Professor of Economics Lawrence H. White at Hillsdale College (2015).
14 Replies to “The Road To Serfdom”
How do you know you are a serf? When you understand that you do not even own your own home. You just rent it via taxation. You can download the full pdf. Road To Serfdom for free. I have had it for years.
Here is a quote from an ancestor of mine who came to Canada in 1670. After he quit the Military and became a Cour de Bois. “We Were Caesar’s Then. There Being Nobody To Contradict Us”. He used to travel from Quebec City to what is now Detroit by canoe, living with and trading with the Indians. There is no Freedom or Liberty in truth anymore. Canada especially is nothing but a huge tax farm. Everything that moves or crawls is taxed. The only reason they leave you the shirt on your back is because they do not want to see your ugly butt running around naked.
“He used to travel from Quebec City to what is now Detroit” —Quebec city, eh? This is my surprised face.(______)
Serfs were tied to the land. They had zero mobility. If they left the land they worked, they were hunted down and gibbeted.
Canadians are not serfs. Canadians are peasants. There is a difference.
Now Quebecers aren’t actually peasants. They’re more like the Trustees in a prison or Sonderkommando in a Polish camp.
Quebecers benefit overall from the Federally regulated inequity, while ostensibly living as a Confederated Province as envisioned in the Confederation Act of 1867, but all the while threatening to separate from their cushy Blackmail arrangement. It is to laugh!?
Except that it is EVIL. I really don’t know how you Pepsi Rats can be so proud of your culture. Maybe Maxime can explain. Prolly not.
Whenever you hear an Idiot like Trudeau or a Harper say “I am going to create jobs.” you should be scared. It means they are gong to tax your ass more and give it to corporations. Canada’s large corporations are all welfare bums. Think Bombardier or hand outs to the Milk Lobby. Not only do the Milk Cartels fleece you when you buy the milk they now get a bonus check from Trudeau for being a good cartel partner with Trudeau. Canada is a Gulag a Slave Ship and we are chained to the Oars.
Correct. Those large corporations have off shore bank accounts. Nice system.
Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” from 1980 is also very good.
“And the sheep look up..”
Canada is a wonderful country,if you like a Kleptocracy, where if an activity is not FULLY PERMITTED it is forbidden.
Where ignorance of the law is no excuse,some exceptions apply,buy our law here.
When taxation exceeds your cost of feeding and housing yourself,you know slavery.
Right in the Criminal Code of Canada is the catch all. “Guilty of an Act or an Omission of an Act.” It’s there go see for your self. And everyone is taxed. Even after you pay taxes all your life then drop dead the get you, even a homeless man who lives in a cardboard box under a bridge and pan handles some change, when he spends it he will pay tax. The complete Vampire system. Canadians are so brainwashed they complain about cost of living and are conditioned to blame the companies. But it really is the size of the Government. I think I read somewhere that 25% of Canadians work for the government at one level or another now, Municipal, Provincial or Federal. The average Canadian family now pays more in taxes than they do for the necessities of life.
watcher, you are correct, government was, is and continues to be the cancer that is destroying the country and our freedom.
jeez watcher, you my long lost twin or sumptin?
I was just telling a buddy a bit of taxation stuff, to whit gubbamints ‘kweatink zhobs’ requires they TAX some person/firm first.
well guess whut, THOSE precise dollars are now lost FOREVER from the person/firm, that *could have* gone ELSEWHERE as in buying services/products thus supporting businesses, OR, a firm using *those exact dollars* to expand the business, ie CREATE THE FRIGGING JOBS ALL ON THEIR OWN.
etc etc.
one thing I will never forget from my economics courses is the notion that money spent is GONE FOREVER.
you can always presumably scoop up more cash, *but the dollars you spent yesterday on ‘x’ ( MOST of it now TAXES)*
are
gone
forever.
I dont think most canaduhians think in those terms.
I like that quip about ‘vampire’ system. Im going to use that in future.
gawd gawd gawd I hate lieberals.
Reader’s Digest published a condensed version? Can you imagine today’s Reader’s Digest or any current magazine publishing anything remotely similar to Hayek’s book. Today’s mainstream media and pundits, with a few rare exceptions are all on the anti-freedom totalitarian team.
That was an hour well worth the time and I can only add this:
The historical setting provided by the speaker gives an important overview of the wartime era when Hayek’s book first appeared on the scene. From FDR’s new deal in America to the coming landslide victory of the socialists in GB it was then a common thought that socialism would prevail throughout the West. In 1944 here in Sask. we elected the first communist government in North America. Free markets are counter-intuitive and are in a constant rearguard battle against the ‘kind and compassionate’ who dwell among us.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S.Lewis
Nold your CS Lewis quote. Excellent had forgotten that one.
It is amazing how the socialists co-opted the fascists to the capitalists and it stuck. Already 50 years ago, I objected to the categorization of Nazis as capitalist. Anti-capitalism and a directed economy were my first clues. I was likely regarded as a fool for denying the obvious. Sure all the big capitalist families worked with the Nazis but there were no free market options.
I recall reading that during WW II the Nazi gov’t eventually controlled around 80% of the German economy. Most was direct ownership but some was control by edict.
Was that % from an editor’s footnote in a modern edition of Hayek’s ‘Road’ which I read? Anyway, Hitler’s economy was a full-blown socialist, verging on commie, system. And as is usual, authoritarian as all get out.
How do you know you are a serf? When you understand that you do not even own your own home. You just rent it via taxation. You can download the full pdf. Road To Serfdom for free. I have had it for years.
Here is a quote from an ancestor of mine who came to Canada in 1670. After he quit the Military and became a Cour de Bois. “We Were Caesar’s Then. There Being Nobody To Contradict Us”. He used to travel from Quebec City to what is now Detroit by canoe, living with and trading with the Indians. There is no Freedom or Liberty in truth anymore. Canada especially is nothing but a huge tax farm. Everything that moves or crawls is taxed. The only reason they leave you the shirt on your back is because they do not want to see your ugly butt running around naked.
“He used to travel from Quebec City to what is now Detroit” —Quebec city, eh? This is my surprised face.(______)
Serfs were tied to the land. They had zero mobility. If they left the land they worked, they were hunted down and gibbeted.
Canadians are not serfs. Canadians are peasants. There is a difference.
Now Quebecers aren’t actually peasants. They’re more like the Trustees in a prison or Sonderkommando in a Polish camp.
Quebecers benefit overall from the Federally regulated inequity, while ostensibly living as a Confederated Province as envisioned in the Confederation Act of 1867, but all the while threatening to separate from their cushy Blackmail arrangement. It is to laugh!?
Except that it is EVIL. I really don’t know how you Pepsi Rats can be so proud of your culture. Maybe Maxime can explain. Prolly not.
Whenever you hear an Idiot like Trudeau or a Harper say “I am going to create jobs.” you should be scared. It means they are gong to tax your ass more and give it to corporations. Canada’s large corporations are all welfare bums. Think Bombardier or hand outs to the Milk Lobby. Not only do the Milk Cartels fleece you when you buy the milk they now get a bonus check from Trudeau for being a good cartel partner with Trudeau. Canada is a Gulag a Slave Ship and we are chained to the Oars.
Correct. Those large corporations have off shore bank accounts. Nice system.
Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” from 1980 is also very good.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97820.Free_to_Choose
“And the sheep look up..”
Canada is a wonderful country,if you like a Kleptocracy, where if an activity is not FULLY PERMITTED it is forbidden.
Where ignorance of the law is no excuse,some exceptions apply,buy our law here.
When taxation exceeds your cost of feeding and housing yourself,you know slavery.
Right in the Criminal Code of Canada is the catch all. “Guilty of an Act or an Omission of an Act.” It’s there go see for your self. And everyone is taxed. Even after you pay taxes all your life then drop dead the get you, even a homeless man who lives in a cardboard box under a bridge and pan handles some change, when he spends it he will pay tax. The complete Vampire system. Canadians are so brainwashed they complain about cost of living and are conditioned to blame the companies. But it really is the size of the Government. I think I read somewhere that 25% of Canadians work for the government at one level or another now, Municipal, Provincial or Federal. The average Canadian family now pays more in taxes than they do for the necessities of life.
watcher, you are correct, government was, is and continues to be the cancer that is destroying the country and our freedom.
jeez watcher, you my long lost twin or sumptin?
I was just telling a buddy a bit of taxation stuff, to whit gubbamints ‘kweatink zhobs’ requires they TAX some person/firm first.
well guess whut, THOSE precise dollars are now lost FOREVER from the person/firm, that *could have* gone ELSEWHERE as in buying services/products thus supporting businesses, OR, a firm using *those exact dollars* to expand the business, ie CREATE THE FRIGGING JOBS ALL ON THEIR OWN.
etc etc.
one thing I will never forget from my economics courses is the notion that money spent is GONE FOREVER.
you can always presumably scoop up more cash, *but the dollars you spent yesterday on ‘x’ ( MOST of it now TAXES)*
are
gone
forever.
I dont think most canaduhians think in those terms.
I like that quip about ‘vampire’ system. Im going to use that in future.
gawd gawd gawd I hate lieberals.
Reader’s Digest published a condensed version? Can you imagine today’s Reader’s Digest or any current magazine publishing anything remotely similar to Hayek’s book. Today’s mainstream media and pundits, with a few rare exceptions are all on the anti-freedom totalitarian team.
That was an hour well worth the time and I can only add this:
The historical setting provided by the speaker gives an important overview of the wartime era when Hayek’s book first appeared on the scene. From FDR’s new deal in America to the coming landslide victory of the socialists in GB it was then a common thought that socialism would prevail throughout the West. In 1944 here in Sask. we elected the first communist government in North America. Free markets are counter-intuitive and are in a constant rearguard battle against the ‘kind and compassionate’ who dwell among us.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S.Lewis
Nold your CS Lewis quote. Excellent had forgotten that one.
It is amazing how the socialists co-opted the fascists to the capitalists and it stuck. Already 50 years ago, I objected to the categorization of Nazis as capitalist. Anti-capitalism and a directed economy were my first clues. I was likely regarded as a fool for denying the obvious. Sure all the big capitalist families worked with the Nazis but there were no free market options.
I recall reading that during WW II the Nazi gov’t eventually controlled around 80% of the German economy. Most was direct ownership but some was control by edict.
Was that % from an editor’s footnote in a modern edition of Hayek’s ‘Road’ which I read? Anyway, Hitler’s economy was a full-blown socialist, verging on commie, system. And as is usual, authoritarian as all get out.