The Reader's Digest Condensed Version of "The Road to Serfdom"

It was recently suggested that I am not intelligent enough to understand Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” so I am rereading it again, and doing a little outside research on Hayek’s views.  Today I was looking up a quote on deflation, that I had seen previously, in response to a post I saw by R. S. McCain.  McCain seems to like the idea of deflation, whereas my understanding is that most economists consider deflation to be much more damaging to an economy than mild to moderate inflation.  During the course of digging up the quote I was looking for I came across the April 1945 Reader’s Digest condensed version of “The Road to Serfdom”.  I have never seen this version before and I think it is probably safe to assume that most people currently jumping on the Hayek bandwagon haven’t either so I am linking it here for the curious.

BTW – the quote I was looking for was:

“I agree with Milton Friedman that once the Crash had occurred, the Federal Reserve System pursued a silly deflationary policy.  I am not only against inflation but I am also against deflation.  So, once again, a badly programmed monetary policy prolonged the depression.”

A further BTW – The reason it was suggested that I am too stupid to understand Hayek is that I maintained that in “The Road to Serfdom” Hayek expressed some support for things such as welfare and universal health care.  I gave page numbers and quotes, but apparently I am to stupid to read and comprehend.  If I am so were the people at Reader’s Digest who condensed the book:

The successful use of competition does not preclude some types of government interference. For instance, to limit working hours, to require certain sanitary arrangements, to provide an extensive system of social services is fully compatible with the preservation of competition. There are, too, certain fields where the system of competition is impracticable. For example, the harmful effects of deforestation or of the smoke of factories cannot be confined to the owner of the property in question. But the fact that we have to resort to direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function. To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies – these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity.

Hayek himself endorsed the Reader's Digest condensation.