1944, F.A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, a book warning about the dangers of normalizing wartime planning in the West.
The book, dedicated to “The Socialists of All Parties,” became a great commercial success, particularly among business leaders in the United States who were resisting the radical policies of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It begins with government leaders who can convince large portions of the population to adopt regimentation in the pursuit of utopian national goals, like a society without want.
The issue is that these utopian plans cannot be maintained. As the government falls short, interest groups compete for political power.
Divides within society create unrest that is met with brutish force. Society finds itself under increasingly tyrannical control. To maintain unity, the government regulates speech. The result is the rise of a total state.
Hayek was writing about the authoritarianism affecting all the nations involved in World War II. But his warnings have renewed relevance today because of the utopian dreams of the modern political Left. Climate change has given political actors a justification for seemingly unlimited power.
Politicians have argued that a government response requires everything from global carbon taxes and bans on fossil fuels to control over the most minor decisions we make, such as what we have for breakfast and how often we flush our toilets.
Environmental doomsday warnings have proven to be successful in modern democracies. This has been particularly true in Europe, where explicitly green political parties have won parliamentary seats in a number of countries.
Other political parties have adopted these groups’ policy aims out of their own interest, resulting in deindustrialization policies that have made their economies less prosperous and more fragile. But the damage isn’t simply done through bad government policies.
The underlying message of the green energy revolution is that human existence is a plague upon the world. There are additional social costs to this demagoguery. These ideas have bred a social environment of nihilism and self-destruction. These results can be seen in activists’ attempts to destroy priceless historical artifacts or in increasing numbers of young people’s choice not to have children in the name of the environment.
These people are all victims of a relentless propaganda campaign by universities, media outlets, celebrities, and others to promote an agenda that simply isn’t compatible with human thriving. This campaign has created an ethical ethos that seeks human destruction.
People who have no hope for the future tend to be those most easily manipulated and controlled by those in power. Demoralizing a population is one of the most effective ways to undermine resistance.
This is precisely the sort of dangerous social dynamic Hayek warned about. In our next video, we will look at the Green New Deal advocated by the American Left and see how a “green revolution” will lead directly to an authoritarian state.