This book, the *The Law*, provided very extreme views on the topic being discussed. However, I do believe that *The Road to Serfdom* is substantially easier to follow and the viewpoints are laid out in a much easier way for everyday people to process regardless of knowledge of the government. *The Road to Serfdom* focuses primarily on totalitarian and socialist societies and the ways current societies are unknowingly progressing similar leadership styles.
One quote that caught me very early on was "in our endeavor consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for". While this quote was state in the context of talking about socialism, is it not relevant for every aspect of government and even for human life in general? We, as people, are constantly trying to get to whatever it is in the best way possible. So, is this not true for government officials as well? Their goal (hopefully) is to better society and do what's best for the people they represent. This, however, is largely subjective and leaves an abundance of room for personal interpretation. It's up to the official to make decisions on what alterations need to be made and how they need to be changed. In general, people can always claim to have other's best interests in mind, but at the same time, nothing is going to benefit everybody, someone must suffer.
Another thing that I most appreciated was the way the term "planning" was used. While it was obviously being used in a critical manner and eluded towards control, using "planning" instead allowed the reader to better form opinions on their own. It also creates an environment for what the reader would consider true understanding of what the author is implying. We all know what it's like to plan. We plan our days, our budgets, events, a lot of things. Governmental planning can be comparable to give us some deeper understand of ultimately what the planning looks like and the way it unfolds. In *The Road to Serfdom*, the planning looked like taking control of small things little by little until control was obtained. You can't have economic control without beginning to dip into every other aspect of civilian life as well. Little by little, more and more becomes controlled by the government and before you know it, we have our own kind of Nazis. "It was not the fascists but the socialists who began to collect children at the tenderest age into political organizations to direct their thinking. It was not the fascists but the socialists who first thought of organizing sports and games, football and hiking, in party clubs where the members would not be infected by other views. It was the socialists who first insisted that the party member should distinguish himself from others by the modes of greeting and the forms of address. It was they who, by their organization of 'cells' and devices for the permanent supervision of private life, created the prototype of the totalitarian party." This quote is long but necessary. Each of those minor events mentioned that were committed by the socialists were not that big of a deal in my opinion. With political leaders wording their goals and ideas behind those actions in a strategic way, I don't think it would be all that hard to make people believe that it was a good thing to do. Specifically, the uneducated people.
