Barkley:(posted 8766 days ago)Stick to your guns...
In the 1952 forward to _The Road to Serfdom_, Hayek wrote:
Of course, six years of socialist government in England have not produced anything resembling a totalitarian state. But those who argue that this has disproved the thesis of The Road to Serfdom have really missed one of its main points: that the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations...
And he also wrote:
[Today]... socialism has come to mean chiefly the extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the institutions of the welfare state. In [this] kind of socialism the [totalitarian] effects I discuss in this book are brought about more slowly, indirectly, and imperfectly. I believe that the ultimate outcome tends to be very much the same...
I think that the most Ransom can say is that at times Hayek said "X", and at times Hayek said "not-X".
Brad DeLong, who has trouble maintaining intellectual consistency from week to week...