When the tide turns against the speculator there is an inevitable loss of liberty. In The Road to Serfdom (first published in 1949), the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek declared that state control of foreign exchange dealing was a “decisive advance on the path to totalitarianism and the suppression of the individual liberty.” Hayek believed that from a mixed economy there would be an inevitable progression to socialism. History has proved Hayek wrong. His analysis underestimated the power of speculation, even in quasi-socialist economies, to pull in the opposite direction. Speculation undermined the Bretton Woods system of fixed currencies and, more recently, it has destroyed the state-managed capitalism of Japan and other Asian nations. As an anarchic force, speculation demands continuing government restrictions, but inevitably it will break any chains and run amok. The pendulum swings back and forth between economic liberty and constraint.

According to Hayek,

Item 3 - a mixed economy is a step in the direction of socialism;