The Road to Serfdom

The case that central planning, however well meant, threatens freedom, because no authority can hold the knowledge scattered across millions of lives, and the attempt to try concentrates a dangerous power. Hayek wrote for a wartime audience inclined to disagree, and the book has been claimed and misread by partisans ever since. Whatever you conclude, his challenge is one the other side has had to answer rather than dismiss. That is what earns a book its place here.

The Austrian economist who argued, against the confident planners of his century, that no central authority can hold the knowledge dispersed across millions of minds, and that the attempt to try threatens freedom itself. The Road to Serfdom made the case to a wartime audience inclined to disagree. Whatever one concludes, his challenge to the planners is one the other side has had to answer rather than ignore.