Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSOPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
42 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
conscription in the event of foreign aggression, and many
other typical government activities. Conscription, for example,
is one of those issues about which libertarians are totally
intransigent, considering it a form of downright slavery.
Hayek, instead, thinks it is certainly a very severe form
of coercion but one that could be justified “to ward off the
danger of worse coercion by an external enemy.” 79 The question
of public health and of various kinds of welfare for the
poor is part of the particular Hayekian concept of solidarity.
Hayek feels that it goes without saying that the state should
take care of those unable to provide for themselves and that
a minimum level of subsistence should be guaranteed for all
so that no member of society would lack for food, shelter,
and medical treatment. Apart from proven cases of need
that should rightly be borne by society as a whole, in reality
Hayek proposes solutions to social-security problems that
are not based on a state monopoly for certain activities. He
only opts for obligatory insurance in fields such as old-age
pensions and health care, on the basis of the observation
that if certain state activities enjoy a monopoly, “the result
is usually not only that those advantages soon prove illusory
but that the character of the services becomes entirely different
from that which they would have had if provided by
competing agencies.” 80 In this way, the benefits of competition
are lost and certain services become the dominion of
bureaucratic hierarchies. For Hayek, it is precisely in order
to safeguard some individuals from suffering coercion that
state activities cannot be limited to maintaining law and
order. Obligatory insurance, which Rothbard sees as invading
the sphere of an individual’s liberty, means that the
other members of society are not obliged to provide for
other members in need.
The Hayekian argument concerning solidarity is linked to
a particular conception. In a society in which the protective
79 Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, p. 349.
80 Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, p. 261.