Commentators claim that Hayek's work readily explains what consequences are likely to result from the allegedly socialist policies finding favor with the Obama Administration. They have ready cause to invoke his name as Hayek himself has a penchant for promiscuously invoking “planning” with widespread descriptive applicability. This article draws upon archival material to show that Hayek did indeed think that persisting with middle‐way policies (Hayek's supposed “muddle of the middle”) would lead to full‐blown command planning. In particular, Hayek argued that middle‐way policies would induce psychological changes in the populace that would lead it to supposedly favor and call for ever greater government intervention. For Hayek, these supposed psychological changes allegedly provide much grease for any slippery slope that leads to serfdom.