Reading Tab

That was a really ignorant comment Pussy. To say that liberal thinkers hate the poor is as ignorant comment as to claim that all manga is tentacle pornography.

(yes, I think that in terms of live action movies and TV and anime I have already watched most of the stuff that I would find worth watching).

That was a really ignorant comment Pussy. To say that liberal thinkers hate the poor is as ignorant comment as to claim that all manga is tentacle pornography.

I was inspired by Hayek's work when I was in high-school and undergrad to pursue an academic career in the social sciences, in fact, I am now working on my research because of his inspiration. He was perhaps the greatest social scientist of the 20th century and The Road of Serfdom, while a political book, represented an argument for the classical liberal principles, which are principles that underlie modern industrial civilization and made it a possibility. These principles which were in danger of not being respected in the mid20th century even in democracy's traditional strongholds, such as the UK and the US.

Hayek is as an important figure for the 20th century social sciences as men such as Borh, Heisenberg and Einstein were for the natural sciences. Indeed, Hayek was ranked in 2nd place among Nobel prize winning economists in citations by other Nobel prize winning economists, just behind Arrow and above Friedman and Samuelson.

Hayek's notion that society is essentially a system of intellectual division of labor and that modern institutions such as private property and contracts exist in order to allow different individuals to integrate the plans formulated into their minds as a cohesive social whole, is fundamental to understand how societies work. Hayek also developed distinct concepts of equality: equality of outcomes is different from equality of conditions and he worked out a better definition of freedom. These days (in the 1970's actually) people value more an abstract notion of social justice, which he shows to be meaningless, rather than the principles of rule of law, this might be a severe problem that will threaten social development and perhaps even fundamental institutions such as private property that enable society to actually exist.

He might have gone a little too far in his expectations regarding how the growth of the welfare state might spiral out of control and become a totalitarian dictatorship, which in the end would destroy the fundamental institutions of society leading to the collapse of civilization: countries like Sweden have a huge welfare state and government expenditures of 40% of GDP or more but they appear to work quite nicely and be very stable democracies. However, I don't think the Swedish system would work in many other countries, countries that are lacking the self sacrificing cultural traits of the Germanic people. In Brazil, for example, we have the same system as Sweden but implemented in a different culture, what happened? Income inequality became higher than would have been without government intervention.

Though it's also true that The Road of Serfdom is not important for understand Hayek as it is his book for laypeople. His work on Law, Legislation and Liberty, The Constitution of Liberty, Prices and Production, collected papers in his Individualism and the Social Order and The Pure Theory of Capital, are his important works that really inspired me. Though I haven't finished reading his Law, Legislation and Liberty because his arguments started to become repetitive after I was reading him for a decade now.

@minio, nice a* hole comment as well I am not really interested in movies and anime anymore.

Socialists often like to think that they are the only ones that care about the commoners.

Here in Mofo it is common for people to have strong opinions on things they don't know anything about.

For what it's worth I agree with Yoda and Guap that Hayek doesn't hate poor people or blame them for their poverty (at least in The Road to Serfdom, which is all I've read), and that his more general distrust of centralization is pretty understandable (especially in the context of WWII, when it was written). I don't have the book anymore (returned it to the library 3 months ago) but off the top of my head my main problems with it were that the polemical aspect makes it feel rather dated and dry and that the history of liberal institutions presented in it is too simplistic and Eurocentric. I still thought it was okay, which is maybe even above average for a 70-year-old book on political economy.

Very often true. And I think it's telling that caring is the default metric. If the primary goal of such comments were actually to lift people out of poverty, then one would talk about the relative effectiveness of each ideology at doing so. Talking about how much someone ostensibly cares suggests that measuring compassion (in a way invariably flattering to the speaker) is the real point of the comment.

Socialists often like to think that they are the only ones that care about the commoners.

Here in Mofo it is common for people to have strong opinions on things they don't know anything about.

But that's because you are reflecting a little of the current socialist ideology. Socialism is still the dominant ideology in academia

I do not think anyone is my enemy based on their political opinion, my best friend is a hardcore conservative don't worry, I think I wanted to be funny or something, it wasn't a very intelligent comment on my part. I think you're exagerating by saying that every political vision in which the state has an important role is socialism, there are different levels of taxation, of government possible. By attaching the pejorative term socialism to any leftist views you are the dishonest one.

Someone admitting they spoke out of ignorance is further proof that they're an ideologue?