Hayek goes Costco

Okay, so I’m in the Costco on Coors on the Westside and am browsing through its tables of books for sale and in between “The Best of Tent Camping” and “Shi*t My Dad Says” is F. A. Hayek’s classic “The Road to Serfdom.”

I was so shocked I damn near dropped my 30-pack case of Bud Light. I’ve come to ignore looking for books in Costco because, although the prices are good, we’re talking John Grisham, James Patterson, and Nicholas Sparks. I’m not a book snob, but I like to read really good writers of fiction, or really good writers of non-fiction. Not formulaic he-said, she-said, predictably plotted genre books.

Hayek is not a genre writer. In fact, he’s not a writer of our time or even of his own time, but nonetheless he has now become a highly revered mind among economists of any time.

Friedrich August Hayek was born in 1899 and died in 1992. He was an Austrian-born economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialism and collectivist thought. In 1974, he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal) for his “pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations.”

More surprisingly, he has become a rap star. Dead though he may be. Check out this music video here of his economic theories pitted against his arch rival John Maynard Keynes performed by actors playing rappers.

When I was an economics student at U.C. Berkeley back in the 70’s we were taught fiscal policy (Keynesianism) and monetary policy (Milton Friedman). Naturally, I was in Berkeley, so I felt obligated to take a course in Marxism just for variety. The bearded, shoeless teacher assigned us to read the three volumes of Das Kapital as the only class coursework, which was the literary equivalent of an overdose of Ambien.

I never did get Marxism. It put me to sleep. It was rigorous intellectual reading (translation: I had to pay attention), but as a 19-year-old there seemed to be nothing in Marxist philosophy that gave me hope that I would one day graduate and go on to make a lot of money and garner the admiration of women, my parents, and, well, get my own rap video.

I had never heard of the Austrian School of Economics or F. A. Hayek back in the 70s, nor were its books assigned or its theories taught. The No. 1 standard text book in economics back then was Paul Samuelson’s “Economics: An Introductory Analysis.“ His textbook is the biggest-selling economics textbook of all time, first published in 1948. It was the first American textbook to explain the principles of Keynesian economics and how to think about economics, and the first one to be successful, and is now in its 19th edition, having sold nearly 4 million copies in 40 languages.

Socialism leads to totalitarianism

The Road to Serfdom was written in Britain (Hayek migrated from Austria to London and became a British subject in 1938) during World War II, and was first published in 1944. At the time, Hayek was a faculty member at the London School of Economics.

As for the book itself, the Road to Serfdom explains the rise of totalitarianism in 20th century Europe. Yet it also made a more general argument concerning the incompatibility of democracy and comprehensive central planning. Hayek argues that the pursuit of socialist ideals leads to totalitarianism. While socialist ideals seem noble to many, those who persist in realizing these ideals will find it necessary to adopt coercive methods that are incompatible with freedom. Thus socialists must choose between their egalitarian goals and the preservation of individual liberty.

So how could a book written in 1944 on economic theory by an Austrian economist for a British audience end up for sale in Costco in Albuquerque, New Mexico?

Because it currently ranks No. 55 on Amazon’s Best Sellers List, that’s why. But why? I do not know. Hayek does argue his basic principles in a plain, powerful, simple writing style that even the faculty at UNM should have no trouble understanding his ideas.

Searching for alternative answers

As for an explanation of his present-day popularity, to the best of my knowledge, Lindsay Lohan did not spell out F. A. Hayek on her fingernails during her recent court appearance so I can only surmise that Hayek’s stardom must mean that people are searching for alternative answers to our current economic catastrophe.

In short order, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin, Robert Reich, Paul Volcker, Joseph Stiglitz and Larry Summers and his entire National Economic Council staff of Ph.Ds just ain’t doing it for us.

We’ve got an unemployment rate that’s stuck on 9.5 percent, a rate likely closer to 20 percent if you look at unemployment from a broader definition that a free-market guy like Hayek would have look at it.

The dollar index continues to tank. We’ve racked up more than $13 trillion in public debt, while running a federal deficit of $1.5 trillion dollars. And a lot of what used to be valuable suddenly isn’t.

Think homeownership. Think of big government-sponsored money pits like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Think of big, zombie-banks that are only here today due to massive government bailouts. Think of formerly great industrial corporations like General Motors, now on post-bankruptcy life support.

On second thought, don’t think at all. I believe if Hayek were alive today and took a gander at the Excel spreadsheet of the U.S. economy he would throw up his arms in exasperated defeat and be less concerned with Obama’s collectivist policies, and be more concerned with collecting his book royalties from Amazon.

Incidentally, I don’t know if either gubernatorial candidate has read Hayek. I don’t know the reading preferences of either candidate (neither of them ever mentions books they’ve read), but I would like to give Susana Martinez a tip. The current Number One, Two, and Three ranked books on Amazon Best Sellers List is the crime thriller trilogy by Stieg Larsson. Now, I ask, what district attorney wouldn’t like to relax after a long day of prosecuting criminals in court with a good bedside crime novel?

Molitor is an adjunct scholar at the Rio Grande Foundation and a regular columnist for this site. You can reach Molitor at tgmolitor@comcast.net.

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