The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism by Friedrich A. Hayek

Author:Friedrich A. Hayek [Hayek, Friedrich A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Non-Fiction, Science, Philosophy, Politics, History
ISBN: 9780226320663
Goodreads: 75831
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: 1991-10-03T22:00:00+00:00

those poor who could exist at all would be very much poorer indeed, assuming a grave responsibility on which they are very likely sooner or scratching a livelihood from marginal lands on which every drought later to default. Man is not omnipotent; and recognising the limits of his would kill most of the children they would be trying to raise. The powers may enable him to approach closer to realising his wishes than creation of capital altered such conditions more than anything else. As following natural impulses to remedy remote suffering about which he the capitalist became able to employ other people for his own purposes, can, unfortunately, do little if anything.

his ability to feed them served both him and them. This ability In any case, there is no danger whatever that, in any foreseeable i ncreased further as some individuals were able to employ others not future with which we can be concerned, the population of the world as a just directly to satisfy their own needs but to trade goods and services whole will outgrow its raw material resources, and every reason to with countless others. Thus property, contract, trade, and the use of assume that inherent forces will stop such a process long before that capital did not simply benefit a minority.

could happen. (See the studies of Julian L. Simon (1977, 1981a & b), Envy and ignorance lead people to regard possessing more than one Esther Boserup (1981), Douglas North (1973, 1981) and Peter Bauer needs for current consumption as a matter for censure rather than (1981), as well as my own 1954:15 and 1967:208.)

merit. Yet the idea that such capital must be accumulated àt the For there are, in the temperate zones of all continents except Europe, expense of others' is a throwback to economic views that, however wide regions which can not merely bear an increase in population, but obvious they may seem to some, are actually groundless, and make an whose inhabitants can hope to approach the standards of general accurate understanding of economic development impossible.

wealth, comfort, and civilisation that thèWestern' world has already reached only by increasing the density of their occupation of their land The Regional Character of the Problem

and the intensity of exploitation of its resources. In these regions the population must multiply if its members are to achieve the standards for Another source of misunderstanding is the tendency to think of which they strive. It is in their own interest to increase their numbers, population growth in purely global terms. The population problem and it would be presumptuous, and hardly defensible morally, to advise must be seen as regional, with different aspects in different areas. The them, let alone to coerce them, to hold down their numbers. While real problem is whether the numbers of inhabitants of particular regions serious problems may arise if we attempt indiscriminately to preserve tend, for whatever reason, to outgrow the resources of their own areas all human lives everywhere, others cannot legitimately object to an (including the resources they can use to trade).

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