Status Updates From O Caminho da Servidão

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Zena Hitz, Ruby Granger, Unjaded Jade, Jack Edwards etc who defend such activities.

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garner surface-level lip service by others, but ultimately receives no sympathy under capitalism.

Thus my point is that there is an interesting turn from Hayek's prediction: that even in the individualistic society we currently live in, practically useless activities are still not valued as highly as those that generate monetary value. In fact it is the cringey modern left, such as ...

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wisdom now: hustling is a virtue, idleness is a vice. Grinding in the office until the late hours of the night to hit bigger milestones for one's company and one's own bank balance is an admirable quality; clocking out sharp to go home to play video games or collect stamps is a waste of time. Devoting more time to highbrow or culturally nourishing activities like painting or reading philosophy might ...

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deprecate activities done for their own sake, activities that do not fit the higher ends of society, or the ends of the state. Now this is a prediction by Hayek that does not seem to conform with the outcome: it is clear to me that the received opinion of our late-stage capitalistic society is that anything done purely for leisure is a waste of time. The Protestant ethic seems to be the conventional ...

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only power structures and class injustices, was Hayek's prediction unfolding right before my eyes. Hayek points to how even the intellectuals of his day were already trying to change the definition of 'liberal' - and we all know how an unstoppable force that has become, with 'liberal' today meaning a completely different thing from what Hayek meant by 'liberal'.

The totalitarian will next seek to ...

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who pursues the objective truth ... thus the next step is to destroy the notion of truth itself.

Eerily, we are obviously already living in this state of affairs! The progressive left is now not only living in a post-modern world, but a post-truth one as well! This was MacIntyre's point, I believe. Destroying even the most basic definitions, like gender, because there is apparently no objective truth, ...

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What is interesting though is the idea that this will lead to the end of truth. Hayek says that the totalitarian will first start by convincing the people that the new ideas he is implementing is just the same as the old, that nothing has changed ... but even that won't be enough, because although that can placate the masses, there will always be a minority of the population who thinks for themselves, ...

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, etc. This necessary step by intellectuals who imagine themselves able to plan society is ancient - I agree with Hayek and Popper (and now I wonder whether Hayek influenced Popper in this regard) that Plato was 1 of the earliest intellectuals to plant the seed of the totalitarian philosopher-king, telling noble lies (but ofc, one must consider the real possibility that Plato was writing ironic fiction).

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Chapter 11: The end of truth gives me much to think about. Hayek posits that in a centrally planned society [i.e. a totalitarian one (which is an extreme view that I don't necessarily agree with)] , due to the inherent impossibility in finding a society-wide hierarchy of values, the totalitarian must necessarily resort to telling people WHAT to believe, controlling what kind of sources the people consume...

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I also find myself with little differentiated views to speak of. Most of my views are just the product of my society, the people I associate with, or rehashes of other thinkers.

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obvious that most stupid people are conservative'. Mill does NOT say that most conservatives are stupid, he says that it is obvious that most stupid people are conservative. ii) Do the students and academics of our higher institutions have differentiated views today? It seems that they are overwhelmingly left-wing, progressive and anti-capitalist. iii) It obviously reminded me of Trump's base.

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regions with lower moral and intellectual standards.

Important caveat by Hayek, however: this does NOT mean that most people have low standards; it merely means that the largest group of people whose values and beliefs are similar are the people with low standards.

Definitely an interesting idea, and I've been reflecting on it all day. 3 points: i) It reminded me of how Mill asserted that 'it is ...

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on top. Firstly, it is 'probably true in general' that more intelligent and educated people have more differentiated views. This is clear: stupid and uneducated people cannot think for themselves, their beliefs are dictated by primitive and common tastes and instincts. I would add first-order thinking to that mix.

So, to find a high degree of similarity and uniformity in outlook, we must descend to the...

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I have reached Chapter 10: Why the worst get on top - probably the most one-sided chapter, where Hayek finally says what he's been itching to say for the whole book: that totalitarianism is inevitable if we allow a select few to run our society. I find this sort of extreme thinking bizarre but I look forward to unpacking the arguments.

What caught my eye was an interesting idea behind why the worst get...

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famous Franklin quote (which Hayek peruses) of 'Those who sacrifice liberty in exchange for security deserve neither' is equally philosophically meaningless.

I'm sure an individual with a predilection for security could equally use reason to argue why security dominates liberty.

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ideologue on neither liberty nor security). Pure reason cannot PROVE why a certain end, even liberty, is the ULTIMATE end: each individual has their own preference for either liberty or security based on their passions. This is why I find Hayek to be constantly shouting 'Liberty liberty liberty!' but never telling me, why liberty? He can't!

Sentimentalist moral philosophy is the same reason why the ...

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It seems to me that this is the classic conundrum of sentimentalist moral philosophy at play. Reason can only inform us HOW to reach our ends (in Hayek's case, his reason informed him that security will eventually subsume liberty - the end that he wants), but never WHICH ends to reach for. I find myself bound in a world where only the passions can inform us which ends I want (in my personal case, I'm an ...

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I've finished reading Chapter 9: Security and Freedom, and the main takeaway was that Hayek, of course, argues very well why trading off a bit of liberty for some security is a slippery slope that will eventually demand from us all our liberty, BUT, Hayek never (and I would argue, can never) proves/ argues WHY liberty should be the supreme good, or at least, why it is a better good than security.

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Since your income is not tied to equity risk, a salaried worker shouldn't expect to be compensated more than a business owner - but it seems that, according to Hayek, many well-trained, highly educated white-collar workers envy the blue-collar business owner who makes more than them.

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- that back then, they didn't have opportunities, and our generation is the entitled generation, etc etc etc. Horseshit.

A key idea that Hayek plants in my mind, though, is that you should expect to not be compensated for the lower risk that you're taking. He comments that socialist mindset against the profit motive led many of the professional class to become salaried workers.

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It is interesting that Hayek touches on the elite overproduction hypothesis (he doesn't use this term of course), and identifies this group as the root of much of socialist support - people with higher education and training who think that they deserve more than their jobs pay them. I find this interesting because I take this as evidence of the lies that our parents and grandparents like to feed us ...