In the Road to Serfdom, the author does a very good job at drawing parallels, although not always directly, between how Germany digressed from socialistic ideas to fascism, and how the United States and other European countries are heading scarily close down a similar path. Although I have more recently been worrying about the intense increase of socialistic and even communistic ideas in the United States, I never realized to what magnitude some of the similarities are to Germany pre-Nazi era. While I know the current generations and societal views on capitalism in America are very negative because of the ever-growing gap between the lower class and upper class but also the middle class and the upper class, be removing or increasing regulation on the economic statuses of the United States we are opening the possibility of creating a new class of severe "eliteness" for people in governmental positions. Such as during the rise of socialism in Germany, the socialists at the time were striving to mandate and regulate the economic flow of money and business in order to supposedly spread the wealth. However, this opened the door for Hitler and Nazi supporting government officials to increase their status and wealth by regulating the economic system.
Another point that the Road to Serfdom pointed out, that socialism leads to the removal of individuality or self-expression. By enforcing an overall conforming idea of certain expectation for the general public, we will strip away the exact form of freedom that the current generations have worked so hard to earn. Socialistic countries that lead to fascist countries have time and time again regulated religious freedoms, personal forms of expression by implementing uniforms, and destroyed all forms of are or literature that encourages freedom of thought or different opinions than that of the government. The author explicitly expresses this thought, "There can be no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all economic activity still believe that socialism and individual freedom can be combined. Yet socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom." And this idea is true, socialism is not for the people and it does not support the people in any way, it is a way to dictate and mandate a uniform idea through society to suppress those unwilling to conform. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to add socialistic policies to encourage growth in the lower classes, by going as far as planning and directing the flow of economic activities we are opening the door to a hellish place that in all of the years humans have been in this earth has never worked.
Week-05: Reflection on Road to Serfdom
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