The New Road to Serfdom Read Online Free PDF

appraise its values and its preoccupations.
    __________
    If you want something more empirical, though, look at the raw numbers. For a long time, it was axiomatic in Europe that low turnouts at American elections were a symptom of a corrupt plutocracy that was rigged against ordinary people. This view was based on a misreading of the figures. The U.S. political system is pluralist, in the sense that there are many more opportunities to vote than in most countries. One elector might care passionately about who her state senator is, but not care about the DA; her neighbor might have strong views on the composition of the school board, but be indifferent about the gubernatorial contest. In other words, while the turnout at any given election might be low, the number of people casting ballots at one time or another is significantly higher. The main role of the president is the direction of foreign and defense policy. It might be argued that, for voters who don’t much care about international relations, the presidential election is less important than the more local polls.
    More to the point, though, the premise of the Euro-sophists is wrong. Turnout at U.S. elections is rising. It isturnout at
European
elections that is falling. This is yet another instance of a phenomenon that we have already seen: the tendency of European critics of the United States to level accusations that not only are untrue, but apply more aptly to Europe than to America. It’s an almost psycho-political phenomenon—a form of displacement.
    Here are the figures:

    I have cited figures for the European Parliament because these constitute the only pan-continental polls, but the phenomenon of falling turnouts can also be observed within most of the EU member states. What is going on?
    Anyone who has canvassed on the doorstep in Europe will tell you the answer. “It doesn’t make any difference how I vote,” people complain. “Nothing ever changes.” The worst of it is that they have a point. With the best will in the world, there is less and less that European politicians
can
change. In recent decades, there has been a comprehensive shift in power in the EU: from elected representatives to permanent functionaries, from local councils to central bureaucracies, from legislatures to executives, from national parliaments to Eurocrats, from the citizen to the state.
    My own country is now largely administered, not by MPs or local councilors, but by what we call quangos: Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organizations. You haven’t yet needed to come up with a name for them in the United States but, at the rate they are multiplying, you soon will. A quango is a state agency, funded by the taxpayer, but at arm’s length from the government.
    Every British politician, if he is being honest, will tell you that these standing
apparats
are the true source of power in modern Britain. When a constituent writes to you with a problem, the best thing you can do forhim, nine times out of ten, is to pass his complaint on to the appropriate bureaucracy: the Child Support Agency, the Highways Authority, the Learning and Skills Council, the Health and Safety Executive, the Food Standards Agency, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
    As these functionariats have grown, representative government has shriveled. To quote the book for which this one is named, F. A. Hayek’s
The Road to Serfdom:
    The delegation of particular technical tasks to separate bodies, while a regular feature, is yet the first step by which a democracy progressively relinquishes its powers.
    Of course, MPs don’t like to advertise their powerlessness. They maintain the fiction that they are still in charge. As a result, voters tend to blame their politicians for the failings of a government machine that no longer answers to anyone. In the 1920s, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin accused the press of exercising “Power without responsibility—the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”