Churchill and Hayek 40
This is from PowerLine:
We know … that Churchill was at least passingly familiar with Hayek’s 1944 classic, The Road to Serfdom, but there are indications from early in Churchill’s career — around the time he was attacking socialism — that he instinctively understood Hayek’s famous critique of centralized and dispersed knowledge in his equally important 1945 essay The Use of Knowledge in Society.
As Churchill put it in a speech in 1908:
“I reject as impracticable the insane Socialist idea that we could have a system whereby the whole national production of the country, with all its infinite ramifications, should be organized and directed by a permanent official, however able, from some central office. The idea is not only impossible, but unthinkable. If it was even attempted it would produce a most terrible shrinkage and destruction of productive energy.”
The “permanent official” means of course any number of permanent officials.
No economy can thrive as it might if it is regulated, to any degree however slight, by government.
