[발췌: 9장, Hayek's Road to Serfdom] Security and Freedom

자료: [구글도서] his Collected Works, vol.2 (Univ. of Chicago Press 2009) ; [구글도서] Routledge(1944 [2001]) ; Some HTML (& its contents) ; Some PDF; ... 차례/독서노트 ;


※ This is a reading note with excerpts taken and some personal annotations or remarks added in trying to partially read the above text. So visit the links above or elsewhere to see the original work.

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※ 발췌 (excerpts): 

Chapter 9_ Security and Freedom

The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work and equality of pay. ㅡ Nikolai Lenin (1917) [1]

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. ㅡ Leon Trotsky (1937) [2]

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Like the spurious “economic freedom,” and with more justice, economic security is often represented as an indispensable condition of real liberty. In a sense this is both true and important. Independence of mind or strength of character is rarely found among those who cannot be confident that they will make their way by their own effort. Yet the idea of economic security is no less vague and ambiguous than most other terms in this field; and because of this the general approval given to the demand for security may become a danger to liberty. Indeed, when security is understood in too absolute a sense, the general striving for it, far from increasing the chances of freedom, becomes the gravest threat to it.

  It will be well to contrast at the outset the two kinds of security:

1. the limited one, which can be achieved for all, and which is therefore no privilege but a legitimate object of desire; 
2. and absolute security, which in a free society cannot be achieved for all and which ought not to be given as a privilegeㅡexcept in a few special instances such as that of judges, where complete independence is of paramount importance. 

These two kinds of security are,[:]

• first, security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a given minimum of sustenance for all; 
• and, second, the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person or group enjoys compared with others; or, as we may put it briefly, the security of a minimum income and the security of the particular income a person is thought to deserve. 

We shall presently see that this distinction largely coincides with the distinction between (1) the security which can be provided for all outside of and supplementary to the market system and (2) the security which can be provided only for some and only by controlling or abolishing the market.

  [1] There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained[,] %{the first kind of security}% should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. There are difficult questions about the precise standard which should thus be assured; there is particularly the important question whether those who thus rely on the community should indefinitely enjoy all the same liberties as the rest.[3] An incautious handling of these questions might well cause serious and perhaps even dangerous political problems; but there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. Indeed, for a considerable part of the population of England this sort of security has long been achieved.

※ I wonder whether this can be really said as an all-time proposition for all societies everywhere.

[3] There are also serious problems of international relations which arise if mere citizenship of a country confers the right to a standard of living higher than elsewhere and which ought not to be dismissed too lightly.

  [2] Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistanceㅡwhere, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risksㅡthe case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.

• [※ 단서 1] There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to supercede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; 
• [※ 단서 2] and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. 

But there is no incompatibility in principle between the state's providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom. To the same category belong also the increase of security through the state's rendering assistance to the victims of such “acts of God” as earthquakes and floods. Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken. 

  [3] There is, finally, the supremely important problem of combating general fluctuations of economic activity and the recurrent waves of large-scale unemployment which accompany them. This is, of course, one of the gravest and most pressing problems of our time. But, though its solution will require much planning in the good sense, it does notㅡor at least need notㅡrequire that special kind of planning which according to its advocates is to replace the market. }

• Many economists hope, indeed, that the ultimate remedy may be found in the field of monetary policy, which would involve nothing incompatible even with 19th-century liberalism. 
• Others, it is true, believe that the real success can be expected only from the skillful timing of public works undertaken on a very large scale.[주4] { This might lead to much more serious restrictions of the competitive sphere, and, in experimenting in this direction, we shall have carefully to watch our step if we are to avoid making all economic activity progressively more dependent on the direction and volume of government expenditure. } But (1) this is neither the only nor, in my opinion, the most promising way of meeting the gravest threat to economic security. (2) In any case, the very necessary efforts to secure protection against these fluctuations do not lead to the kind of planning which constitutes such a threat to our freedom.

[주4] Hayek here refers to policies that would later carry the label "Keynesian" demand management policies.ㅡEd.

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The planning for security which has such an insidious effect on liberty is that for security of a different kind.[:]

• It is planning designed to protect individuals or groups against diminutions of their income, which although in no way deserved yet in a competitive society occur daily, against losses imposing severe hardships having no moral justification yet inseparable from the competitive system. 
• This demand for security is thus another form of the demand for a just remunerationㅡa remuneration commensurate with the subjective merits and not with the objective results of a man's efforts. 

This kind of security or justice seems irreconcilable with freedom to choose one's employment. In any system which for the distribution of men between the different trades and occupations relies on their choice it is necessary that the remuneration in their trades should correspond to their usefulness to the other members of society, even if this should stand in no relation to subjective merit. Although the results achieved will often be commensurate with efforts and intentions, this cannot always be true in any form of society. It will particularly not be true in the many instances where the usefulness of some trade or special skill is changed by circumstances which could not be foreseen. We all know the tragic plight of the highly trained man whose hard-learned skill has suddenly lost its value because of some invention which greatly benefits the rest of society. The history of the last hundred years is full of instances of this kind, some of them affecting hundreds of thousands of people at a time.

  That anybody should suffer a great diminution of his income and bitter disappointment of all his hopes through no fault of his own, and despite hard work and exceptional skill, undoubtedly offends our sense of justice. The demands of those who suffer in this way, for state interference on their behalf to safeguard their legitimate expectations, are certain to receive popular sympathy and support. The general approval of these demands has had the effect that governments everywhere have taken action, not merely to protect the people so threatened from severe hardship and privation, but to secure to them the continued receipt of their former income and to shelter them from the vicissitudes of the market.[1]

  Certainty of a given income can, however, not be given to all if any freedom in the choice of one's occupation is to be allowed. And if it is provided for some it becomes a privilege at the expense of others whose security is thereby necessarily diminished. That security of an invariable income can be provided for all only by the abolition of all freedom in the choice of one's employment is easily shown. Yet, although such a general guarantee of legitimate expectation is often regarded as the ideal to be aimed at, it is not a thing which is seriously attempted.  What is constantly being done is to grant this kind of security piecemeal, to this group and to that, with the result that for those who are left out in the cold the insecurity constantly increases. No wonder that in consequence the value attached to the privilege of security constantly increases, the demand for it becomes more and more urgent, till in the end no price not even that of liberty, appears too high.

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If those whose usefulness is reduced by circumstances which they could neither foresee nor control were to be protected against undeserved loss, and those whose usefulness has been increased in the same way were prevented from making an unmerited gain, remuneration would soon cease to have any relation to actual usefulness. It would depend on the views held by some authority about what a person ought to have done, what he ought to have foreseen and how good or bad his intentions were. Such decisions could not buut be to a large extent arbitrary. ( ... p. 128 / PDF 138