"It is inevitable that occasionally cruelty may become a duty; that acts which revolt all our feeling, such as the shooting of hostages or the killing of the old or sick, should be treated as mere matters of expediency; that the compulsory uprooting and transportation of hundreds of thousands should become an instrument of policy approved by almost everybody except the victims; or that suggestions like that of a 'conscription of women for breeding purposes' can be seriously contemplated."

In fact, a person's willingness to support such measures becomes an important qualification for promotion in the political hierarchy of power; for this reason, Hayek entitles his chapter "Why the Worst Get on Top." Under such conditions, naturally, the benevolent attitudes possible to free men and women give way to suspiciousness, dehumanization, and the alienation of human beings from one another. This attitudinal change in turn enables still more extreme applications of the kinds of ruthless methods just described.