"This week, 70 years ago, Friedrich Hayek's book The Road To Serfdom was first published in the United Kingdom. Dedicated "to the socialists of all parties", the book quickly became a bestseller with five reprints within 15 months in the UK, and with US sales in the first six months exceeding initial expectations 10 times over."
"Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist imaginable."
I appreciate the commitment of the ABC to balanced, unbiased journalism, and that this involves printing both sides of any story no matter that it is untrue and proven to be untrue by the application of logic and reason, but publishing this drivel is akin to the radio broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw in the 1940's or the continuing publication of climate change denialism.
'Freedom of choice' is a myth. Look around you and you will see the homogenation of the so-called 'free' market. Many of the houses in my neighbourhood are on the market from time to time, and I walk around and look at the display boards, noting all the time how similar these houses are to mine. Cars are the same. Go out and buy any car on the market and you will find that it does pretty much exactly what they all do with a minor, superficial deviation here and there. Even that bastion of Hayekian economic thought Niall Ferguson notes this problem.
I have deconstructed the Austrian School of economic thought on this blog for the past year or so. In fact it has been one of my favourite themes. The ABC chooses to publish the alternative to this in the interests of balanced journalism. I applaud them on this. Fortunately this drivel is shouted down by the voices of Greg Jericho, David Llewellyn-Smith, Ian Verrender, and Mungo MacCallum, among others.
This is just a token article which no one with half a brain will take any notice of.
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