The Slippery Slope of Planning

Hayek says that when governments try to control a free market, what they're actually doing is simply responding to demands for special treatment. Each demand will create another demand, and each attempt to buy off one group will just inflate the price that will have to be paid to buy off the next one. So it's a slippery slope argument because Hayek thinks once you get onto that path, all you can end up doing is trying to buy off everyone. Forms of piecemeal control become attempts at total control. Trying to fix your five-year plan leaves you trying to control everything. And since nothing can be controlled in that way, it will end in Hayek's terms, in the