Would Hayek Have Approved Obamacare?

Would Friedrich Hayek - the Nobel-winning economist who inspired Margaret Thatcher's free-market reforms and is a hero to libertarians everywhere - have supported Obamacare?

"He would have been in favor of mandates," George Mason University philosopy professor Erik Angner tells Reason's Nick Gillespie. "The first thing to know about Hayek is that he was actually for redistribution," continues the author of 2007's Hayek and Natural Law.

While stressing Hayek's aversion to top-down economic planning and governmental interference with the price system, the Swedish-born scholar nonetheless points to works such as The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty in which Hayek flatly endorses a publicly provided social safety net and, like another free-market intellectual giant, Milton Friedman, discusses a guaranteed minimum income.

In a controversial Politco op-ed published in 2012, Angner wrote that while Britain's National Health System and the price-rigging elements of Obamacare violate Hayekian principles, creating an individual mandate and giving poor Americans some amount of money to spend on health care as they see fit does not. To Angner, vouchers for health care would function similarly to vouchers for education, helping to create stronger market forces and spurring the sort of competition that would lead to a more efficient and robust system.

"You can be for markets without being against redistribution," says Angner, who argues that Hayek thus offers a true alternative to contemporary liberals and leftists on the one hand and libertarians and conservatives on the other.

Produced by Amanda Winkler. Camera by Meredith Bragg and Amanda Winkler.

About 8 minutes.

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[StatelessLiberty]

As I understand it Friedman viewed the Negative Income Tax and school vouchers as stepping stones to abolishing the welfare state and having a private market in education. So it's misleading to say he was pro-redistribution.

[SpellboundSolution]

Again don't argue with me, argue with your dictionary. Capitalism was the first system to respect property rights (i.e. the king or the ruling political party can't confiscate property at will.) Business has existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Trying to win the argument by constantly conflating business, no matter what the political environment, with capitalism is tiresome. The Soviet Union traded with foreign businesses, business took place in Medieval Europe. So what?

[Kool Shane]

Hayek would thrown up all over this Marxist. And what insult to allow this guy to suggest hayek was okay with coercive tax collections...

[Kool Shane]

Redistribute what? Could that ave been made clear.... a voluntary system or a coercive system of revenue collections. Is he advocating forced revenue collection for social welfare programs. I think not. And had this left leaning libertarian thought it out he would even consider personally being immoral and unethical but when collective mob does it its okay?

[SpellboundSolution]

And so long as America has eminent domain (and coercive income tax, amongst many other things) it will not be a capitalist country. Unfortunately the world has never seen such a thing. I doubt the people with the privilege of taking our freedoms away will ever let us have them all.

[LucisFerre1]

Spellbound, anytime you're talking to someone who tries to define capitalism as some form of feudalism...you're talking to a Marxist. That's a waste of time in my opinion since Marx seldom got anything right.

Cheers.

[LucisFerre1]

[[No, you are wrong again, capitalism doesn't respect property rights. Capitalism allows the exploitation of property.]]

You don't know what you're talking about. Capitalism is about the investment of private capital.

[LucisFerre1]

"Capitalism" is merely Marx's dirty word for private enterprise. And yes, that necessitates private property rights, whereas every other economic system does not necessitate the recognition of such rights.

[LucisFerre1]

Yes, the dividing line between socialism and fascism is ephemeral. I think Nazi Germany had elements of both at the same time. It was certainly socialist as you say. Nazi means national socialist worker's party. It was a "labor" party.

[LucisFerre1]

Wealth isn't distributed. How can it be redistributed?

[ohedd]

To argue that more people in the market place making price signals clearer is a Keynesian way of thinking about it. If we were to redistribute, money wouldn't simply be less idle, in fact money is never really idle. When capital is not being spent it is reflected in interest rates. Distributing money whenever government considers it being in abundance will only diminish the savings rates.

[JoshBoschke]

The Soviet Union outlawed profit and confiscated private property - you dare say that's not communism? Also, the Nazis were extremely socialist - they nationalized ALL unions & personal trusts, expanded public pensions greatly, confiscated unearned wealth, outlawed profiting from war, forced profit-sharing in industries, and so on. Saying Nazi Germany wasn't socialist is extremely revisionist and false. They loved big government - read a history book.