From Hayek in “Security and Freedom”:
“It will be well to contrast at the outset two kinds of security: the limited one, which can be achieved for all, and which is therefore no privilege but a legitimate object of desire; and absolute security, which in a free society cannot be achieved for all and which ought not to be given as a privilege…. These two kinds of security are…the security of a minimum income and the security of the particular income a person is thought to deserve. … There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. …there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody.” (1930)
“Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance…the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. …there is no incompatibility in principle between the state’s providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom.” (1942)
“There is, finally, the supremely important problem of combating general fluctuations of economic activity and the recurrent waves of large-scale unemployment which accompany them. …the very necessary efforts to secure protection against these fluctuations do not lead to the kind of planning which constitutes such a threat to our freedom.” (1950)
“The planning for security which has such an insidious effect on liberty…is planning designed to protect individuals or groups against diminutions of their income. … This demand for security is thus another form of the demand for a just remuneration commensurate with the subjective merits and not with the objective results of a man’s efforts.” (1957)
“That anyone should suffer a great diminution of his income and bitter disappointment of all his hopes through no fault of his own, and despite hard work and exceptional skill, undoubtedly offends our sense of justice…[and] are certain to receive popular sympathy and support. … Certainty of a given income can, however, not be given to all if any freedom in the choice of one’s occupation is to be allowed. And, if it is provided for some, it becomes a privilege at the expense of others whose security is thereby necessarily diminished.” (1963)
“When a person’s income is guaranteed, he can neither be allowed to stay in his job merely because he likes it nor to choose what other work he would like to do. As it is not he who makes the gain or suffers the loss dependent on his moving or not moving, the choice must be made for him by those who control the distribution of the available income.” (1981)
“The conflict with which we have to deal is, indeed, a quite fundamental one between two irreconcilable types of social organization, which, from the most characteristic forms in which they appear, have often been described as the commercial and the military type of society. … The army does, indeed, in many ways represent the closest approach familiar to us to the second type of organization, where work and worker alike are allotted by authority and where, if the available means are scanty, everybody is alike put on short-commons. This is the only system in which the individual can be conceded full economic security and through the extension of which to the whole of society it can be achieved for all its members.” (2005)
“The military type of organization as we know it gives us, however, only a very inadequate picture of what it would be like if it were extended to the whole of society. …the unfreedom of the members of the military organization is mitigated by the fact that there is still a free sphere to which they can move if the restrictions become to irksome.” (2016)
“Where distinction and rank are achieved almost exclusively by becoming a salaried servant of the state, where to do one’s assigned duty is regarded as more laudable than to choose one’s own field of usefulness, where all pursuits that do not give a recognized place in the official hierarchy or a claim to a fixed income are regarded as inferior and even somewhat disreputable, it is too much to expect that many will long prefer freedom to security.” (2067)
“It is essential that we should relearn frankly to face the fact that freedom can be had only at a price and that as individuals we must be prepared to make severe material sacrifices to preserve our liberty. If we want to retain this, we must regain the conviction on which the rule of liberty in the Anglo-Saxon countries has been based and which Benjamin Franklin expressed in a phrase applicable to us in our lives as individuals no less than as nations: ’Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’” (2078)
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