I've finally gotten around to reading the influential book from F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. (And you can read it in condensed and comic form for free.) Obviously many interesting things have been written about this book, so I'll just give a few of my favourite quotes.#

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Hayek is discussing whether planning is truly inevitable or more appropriately, why some think this is the case. In the concluding remarks he explains that this is best resolved by looking at the proponents of planning:#

The movement for planning owes its present strength largely to the fact that, while planning is in the main still an ambition, it unites almost all the single-minded idealists, all the men and women who have devoted their lives to a single task. The hopes they place in planning, however, are the result not of a comprehensive view of society but rather of a very limited view and often the result of a great exaggeration of the importance of the ends they place foremost. [p. 61-62]

In the discussion of the important of the Rule of Law, Hayek makes an important point that the key to the rule of law is predictability, not formalization, although often the one provides the other. This much quoted paragraph from this section stood out:#

The fact that someone has full legal authority to act in the way he does gives no answer to the question whether the law gives him power to act arbitrarily or whether the law prescribes unequivocally how he has to act. It may well be that Hitler has obtained his unlimited powers in a strictly constitutional manner and that whatever he does is therefore legal in the juridical sense. But who would suggest for that reason that the Rule of Law still prevails in Germany? [p. 91]

My favourite chapter was Why the Worst Get on Top, check it out in full if possible.#