Where has F.A. Hayek been all my life?

Thanks to our sons, I’m reading The Road to Serfdom, written by Hayek when he was at the LSE in 1944. Hundreds of thousands of copies have been read since then, but even though I was an Econ major in 1968, somehow I missed his work, other than as a footnote in an introductory class.

Apparently not much has changed in how Hayek’s views are generally taught: our son just graduated with an Econ major, and only by taking a special class with a specific professor was he “turned on” to the depth and scope of Hayek’s observations and theories.

As soon as I finish, I’ll study Ludwig Von Mises, and reread Alexis de Tocqueville, who in Democracy in America foresaw the kinder, gentler servitude that does not completely destroy but instead “…extinguishes and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd.”