"To get competition among firms with large capital — how is that possible? Only by setting up competitors who have interesting ideas and good projects and yet may not accumulate the necessary capital before they die. This means that to maintain competition the government planner for free-for-all competition must provide or guarantee credit to would-be competitors. To anybody? If he does not take anybody but chooses his particular people, it would set up a rising howl throughout the land; while if he did not choose among them, there would be a great many failures, and charlatans would run the government into bad debts. If he selected the creditors, by what criterion would he choose? It would have to be a guess that they were good competitive material in some particular line of business. And here Hayek's own planner would have to make distinctions between persons jar particular objects — which he said was against natural law. It is to such absurdity that the insensate attachment to unmitigated bigotry is bound to lead."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chap. 5 : Adam Smith and Planning for Competition
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herman_Finer
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Herman Finer
Herman Finer (February 24, 1898 – March 4, 1969) was a Jewish Romanian-born British political scientist and Fabian socialist.
16 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Herman Finer →
Related Quotes
"Reaction has been waiting yearningly for this message, for someone to smite democracy hip and thigh. It eases the con…"
"Government is the instrument for the exchange of one kind of benefit among persons and groups for others; the exchang…"
"Most human beings like enjoyment without employment. Most human beings like the services of government while they cla…"
"If the champions of an economic and political delusion were its only victims, we could with a little charity leave th…"
"No one intends to "plan" or "collectivize" or "socialize" all economic activities, but many do wish to administer sol…"
"Professor Hayek's history is not history. Especially before the nineteenth century, but quite plentifully since the s…"
"Hayek's unscrupulous travesty of the democratic process of securing legislation (for that is the first basis of any g…"
"Hayek cannot see how, in a planned state, groups can settle their differences over the course to be followed when, th…"
"Hayek's assumption is that political power is neither limited in scope, restricted in authority, responsible in opera…"
"Hitler was not a socialist. He was a nationalist and a racialist; and in Mein Kampf himself tells how he designed to …"