ȃǿȁ Partʺʺ: Politics and PhilosophySpecialists tend to be enthusiastic for central planning because they
tacitly assume that the planners will, like themselves, be intelligent persons
having sensible scales of values and so understanding the special impor-
tance of each particular specialist’s favorite goal. (Examples might be edu-
cation, environmental protection, high technology, mass transportation,
or more nearly equal distribution of income and wealth.) Accordingly, an
apparent consensus in favor of planning is likely to be spurious, for the
different enthusiasts will have different visions of the plan to adopt.
What “gives the demand for planning its strongest impetus,” says Ha-
yek, is “the resentment of the frustrated specialist” (ȀȈȃȃ/ȀȈȄȅ, p.ȄȄ). No
single economic factor has contributed more to help Fascist and National
Socialist movements “than the envy of the unsuccessful professional man,
the university-trained engineer or lawyer, and of the ‘white-collared prole-
tariat’ in general, of the engine driver or compositor and other members of
the strongest trade unions whose income was many times theirs” (p.ȀȀȅ).
Another source of discontent with the market economy is a vague
resentment at often having to pay a material cost to serve higher val-
ues—“life and health, beauty and virtue, honor and peace of mind.” Peo-
ple resent “having the higher values of life brought into the ’cash nexus’.”
At bottom, and without realizing it, what they resent is the economic
problem—the inexorable fact of scarcity and the need to make choices
(pp.ȈȆ–Ȉȇ).
Hayek describes the attitude, cultivated in the Germany that eventu-
ally put Hitler in power, that something disreputable attaches to taking
economic risks and making profit: “to employ a hundred people is repre-
sented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable”
(pp.ȀȂǿ–ȀȂȀ).
In a complex civilization with a developed market economy, many
people will not understand why they must adjust to changes of unknown
source and nature, as by shifting occupations, or why some things they
desire should become harder to obtain than in the past. Ļey do not under-
stand that “the only alternative to submission to the impersonal and seem-
ingly irrational forces of the market is submission to an equally uncontrol-
lable and therefore arbitrary power of other men” (p.ȁǿȄ).
One famous piece of Hayek’s psychologizing is his chapter on “Why
the Worst Get on Top.” In a system in which achieving wealth and posi-
tion depends less than it does in a market economy on satisfying the
wants of one’s fellows through voluntary transactions, ambitious people
have more scope for pandering to popular resentments and prejudices