Setting aside the question of morality as it relates to coercing citizens to part with their property, let us consider a tax regime based solely on the stock market. (Also, assume a Bitcoin standard.) Equity-Based Tax System In this system only top publicly traded companies are taxed. Taxation takes place in-kind, through shares. Only, say, the top 500 companies (by market capitalization) in the country are in consideration for taxation. And the taxation occurs thus: ...
In Saifedean Ammous’ podcast with Thomas Massey, Hayek is accused of being a little too socialist and his book The Road to Serfdom overrated. He is praised, however, for being diplomatic enough with the mainstream to remain relevant until winning the Swedish Central Bank Prize (the so-called Nobel Prize), and then speaking the anarchist language. The Road to Serfdom is the only book by Friedrich Hayek that I have read, and based on just that, I have to disagree with the socialist-lite characterization. The ideas he promotes are libertarian. He does not go up against the Keynesians, but then, the book was meant to target socialists, which it did. ...
I recently revisited the chapter titled “Why the Worst Get on Top” from FA Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. The essay discusses the sociopolitical dynamics within a totalitarian system that inevitably encourage and enable bad actors to gain power while sidelining decent people. The worst features of totalitarian governments are not accidental or avoidable; they are features totalitarianism produces given enough time to operate. Just as a socialist planner must choose between either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, a totalitarian dictator must renounce morality or fail. Socialism produces a totalitarian society, which places at its helm a dictator not bound by common morals, and from this system we get social and economic repression, destruction of life and property, elimination of political alternatives, conscription, etc. ...