The Road to Serfdom

I want to start in 1945. Silence the guns had finally drawn in Western Europe. The bombs had stopped falling. The sky above is no longer filled with the scream of fighter aircraft. The invasions and battles were no more. The allied forces had won, and the Second World War was over. But this was far from the end. Another, perhaps even more important war had just begun. Europe was politically and structurally, and watched the daunting task to start again from scratch decimated.

America was emerging from a Great Depression, many believed was caused by evil, greedy capitalist system. The question that loomed largest in many countries around the world: What do we do from here? Should we risk another economic collapse, or should we let the government control the economy?

The final deciding factor in the "war after the war came from a very unlikely source: A little-known economist, originally from Vienna, named Friedrich A. Hayek. We are in a similar war today, but if you do not know history, you probably are not even aware of.

From the beginning of the 1940s, Hayek began writing a book called "The Road to Serfdom." The book clearly and logically explains how each form of central government planning ultimately leads to serfdom (or service), and extinguish liberty. He did not think he would have no reputation or fortune of the book profit, in fact, was exactly the opposite. Stuff like this was banned in Germany and elsewhere. He was only writing because he finds it "a duty that I may not shirk." See, there was a real possibility that Europe and even America would be in that direction. After all, England had been with the Fabian socialists.