“Conflict between an individual’s emotions and what is expected of him in an extended order [the market place; a capitalist system of private property] is virtually inevitable: innate responses [natural instincts] tend to break through the network of learnt rules that maintain civilization. But only Rousseau provided literary and intellectual credentials for reactions that cultivated people once dismissed as simply uncouth [behavior].
Regarding the natural (read “instinctual”) behavior as good or desirable is, in his opinion, an expression of nostalgia for the simple, the primitive, or even the barbarian, based on the conviction that one ought to satisfy his or her desires, rather than to obey the “shackles” allegedly invented and imposed by selfish, [corporate or civilized society] interests.
Disappointment at the “failure” of our traditional morality to produce greater pleasure has recently found expression in nostalgia for the small that is beautiful, or in complaints about The Joyless Economy (Schumacher, 1973; Scitovsky, 1976), as well as much of the literature of “alienation.”
Mere existence cannot confer a right or moral claim on anyone against any other. Persons or groups may incur duties to particular individuals, but as part of a system of common rules that assist humankind to grow and multiply not even all existing lives have a moral claim to preservation.
Rights derive from systems of relations of which the claimant has become a part through helping maintain them. If he ceases to do so, or has never done so, there exists no ground on which such claim could be founded. Relations between individuals can only exist as products of their wills, but the mere wish of a claimant can hardly create a duty for others. Only expectations produced by long practice can create duties for the members of the community in which they prevail, which is one reason why prudence must be exercised in the creation of expectations, lest one incur a duty that one cannot fulfill.
Socialism has taught many people that they possess claims irrespective of performance, irrespective of participation. In the light of the morals that produced the extended order of civilization, socialists in fact incite people to break the law.
Those who claim to have been ‘alienated’ from what most of them have never learned, and who prefer to live as parasitic dropouts, draining the products of a process to which they refuse to contribute, are true followers of Rousseau’s appeal for a return to nature, representing the chief evil to those institutions that made possible the formation of an order of human coordination [civilization].
I do not question any individual’s right to voluntarily withdraw from civilization. But what ‘entitlements’ do such persons have? Are we to subsidize their hermitages?
There cannot be any entitlement to be exempted from the rules of which civilization rests. We may be able to assist the weak and disabled, the very young and old, but only if the sane and adult submit to the impersonal discipline which gives us means to do so.
It would be quite wrong to regard such errors [of thinking] as originating with the young. They reflect what they are taught, the pronouncements of their parents – and of departments of psychology and sociology of education and the characteristic intellectuals whom they produce – pale reproductions of Rousseau and Marx, Freud, and Keynes, transmitted through intellects whose desires have outrun their understanding.”
– F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, 1988; 158 pages; Appendix D. Alienation, Dropouts and the Claims of Parasites
