[발췌: Hayek's LLL, vol. 3. Chapter 18] The abolition of the government monopoly of services

출처: F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3: The Political Order of a Free People (University of Chicago Press, 1979)

자료: 구글도서 ; 주요차례

Chapter 18.  The Containment of Power and the Dethronement of Politics

※ 발췌 / of which some excerpts from the section: 

The abolition of the government monopoly of services (p. 147)

There is of course no need for central government to decide who should be entitled to render the different services, and it is highly undesirable that it should possess mandatory powers to do so.[KHNW p291-2]

• Indeed, though it may in some instances for the time being be true that only governmental agencies with compulsory powers of levying contributions can render certain services, there is no justification for any governmental agency possessing the exclusive right of supplying any particular service. 
• Though it may turn out that the established supplier of some services is in so much better a position to render it than any possible competitor from private enterprise, and thus will achieve a de facto monopoly, there is no social interest in giving him a legal monopoly of any kind of activity. 
• This means of course that any governmental agency allowed to use its taxing power to finance such services ought to be required to refund any taxes raised for these purposes to all those who prefer to get the services in some other way. 
• This applies without exception to all those services of which today government possesses or aspires to a legal monopoly, with the only exception of maintaining and enforcing the law and maintaining for this purpose (including defence against external enemies) an armed forces, i.e. all those from education to transport and communications, including post, telegraph, telephone and broadcasting services, all the so-called 'public utilities', the various 'social' insurances and, above all, the issue of money.[KHNW p291-1] Some of these services may well for the time being most efficiently be performed by a de facto monopoly; but we can neither insure improvement nor protect ourselves against extortion unless the possibility exists of somebody else offering better services of any of these kinds.

  As with most of the topics touched upon this final chapter, I cannot enter here into any more detailed discussion of the service activities which are today rendered by government; but in some of these cases the question whether the government ought to possess an exclusive right to them is of decisive importance, not merely a question of efficiency but of crucial significance of the preservation of a free society. In these case the objection against any monopoly powers of government must preponderate, even if such a monopoly should promise services of higher quality. We may still discover for example, that a government broadcasting monopoly may prove as great a threat to political freedom as an abolition of the freedom of the press would be. The postal system is another instance where the prevailing government monopoly is the result solely of this striving of government for control over private activity and has in most parts of the world produced a steadily deteriorating service.

[※ 이하 내용은 화폐 발행과 관련된 내용에 국한돼있음]

  Above all, however, I am bound to stress that in the course of the work on this book I have been, by the confluence of political and economic considerations, led to the firm conviction that a free economic system will never again work satisfactorily and we shall never remove its mot serious defects or stop the steady growth of government, unless the monopoly of the issue of money is taken from government. I have found it necessary to develop this argument in a separate book,[16] indeed I fear now that all the safeguards against oppression and other abuses of government power which the restructuring of government on the lines suggested in this volume are intended to achieve, would be of little help unless at the same time the control of government over the supply of money is removed. Since I am convinced that there are now no longer any rigid rules possible which would secure a supply of money by government by which at the same time the legitimate demands for money are satisfied and the value of that money kept stable, there appears to me to exist no other way of achieving this than to replace the present national moneys by competing different moneys offered by private enterprise, from which the public would be free to choose that which serves best for their transactions.

  This seems to me so important that it would be essential for the constitution of a free people to entrench this principle by some special clause such as: 'Parliament shall make no law abiding the right of anybody to hold, buy, sell or lend, make and enforce contracts, calculate and keep their accounts in any kind of money they choose.' Although this is in fact implied in the basic principle that government can enforce or prohibit kinds of action only by general abstract rules, applying equally to everyone, including government itself, this particular application of the principle is still too unfamiliar to expect courts to comprehend that the age-old prerogative of government is no longer to be recognized, unless this is explicitly spelled out in the constitution.


The dethronement of politics (p. 149)

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