Our Totalitarian Regulatory Bureaucracy

Our Totalitarian Regulatory Bureaucracy por Thomas DiLorenzo:

Because of the inevitable failures of all government planning in a democracy, Hayek wrote that "the conviction [will grow] that if efficient planning is to be done, the direction must be 'taken out of politics' and placed in the hands of experts -- permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies." Moreover, "the cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward [central] planning." This indeed describes many of the above-mentioned agencies and commissions, but is especially descriptive of all the central planning "czars" who now hold office in the federal government.

In sum, it would be very difficult to argue against the proposition that the US economy today is even more heavily controlled, regulated, and regimented by the state than Germany was at the time Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom. Americans have travelled many miles down the road to serfdom by deluding themselves that the god of democracy will somehow save them from statist slavery. But as Hayek warned 56 years ago, "There is no justification for the belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary ...."

The exercise of arbitrary or dictatorial power is, of course, the whole purpose and function of all those agencies, commissions, and czars.