator’s plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.” Mises contrasts the tyranny of socialism with capitalism in Bureaucracy when he writes,”
“Five years of fiat money expansion has so disrupted economies worldwide that a serious recession is on the horizon. Prices are rising. World trade is under attack. The world is on the brink of nuclear war. Sovereign debt has reached absurd levels. All these insults toward ordinary people are brought to us by out-of-control governments who have no understanding of real economics and, of course, no real understanding of wealth creation.”
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Woke Egalitarianism and the Elites
“Modern progressives are not ‘reformers.’ Instead, as Murray Rothbard wrote, they have commandeered social and governmental institutions to impose outcomes incompatible with a free society.”
“In the research paper Egalitarianism and the Elites, published in 1995 in the Review of Austrian Economics, one of Murray Rothbard’s most brilliant insights was that even the implementation of an egalitarian society requires leadership. As the fall of one system to the implementation of a new model of society cannot come out of nowhere, someone must command and lead this process. And naturally, these leaders will occupy powerful positions.
Indeed, Rothbard’s affirmation demonstrates how human existence is unequal and how some are naturally more qualified to lead the social processes. In a free-market society, the leaders are the entrepreneurs. With their ability to forecast future needs, they generate new solutions and create new productive arrangements. As a consequence, they create profit for themselves and value for their customers.”
Each problem of private life becomes a public question, and over time, the Leviathan expands more and more, both in terms of income and influence. Allied with the government and the establishment, the leaders of these movements thus achieve relevance in the public debate, occupying positions and being paid to produce nothing.
“They are the opposite of entrepreneurs: instead of producing welfare and improving people’s lives, they disseminate chaos to harvest institutional rewards while annihilating the institutions. Family, religion, and market ethics are more and more under attack, and these social movements are working to substitute these private arrangements with state influence and social engineering.”