Commentary
In the trajectory laid out by F.A. Hayek in his 1944 book, “The Road to Serfdom,” dictatorship is the end game of a period of immense government failure. The ruling class begins by tinkering with the normal function of markets and society with some high goal in mind (think: virus eradication) and the results are the opposite of what is intended. The crisis gets worse but the public becomes more incredulous. At this point, there is a choice to make: continue with the supposed inefficiencies of democracy or move to full-on dictatorship.
It’s not hard to know where Hayek got the idea. After the onset of the Great Depression, the notion of democracy fell into widespread disrepute in elite circles. Reading high-end material from the period you gain a quick realization that everyone agreed that freedom and democracy really have seen their day. They are ill-suited to the planning needs of the day, which require power from the top and expertise throughout the administrative bureaucracy….