A Nation Called "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"

 Big Daddy

I'm started eading F.A. Hayek yesterday, co-winner of the 1974 Economic Nobel, and taking notes. Then I decide to take in a little Tennessee Williams on TCM where "Cat" is playing.
I am impressed how much acute intelligences have in common with each other; I would never have guessed that Williams would illustrate something like Hayek's The Road to Serfdom to me.

"I've given you an empire, boy!"

Burl Ives, Big Daddy, yells this at Paul Newman, Brick - his son, in the mansion basement, filled with hundreds of objects bought in Europe - Europe was on fire-sale at the time - mostly untouched and packed away.
Brick's grandfather, Big Daddy's dad, who died a penniless hobo, gave Big Daddy an empty wicker suitcase as his inheritance, and Big Daddy built his empire from nothing. Brick makes the point that granddad took Big Daddy everywhere with him, he gave him love, he gave him the foundation of a balanced soul that could do anything it wanted - good or bad - but a soul which would not be afraid to grasp life and put its foot down where it wanted to stand: a soul without love would jump and dance like a cat on a hot tin roof, never taking a stand. That cat would forever jump from the heat of mendacity and lies to find a cool spot where it could be comfortable.

"I've given you an empire... !"

Hayek is very much opposed to socialism under the rubric of "central planning", the type of socialism opposed to markets and which for its implementation requires the entire power of the state to run the economic life of the nation. Hayek is very much a libertarian - so it seems thus far - and emphasizes the individual as decision making unit of interest, not the collective.

At this point early in my reading, there has been a brief discussion about how wartime requires central planning for the allocation of the nation's resources, and how prices must be controlled to inhibit inflation: since the nation at war wants to sell war bonds to people, these people would hold the debt of the government and the last thing these people would want is inflation to decrease the value of their holdings. Inflation would discourage bond holders - no one would buy war bonds.

Fortunately, wars and their pernicious system of central planning are of short duration. Or are they?

World War II's Manhattan Project is not only the paradigm of success of American know-how and determination, it is the paradigm of the success of the central planning system; i.e., it is the emblem of a type of extreme socialism.

World War II never ended; it just took a short intermezzo and swung into Act III, called the Cold War. Military Economy is planned economy. Fully 50% of our budget is spent on the Military - essentially a planned type of economy where there is no free market to direct investment: 50% goes here ! Period !
Perhaps the dimly perceived threat of the Military-Industrial Complex is the fact that a Military-Industrial Economy is a thoroughly centralized and planned economy which requires the full force of the state to enforce it: the military, the tax system, the police, the media.

The full example of Socialism in its worst form - a type of Stalinism - is what we have in front of us: the CIA and Special Operations who have absolutely no accountability to anyone nor anything. They are funded by imperial fiat. There is no transparency. There is no external regulation.
We have moved far beyond Stalinism.

 Big Daddy

I've given you an empire, boy! What the heck that I had to destroy your freedom to do it!