Dean's World

Thursday Quote

Dave Price

"And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?"

--F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"

Posted by Dave Price | Permalink | Technorati Trackbacks

(link)

Dean Esmay:

Yes, it's hard to deny. And yet it's foolish to deny that being wealthy and powerful, or related to someone wealthy and powerful, is the easiest way to become wealthy and powerful.

It's also foolish to deny the extent to which the state helps the wealthy and powerful through policies on non-human entities like publicly traded corporations--which are, after all a creation and creature of the state.

12.6.2007 8:57am

(link)

TallDave (mail) (www):

Yes, people are finding out today what Hayek wrote 60 years ago: the more power you give to government, the more we end up in that second world, rather than the first.

12.6.2007 9:22am

(link)

zach.:

I think the thing missing in this quote is the related danger of only the wealthy being able to acquire power. it seems like his construction is flawed. he starts off by saying that the wealthy being powerful is better than only the powerful being able to be wealthy. but the apples to apples is only wealthy being able to be powerful is preferable to only powerful able to become wealthy. either that or "wealthy are powerful is better than the powerful being wealthy."

12.6.2007 10:28am

(link)

TallDave (mail) (www):

zach,

Well, in fact he's saying it's better to have only the wealthy able to acquire power than to have only the powerful able to acquire wealth.

Why is this so? Because if anyone can acquire wealth, then anyone can acquire power.

Military dictatorships generally work the opposite way: the powerful control the sources of wealth. Saddam Hussein is a good example.

12.6.2007 11:10am

(link)

zach.:

Dave,

Couldn't you conversly argue that if anyone is able to acquire power than anyone is able to acquire wealth? Though I guess that formulation is flawed, since wealth generation is not as zero-sum as power-generation.

12.6.2007 12:53pm

(link)

Arnold Harris (mail):

All capitalist societies are meritocracies. The history of our particular meritocracy is that unknown or insignificant men and women rose first to prominence, then wealth, then power, more or less exclusively because of the publicly perceived usefulness of their inventiveness, financial management skills, aptitude at largescale scales, and their ability not merely to perceive the future of our society but also to fight and proper in the struggle to shape that future.

I describe here the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, McCormicks, Armours, Morgans, Hills, Carnegies, Fords, Gates, and thousands of others who led where others merely gaped.

Long live inequality. For in a free society, it is the mother of all enterprise. And enterprise has in turn been the father of much of the human progress we have enjoyed in this blessed country, the United States of America.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

12.6.2007 1:49pm

(link)

Arnold Harris (mail):

I meant to say "largescale business organizational development", rather than "largescale scales". The latter are the ones anticapitalists and socialists wear in order to blind themselves to human reality.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

12.6.2007 1:51pm

(link)

TallDave (mail) (www):

Couldn't you conversly argue that if anyone is able to acquire power than anyone is able to acquire wealth?

Yes, if the powerful controlled wealth. Hayek asks if you would want to live in that world of Saddam Husseins seizing power and using it to control wealth.

12.6.2007 2:43pm

(link)

zach.:

Dave,

I guess if I had my druthers I'd rather not have to choose between those seizing wealth and using it to control power and those seizing power and using it to control wealth. I do agree with Hayek's formulation of their relative odiousness, though.

12.6.2007 6:20pm

(link)

TallDave (mail) (www):

I guess if I had my druthers I'd rather not have to choose between those seizing wealth and using it to control power and those seizing power and using it to control wealth.

Well, absent gov't intervention, successful businesspeople generally aren't seizing wealth, they're acquiring it by offering services other people value.

I think we all would like to live in a world where we didn't have to choose between having the wealthy be powerful or the powerful control wealth. But our liberal democracy, flawed though it be, is probably as close as we can come to that ideal.

12.6.2007 7:35pm

Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.

Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.

Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.