. . .
1 “Two books do offer more insight. But that is just me.”
2 “Three if you have a spare three-day weekend.”
. . .
1 “Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist often said that his world view was strongly influenced by a book he read as a young man, The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich von Hayek. The best-seller was published in 1944 during the last days of World War II.”
2 “I can see why Fred’s missive captivated the young private from Milwaukee. He was conscripted by Big Government to fight other privates conscripted by other Big Governments. Fred warned of the dangers of what he called collectivism and big government and predicted that the path to socialism, the ‘road to serfdom’ of his title, would eventually collapse. The world sure looked like it was collapsing.”
1 “My original edition notes that the printing has been redesigned by the publisher to conform to the government’s request to conserve paper during that War. Government making reasonable requests?”
2 “The government was right, we tattoo far too many fallen trees. My copy warns the reader right on the cover that Fred may not have any idea what he is talking about. The publisher warns the prospective purchaser that Hayek got the Nobel Prize in E-con-omics.”
1 “What if Rehnquist had stumbled on a book that warned of the dangers of raw selfishness and big corporations and predicted that the path to corporatism and kleptocracy, the ‘road to serfdom’ of the new publication, would eventually collapse.”
2 “Fred lived during a period of time when the governments of many world powers, at the direction of their military and financial elites, marketed much evil and inflicted great pain, grief, and violence on the world. His distrust is not unfounded but myopic.”
1 “He intuits that big is often bad, but he only got half the story right. We do not have a market economy. Today, Big Government is Big Business; Big Business is Big Government. Sit down and analyze the major industries in America. Each one of them is monopolized. The business is the industry; the industry is the business. In this Internet era, when someone concocts a new application or gizmo, that person has a monopoly on the application or gizmo.”
2 “We are racing down the road to serfdom. Yet the guvmit, not the private sector, has always enforced speed limits.”
1 “The government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the monopoly corporations. There are now no limits and no governors.”
. . .
1 “Let’s say that someone is deeply and genuinely concerned about the road to serfdom. Would the concerned citizen support a higher minimum wage or not? The folks who have minimum wage jobs today are serfs. They are at the end of the road to serfdom in a hopeless cul-de-sac. If the rate is raised, some folks will lose some of their serf status and yet a few may lose their job.”
2 “What I have noticed is that the opponents of a minimum wage increase do not give a hoot about the workers and only seek to do everything to cut the costs for the Owners.”
1 “Now that you mention it, Fred surely would support an increase in the minimum wage to avoid the nefarious road to serfdom.”
2 “What happened to Bill along his journey?”
. . .
1 “In The Age of Turbulence, Alan ‘Easy Al’ Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development. So many young men are distracted by shiny objects.”
2 “So many things in life just are not a surprise.”
1 “Raw self-interest is not genius, but it sure does appeal to our baser instincts.”
2 “And it advanced her and his financial interests.”
1 “But not ours. I do not hold her exclusively responsible for the economic violence that he unleashed on the world, yet she is at the top of the list.”
. . .
1 “Think about the folks who look to the Good Book and only the Good Book for insight and inspiration. At one time, a person could only carry one gun, one knife, one bed roll and one book. That book was dubbed the Good Book. The struggle to exist limited one’s time to contemplate one’s existence. Space only allowed for one book and time only allowed for reading one book that had to provide all the answers.”
. . .
1 “Those who have access to more resources need to get a life. And scan a second book.”
2 “Asking someone to read two books is a lot to ask. Life is short.”
. . .
1 “When the smarter gender takes over, Nancy Drew will reign supreme.”
. . .
[Banned Book Week – September 21 – 27]
[Search the name “Carmen Segarra” on the Internet. She should receive the Profile in Courage Award for 2014, but it will likely go to someone like Greenspan or Bernanke. See the previous e-ssay at Profile In Cowardice Award (May 12, 2014).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Scan a book, don’t ban books.
Read a second book; get a second opinion.
What we really need is a moment of science in the public schools.
e-commentary 