Asheville continues march on “Road to Serfdom”
by Leslee Kulba
for The Tribune Papers

Never in my life have I wanted so strongly and conclusively to push an agenda off the table and run its proponents out of town on a rail.

It would be a legitimate role of government to ask the taxpayers where they wanted to build roads and lay pipe, if they wanted to pay for green pocket parks or stone piazzas, what kinds of street trees the city should buy, etc. It is dead wrong to ask members of the public to “should” all over private property. If one has a vision for private property, they should offer the landowner a price he can’t refuse.

Out of about 150 participants in Asheville’s (NC) Master Planning public input sessions, I am the only person to my knowledge who refused to participate in Goody Clancy’s exercise of drawing purple lines around the public and private properties I wanted to keep and a yellow line around the public and private properties I wanted to change. I asked if I could play Supreme Court and write a dissenting opinion about the whole process instead.

It is alarming that the majority of citizens don’t see any danger in the process. Maybe we should dust off F.A. Hayek’s classic Road to Serfdom, written during World War II on the causes giving rise to Nazism.

Hayek saw how large-scale government planning preceded the rise of totalitarian states not by chance. He saw in the collectivist ideologies brewing in England the same forces that created enough chaos to give rise to public sentiments that dictators were needed in other countries. Fortunately, England changed its course of action before it became another Germany or USSR.

Hayek praised the generation before him for their wisdom in pursuing a path of liberalism. Before doublespeak, liberalism meant simply the denial of all privilege. Hayek with regret noticed his contemporaries with good intent did not see the “unintended consequences” of their attempts to make a better world. “Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all its manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.”

Further, “It seems almost as if we did not want to understand the development which has produced totalitarianism because such an understanding might destroy some of the dearest illusions to which we are determined to cling.”

The largest explosions of thought and inventiveness happened in a climate of liberalism. “Only since industrial freedom opened the path to the free use of new knowledge, only since everything could be tried – if somebody could be found to back it at his own risk – and, it should be added, as often as not from outside the authorities officially entrusted with the cultivation of learning, has science made the great strides which in the last hundred and fifty years have changed the face of the world.”

Hayek was not opposed to planning. He was supportive of the individual planning that each member of society would undertake, using his own expertise with room to exercise judgment for the wealth of spontaneous circumstances that abounded day-to-day. The ability of individuals to contract on their own terms and conditions did not always solve all ills, but it created an economy that was continuously fine-tuning itself with intelligent response to stimuli. Centralized plans to be enforced through government dictation are like human beings without nerves. The ability of the system to respond immediately and appropriately is impaired. .

Centralized planning sets in stone rules necessarily based on the limited knowledge of the planners. Unlike liberalism’s reliance on the balancing of the myriad infinitessimal needs of individuals, planning can only take into consideration a few select priorities. Those whose priorities are not graced by the plan are likely to feel some resentment and need some coercion. David Dixon of Goody Clancy told the people of Asheville if they wanted “Portland to look to Asheville as the model city,” they need the courage of conviction to “enact laws with teeth,” “push,” “force,” and “seek second legal opinions.” What’s more, too much power in one place is a bad thing because it puts several eggs in one basket for certain people with psychological proclivities for amassing power unto themselves.

Hayek said the economist is the first to admit he does not have the knowledge to undertake centralized planning. Even Adam Smith realized, “The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

Successes of central plans lauded in his day were seen as “misdirection of resources” by Hayek. He gave as an example the magnificent and uncongested highways of Germany created at the expense of general social conditions. Mary Means of Goody Clancy triaged the sundry needs of the citizens of Asheville by asking participants in the master planning process not to worry about funding sources. Federal grants (to increase the $500 billion the US owes to China) were always available.

When centralized planners call the shots, individuals start acting like herded animals rather than intelligent innovators and responders. Yet advocates of centralized control these days are among the first to share a “Namaste.”

The best master plan is no master plan, and the cost of freedom has always been high. I therefore recommend the city redeem our freedoms with the $170,000 in taxpayer dollars promised to Goody Clancy, and tell the planners, “Take the money and run.”