The Road to Serfdom
by John Lawrence
The Road to Serfdom is a book written by conservative Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek in which he contends that socialist type governments will lead everyone down the road to becoming serfs. Well just the opposite is occurring nowadays. The very success of free market capitalism has led us down the road to fantastic economic gains for some and serfdom for the masses. No one is arguing that the Bill Gates', Jeff Bezos' and Mark Zuckerberg's of the world haven't worked hard and made tremendous contributions to economic development. The problem is that the economic gains that people like these are responsible for have not been widely dispersed, but have been concentrated in the hands of a few people leading to an economic divide far greater than that of the Gilded Age and the robber barons.
Imagine if one man invented a robot that did all the work of the world. He would probably be very successful and make a lot of money. But this would also have the consequence that he would have eliminated workers from the face of the world. Therefore, those redundant workers would have no work and no income. Something like this is happening today. The automation of society and the very success of some has concentrated economic gains in the hands of a few people while the former workers have effectively become serfs scraping a few crumbs off the floor.
Economic inequality is accelerating exponentially, and capitalism, not socialism, is paving the Road to Serfdom. The jobs that haven't been automated are low paying service type jobs: retail in the eroding retail industry, baristas for Starbucks, caregivers, teachers, health care workers. While major industries concentrate their power by mergers and acquisitions and stock buybacks, the rest of us get by on menial jobs.
The net effect is that housing and rents get bid up in desirable areas by those on the wealthy side of the economic divide and more and more people are forced into homelessness. The only solution to this lack of affordable housing is for the government to build affordable housing. The free market won't do it. But that's socialism, n'est pas?. What, you think that the free market can't solve every problem? Well, you're right. It can't solve this one. Socialist type government solutions must come into play just in order that the haves can enjoy a downtown area not populated by people pissing and shitting all over the streets and leaving needles for tourists to step on.
Capitalists never fear, however. Mixed economies work the best as evidenced by the Nordic countries which combine entrepreneurialism with a safety net so that no one can fall too far down the ladder. In the US though you can fall as far as gravity will carry you. There is no bottom. So we have a growing homeless class which would have been unimaginable in the days of Lyndon Johnson and his War on Poverty. Those poverty stricken that he was concerned about at least had roofs over their heads.
