Here is an appreciation of Hayek:
Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992)
by Peter J. Boettke
Friedrich A. Hayek, who died on March 23, 1992, at the age of 92, was probably the most prodigious classical liberal scholar of the 20th century. Though his 1974 Nobel prize was in Economic Science, his scholarly endeavors extended well beyond economics. He published 130 articles and 25 books ranging from technical economics to theoretical psychology, from political philosophy to legal anthropology, and from the philosophy of science to the history of ideas. Hayek was no mere dabbler; he was an accomplished scholar in each of these fields of inquiry. He made major contributions to our understanding in at least three different areas-government intervention, economic calculation under socialism, and development of the social structure. It is unlikely that we will see the likes of such a wide-ranging scholar of the human sciences again...
The Road to Serfdom
Hayek, however, kept on refining the argument for the liberal society. The problems of socialism that he had observed in Nazi Germany and that he saw beginning in Britain led him to write The Road to Serfdom (1944). This book forced advocates of socialism to confront an additional problem, over and beyond the technical economic one. If socialism required the replacement of the market with a central plan, then, Hayek pointed out, an institution must be established that would be responsible for formulating this plan. Hayek called this institution the Central Planning Bureau. To implement the plan and to control the flow of resources, the Bureau would have to exercise broad discretionary power in economic affairs. Yet the Central Planning Bureau in a socialist society would have no market prices to serve as guides. It would have no means of knowing which production possibilities were economically feasible. The absence of a pricing system, Hayek said, would prove to be socialism's fatal flaw.
In The Road to Serfdom Hayek also argued that there was good reason to suspect that those who would rise to the top in a socialistic regime would be those who had a comparative advantage in exercising discretionary power and were willing to make unpleasant decisions. And it was inevitable that these powerful men would run the system to their own personal advantage.... |
