[littlestymaar]

I agree that the Road to Serfdom is an interesting read. Even if you don't share the really conservative view of the author (and the Austrian school as a whole), it gives you the ideological background that underlied the dismantling of the western Welfare State (which is what Hayek calls “road to serfdom”) during the 80s and 90s.

[nickik]

In Raod to Sefdom Hayek acknowledges that basic welfare, health and retirment polices are consistant with a liberal state.

What it gave a backround to was dismanteling a lot of the idioitc regulatory structures and inflationary spending of the 1970s.

[littlestymaar]

> In Raod to Sefdom Hayek acknowledges that basic welfare, health and retirment polices are consistant with a liberal state.

True, and it was actually a surprise to me since this part of the book have completely disappeared from later policymaking. It's not that uncommon though, most people using Adam Smith as a reference tend to forget the part where he goes full socialist and calls landlords parasites… I even saw a reedition of Wealth of Nations (in French, from an independant libertarian publisher) where the said chapters where simply removed from the book!

> idioitc regulatory structures

Oh yeah, and the 2008 crisis was a good illustration of how good of an idea it was to remove those “idiotic” regulations. Oopsie

[ardy42]

> What it gave a backround to was dismanteling a lot of the idioitc regulatory structures

Guardrails are so idiotic: people are always bumping into them and getting annoyed. It'd probably be best if we just removed most if not all of them. /s

The thing about regulations is you can always cherry-pick a couple mind-boggling stupid ones. But then there are the ones that look silly, but only if you've never experienced or witnessed the problem they were meant to solve.

[nickik]

These regulations included things like monopoly in many industries, truckig, airlines and so on. There are lots of example like this. I'm just absoulty mindboggled by the current liberal idea of literally and regulation is always great and any removal of any regulation always responsable for the next crisis. Even saying 'deregulation' gets view on basically like saying that you are a neonazi.

Simularly the view that all regulation exist for a good reason is also flat-out false. It flys directly in the face of any serious study of political science and the formation of regulation in the real world.

[ardy42]

> I'm just abso[lutely] mindboggled by the current liberal idea of literally an[y] regulation is always great and any removal of any regulation always respons[i]ble for the next crisis.

> ...Sim[i]larly the view that all regulation exist for a good reason is also flat-out false.

You're boggling your own mind, since that's a straw man position. I made it clear I didn't hold it ("the thing about regulations is you can always cherry-pick a couple mind-boggling stupid ones..."), and I don't think "liberals" hold it either.

The position I do hold is that to actually evaluate a particular regulation is difficult and requires a lot of thought; and it's easy to to mislead someone into taking an ignorant, broadly anti-regulation stance by cherry-picking examples of bad ones. I've seen a lot of that, and at one time I even found the cherry-picking persuasive.

Deregulatory zeal has a tendency of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Also, some specific cases of deregulation can merely re-introduce negative externalities that some connected group stands to benefit from (to the determent of the public good).