The Dangers of Top-Down Rule-Making, According to Hayek

I'm just now starting to read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, but stopped in my tracks and decided that this paragraph from the Forward is a keeper. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing how Hayek himself expressed these ideas.

Hayek employed economics to investigate the mind of man, using the knowledge he had gained to unveil the totalitarian nature of socialism and to explain how it inevitably leads to ‘serfdom’. His greatest contribution lay in the discovery of a simple yet profound truth: man does not and cannot know everything, and when he acts as if he does, disaster follows. He recognised that socialism, the collectivist state, and planned economies represent the ultimate form of hubris, for those who plan them attempt – with insufficient knowledge – to redesign the nature of man. In so doing, would-be planners arrogantly ignore traditions that embody the wisdom of generations; impetuously disregard customs whose purpose they do not understand; and blithely confuse the law written on the hearts of men – which they cannot change – with administrative rules that they can alter at whim. For Hayek, such presumption was not only a ‘fatal conceit’, but also ‘the road to serfdom’.

From Edwin Feulner, Jr.'s Forward to Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom."

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Tesla Camera Did its Job Well

Last week I was in an accident while driving my 2025 Tesla Model 3 with FSD (supervised self-driving). I was in a right-side left-turn lane at an intersection when a big Chevy pickup in the mandatory left turn lane to my left went straight. He came into my path. My car saw him and tried to avoid the collision by swerving right, but he scraped up my side, ripping off my driver-side mirror. Then the other driver fled the scene.

I had configured the Tesla to save footage whenever I honk, which I did immediately. I reviewed the video, got the truck’s license plate, and reported it to the police. I also gave the footage to my insurance company. They identified the other driver and his insurer, and his company is now paying for all of my damage — approaching $9,000.

That wasn’t the only incident that the Tesla helped me with. About eight months ago, the same car saved me from being in an accident. A vehicle coming from behind on the left started entering my lane. The Tesla swerved right onto the shoulder and avoided what would certainly have been a sideswipe crash. Its cameras instantly saw that car coming from behind and to my left.

I bought my Model 3 last year for $36,000. It has eight cameras, so it can see dangerous things surrounding the car, including behind and to both sides, while a human can only look in one direction at a time. Statistics currently show that FSD is nine times safer than human drivers, and you can see why after just a little time in the car. It’s also loaded with dozens of other useful high-tech and safety features.

It’s also economical. One day last week I drove 139 miles and it cost only $4 for the electricity. Gasoline would have been about $19.One last thing: I asked Grok how many hit-and-run accidents there are in the city of St. Louis each year. Out of 12,000 car collisions in St. Louis city each year, 5,000 of them are hit-and-runs.

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Data-Driven Portrait of Wokeness

I've followed psychologist Steve Stewart-Williams for years and really enjoy his rigorous scientific analysis of many aspects of the world. He recently posted: "12 Things Everyone Should Know About Wokeness: A data-driven look at the rise, effects, and psychology of one of the major cultural movements of our time." Many of his conclusions about wokeness, but not all, seem to be true to those of us who simply are watching what's going on around us. You've got the link to his article now and I would highly recommend reading the details, but I will give you the titles to though sections of his article on wokeness:

1. The woke worldview is associated with depression and anxiety

2. Women are more woke than men

3. Younger people are more woke than older ones

4. Many people pretend to be more woke than they are

5. Safe-space culture may function as reverse CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy)

6. Many woke views are inaccurate

7. Woke people underestimate minority success

8. Woke ideas may foster dislike of majorities rather than concern for minorities

9. The woke may secretly look down on those they see as oppressed

10. Many interventions favored by the woke don’t work

11. Wokeness took off in the 2010s

12. We may have hit “peak woke” - or maybe not

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Freedom of Speech is Designed to Protect Political Minorities.

The first amendment is not a weapon wielded by the rich and powerful. Many of these people of influence are apprehensive of the protections offered by the First Amendment, because the First Amendment is a limitation on their ability to shut the rest of us up. Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) explains why the First Amendment is especially important for political minorities and those who are victims of political opression:

You only need a special protection for freedom of speech, like the First Amendment, for people who are either unpopular with power or unpopular with the majority. This is why revolutionary figures like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela all championed freedom of speech. It's why John Lewis, someone I was, I got to meet actually because he was in my neighborhood a lot. The great John Lewis, civil rights icon, he would argue. He would often say that without freedom of speech, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings. They understood that free speech was not the weapon of the powerful. It is the best check on power ever invented.

Consider visiting the website of FIRE, a completely non-partisan nonprofit organization, dedicated to free speech for all. You can spend days at the FIRE site reading about the most important free speech cases in the United States, as well as warning about the many people from across the political spectrum that FIRE has represented.

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