Monday, March 29, 2010

F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

In much of the current discussion on the effects of technological progress this progress is presented to us as if it were something outside us which could compel us to use the new knowledge in a particular way. While it is true, of course, that inventions have given us tremendous power, it is absurd to suggest that we must use this power to destroy our most precious inheritance: liberty. It does mean, however, that if we want to preserve it, we must guard it more jealously than ever and that we must be prepared to make sacrifices for it. While there is nothing in modern technological develpments which forces us toward comprehensive economic planning, there is a great deal in them which makes intuitively more dangerous the power a planning authority would possess.

[Chapter Four: The "Inevitability" of Planning]

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