Articles
35 Heroes of Freedom, by
Reason,
Reason, Dec 2003
"Eclectic, irreverent" list of individuals "who have made the world a freer, better, and more libertarian place by example, invention, or action", as chosen by
Reason editors (includes the unknown martyr of Tiananmen Square and "The Yuppie")
F.A. Hayek. He mapped the road to serfdom ... and paid a steep price—decades-long professional isolation—for daring to suggest that social democracy had something in common with collectivist tyrannies of the right and left ... Building on the work of that other great Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, and combining a respect for inherited wisdom with an understanding that freedom is fundamentally disruptive, Hayek showed that the uncoordinated actions of individuals generate wonders—market prices, language, scientific progress—that the deliberate designs of central planners never could.
3 libertarian takeaways from South Park season 20 (SPOILERZ), by
Joseph Kast,
LearnLiberty.org, 14 Dec 2016
Discusses three themes of the 20th season of "South Park", in particular the issues of free speech and online anonymity, collectivist thinking and traditionalism
As Hayek says in his famous essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative":
[Conservatism] cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance.
Here Hayek is drawing out the traditionalist strand of conservatism.
Areopagitica: Milton's Influence on Classical and Modern Political and Economic Thought, by Isaac M. Morehouse, 15 Dec 2009
Discusses the four sections of Milton's 1644 pamphlet, the reasons for which and the environment in which it was published, and various lessons or parallels that can be made from an economic and political philosophy perspective
This [third] section [of Areopagitica] is perhaps the earliest form of F. A. Hayek's argument in The Road to Serfdom, in a chapter titled "Why the Worst Get to the Top," where he describes why in activist governments bad people will tend to be attracted to and obtain positions of power. It is here also that Milton touches upon what Hayek called the knowledge problem. That is, there is no way that any one person or group of persons could have enough knowledge to properly order and plan the market of ideas so as to deliver the necessary concepts to the necessary people.
Biography of Ludwig Lachmann (1906-1990): Life and Work, by Peter Lewin, 1 Aug 2007
Biographical and bibliographical essay, examining in particular his approach as a teacher and his contributions to the theory of capital and subjectivism
The LSE ... had attracted a number of very talented rising stars among whom was the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek ... Hayek ... attempted to incorporate the theory of capital as involving production plans over time along the lines indicated by Böhm-Bawerk. ... From Hayek he had learned about the importance of subjectivism, the importance of the fact that economic value was in the final analysis a matter of individual appraisal. ... Lachmann is fond of quoting Hayek's remark that 'every important advance in economic theory during the last hundred years was a further step in the consistent application of subjectivism' ...
A Call to Activism, by
Margit von Mises,
The Free Market, Jun 1984
Speech delivered on 27 Feb 1984 at a Mises Institute dinner in her honor; relates how she wrote
My Years With Ludwig von Mises, then calling her late husband an "activist of the mind" and encouraging others to become likewise
I must tell you now that there is something I am proud of. And that is that all of my husband's former students, from the Vienna seminar as well as the New York seminar ... Another one of these famous pupils who has always most willingly helped is Nobel-Prize winner Friedrich von Hayek, about whom I wrote so much in My Years With Ludwig von Mises ... Professor Hayek once called my husband "a great radical, an intelligent and rational radical, but nonetheless a radical on the right lines." This was correct, but Ludwig von Mises was also an activist—an activist of the mind.
Related Topics:
Atlas Network,
Foundation for Economic Education,
The Freeman,
Grove City College,
Hillsdale College,
Human Action,
Israel Kirzner,
Mises Institute,
Ludwig von Mises,
Leonard Read,
Lew Rockwell,
Murray N. Rothbard,
Hans Sennholz
Cantillon for Laymen, by Karen De Coster,
Mises Daily, 7 Jun 2006
Discusses in general terms the themes in Richard Cantillon's
Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (1755), including a short biographical section
Friedrich A. Hayek characterized the three parts of the Essai "On Wealth or Production," "On Exchange," and "On International Trade," ... Other economists who unearthed and venerated Cantillon's remarkable contributions were ... Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize winner ... Hayek went so far as to say "this gifted independent observer, enjoying an unsurpassed vantage point in the midst of the action, coordinated what he saw with the eyes of the born theoretician, and was the first person who succeeded in penetrating and presenting to us almost the entire field which we now call economics".
The Constitution and the Rule of Law, by
Jacob G. Hornberger, Aug 1992
Describes, using some of F. A. Hayek's writings, the concepts that individual rights do not stem from the U.S. constitution, that the latter is meant to "straitjacket" the government and the misunderstood (or forgotten) "rule of law"
In 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek wrote one of the most thought-provoking books of our time—The Road to Serfdom. Hayek warned that Great Britain and the United States were abandoning their heritage of liberty and adopting the economic principles of the Nazis, fascists, and socialists ... Hayek, who would later win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Science, was vilified as an old-fashioned reactionary ... [S]ome of his greatest contributions have been in the area of law. Among his finest books are The Constitution of Liberty and his three-volume work, Law, Legislation, and Liberty.
Defending the Undefendable: Walter Block, Twenty Years Later, by
Walter Block, Alberto Mingardi,
Laissez Faire City Times, 7 Dec 1998
In addition to discussing
Defending the Undefendable, covers issues such as entertainment, Ayn Rand, Hazlitt, the Libertarian Party and Murray Rothbard
Looking at Defending the Undefendable twenty years later, it holds up well, and it's no wonder why intellectuals as broadly diverse as F.A. Hayek, who said "Defending the Undefendable made me feel that I was once more exposed to the shock therapy by which, more than fifty years ago, the late Ludwig von Mises converted me to a consistent free market position. Some may find it too strong a medicine, but it will still do them good even if they hate it," ...
Dialectics and Liberty [PDF], by
Chris Matthew Sciabarra,
The Freeman, Sep 2005
Written ten years after publication of the first two of Sciabarra's "Dialectic and Liberty" trilogy, discusses Hayek's and Rand's dialectical analysis approaches and suggests that such context-keeping analysis is important in radical libertarian theory
Hayek, who absorbs from Menger an Austrian emphasis on process and spontaneous order, enunciated a profoundly dialectical critique of utopianism ... For Hayek, since no human being can know everything there is to know about society, people cannot simply redesign it anew. Human beings are as much the creatures of their context as they are its creators. Hayek's rejection of utopianism is a repudiation of what he calls "constructivist" rationalism. The utopian relies on a "pretense of knowledge," Hayek argued, in an attempt to construct a bridge from the current society to a future one.
The Early History of FEE, by
Henry Hazlitt,
The Freeman, Mar 1984
Excerpted from Hazlitt's remarks at the Leonard E. Read Memorial Conference on Freedom, November 1983; reprinted in the May 2006 issue, including photos of early FEE senior staff
Friedrich Hayek, in London, impressed by Read's initiative [of setting up the Foundation for Economic Education], raised the money the next year, 1947, to call a conference at Vevey, Switzerland, of 43 libertarian writers, mainly economists, from half a dozen nations.The group of ten of us from the United States included such figures as Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, George Stigler—and Leonard Read. That was the beginning of the still flourishing and immensely influential Mont Pelerin Society, now with several hundred members from dozens of countries.
Related Topics:
Atlas Network,
Manuel Ayau,
Foundation for Economic Education,
Universidad Francisco Marroquín,
The Freeman,
Milton Friedman,
F. A. Harper,
The Law,
Ludwig von Mises,
Mont Pelerin Society,
Leonard Read,
George Stigler,
The Wealth of Nations
F.A. Hayek accomplished several careers' worth of economic achievements in one lifetime, by Art Carden, 8 May 2017
Bibliographic essay discussing the diverse scope of Hayek's works
Hayek was the 20th century's most prominent developer of the Austrian business cycle theory ... As a student, he developed the basis of a cognitive theory, which he revised and published in 1952 ... He wrote extensively on the method of the social sciences ... Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he developed a body of social theory about knowledge and competition ... Each of these separate bodies of work would constitute a monumental achievement. Hayek did it all over the course of a single career that established him as one of the most important social thinkers of the 20th century.
F.A. Hayek, R.I.P., by
Ralph Raico, Mar 1992
Memorial and biographical essay
Hayek's scholarly and scientific achievements were immense and enduring. They include his contributions to Austrian economics in business-cycle theory and in the great debate on economic calculation under socialism; his discovery of the centrality of the problem of knowledge in society; and his work on the methodology of the social sciences, where he refined and defended methodological individualism. ... By his close collaboration with the most eminent liberal scholars in all parts of the world and his founding of the Mont Perelin Society, Hayek amply demonstrated his dedication and his leadership.
F.A. von Hayek - Hero of the Day, by John C. LeGere,
The Daily Objectivist, 2000
Biographical profile published by
The Daily Objectivist
In 1944 he dedicated The Road to Serfdom to 'The Socialists of All Parties,' generously presuming that 'they would recoil if they became convinced that the realization of their program would mean the destruction of freedom.' Their schemes, he argued in this sober warning, had already led to tyranny in Germany and Russia, and good intentions would not save them.
Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), by
Peter J. Boettke,
The Freeman, Aug 1992
Lengthy biographical essay, including Hayek's criticism of Keynes and the impact of
The Road to Serfdom
Though his 1974 Nobel Prize was in Economic Science, [Hayek's] scholarly endeavors extended well beyond economics. He published 130 articles and 25 books on topics 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 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.
Friedrich the Great, by
Virginia Postrel,
The Boston Globe, 11 Jan 2004
Biographical essay, including Hayek's insights on cognitive science and his influence on postmodernism
Hayek, who died in 1992, was not just any economist. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974. His 1945 article, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," is a touchstone work on the role of prices in coordinating dispersed information. His 1944 bestseller The Road to Serfdom helped catalyze the free-market political movement in the United States and continues to sell thousands of copies a year ... Indeed, Hayek is increasingly recognized as one of the 20th century's most profound and important theorists, one whose work included political theory, philosophy of science, even cognitive psychology.
Hayek and the Scots on Liberty [PDF], by Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr.,
The Journal of Private Enterprise, 2015
Explores the influence of the eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophers, mainly David Hume and Adam Smith, on Hayek's thinking about liberty and concepts such as natural law theory
Hayek raised freedom to the 'supreme principle.' In his trilogy, Hayek advances the conception of the Scottish philosophers, their Whig allies in politics, the common law tradition, the later contributions of German historians, and, of course, Menger. Hayek (1973a) [Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume I] provides the most complete and systematic theoretical case for his view of liberty. Some of his ideas on the limitations of knowledge and the emergence of order were developed in his economic work. ... His uniting economic analysis with legal and moral theories was a distinctively Hayekian contribution.
Henry Hazlitt: An Appreciation, by
Roy Childs,
Richard M. Ebeling, Nov 1985
Tribute to Hazlitt on his 91st birthday, reviews his career and works
When F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1944, the publishers didn't expect much of the book. But when Hazlitt submitted a rave review to the New York Times Book Review, calling it the most important political book of that generation, the editor of the review had it published on page one, launching the book immediately onto the bestseller lists, and its visibility onto every major college campus in America. Needless to add, it was Hayek's book, more than any other, that established the credibility of libertarian ideas to intellectuals and academics alike ...
Herbert Spencer: Liberty and Unlimited Human Progress, by
Jim Powell,
The Freeman, Apr 1995
Biographical profile, highlighting
Social Statics and his acquaintance with Andrew Carnegie
Again and again, Spencer emphasized how extraordinary human progress develops naturally when people are free. Consider this passage from
Principles of Sociology:
... by spontaneous cooperation of citi-zens have been formed canals, railways, telegraphs ... Knowledge developing into science ... now guides productive activities at large, has resulted from the workings of individuals prompted not by the ruling agency but by their own inclinations ...
Spencer anticipated the work of Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek who reminded the world why spontaneous market action, not central planning, is responsible for humanity's most stunning achievements.
How I Became a Libertarian and an Austrian Economist, by
Richard M. Ebeling, 2 May 2016
Autobiographical essay highlighting the people and events who influenced Ebeling in his path to libertarianism and Austrian economics
When Hayek won the Nobel Prize in 1974, my professors were flabbergasted ... Some had never heard of him; others only knew him as the author of The Road to Serfdom and they asked what that had to do with "real economics"? ... [T]he especial highlight of these two summers [in 1975 and 1977] was that for both of them Friedrich A. Hayek ... was present as a senior research fellow ... [He] was the epitome of the old world Viennese gentleman, generous with his time, patient with questions many of which he must have heard a hundred times over his long career, and often amusingly self-deprecating ...
Related Topics:
Economics,
Austrian Economics,
Bettina Bien Greaves,
Institute for Humane Studies,
Israel Kirzner,
Ludwig Lachmann,
Libertarianism,
Man, Economy, and State,
Ludwig von Mises,
Ayn Rand,
Murray N. Rothbard
How Star Wars Can Lead America Off the Dark Path, by Dan Sanchez, 4 May 2017
Examines the first two Star Wars trilogies, drawing parallels to 20th and 21st century U.S. and world history, and draws lessons from the films that could help the United States from "giving in to the dark side"
As F.A. Hayek explained in
The Road to Serfdom, such an impulse toward dictatorship among those "impatient with the impotence of democracy," ... occurs frequently. He argued that it is a function of citizens giving their republics too expansive a mandate for addressing the ills of society through central planning. As Hayek put it:
"... agreement that planning is necessary, together with the inability of democratic assemblies to produce a plan, will evoke stronger and stronger demands that the government or some single individual should be given powers to act on their own responsibility ..."
Immortal Keynes?, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 23 May 2014
Examines reasons for the continued acceptance of Keynes' economic prescriptions, surveying Lawrence H. White's
The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years (2012)
"Hayek, by contrast," White continues,
objected exactly to the 'never mind why' approach. He considered it an irresponsible search for a superficial fix: "I cannot help regarding the increasing concentration on short-run effects ... not only as a serious and dangerous intellectual error, but as a betrayal of the main duty of the economist and a grave menace to our civilisation."
Hayek, Robbins, and Mises, in contrast to Keynes, could explain the initial downturn in terms of the malinvestment induced by the central bank's creation of money and its low-interest-rate policies during the 1920s.
Individual Liberty and Civil Society, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
Freedom Daily, Feb 1993
Reflects on Benjamin Constant's lecture "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns" on what liberty meant to the ancient Greeks vs. the 19th century Europeans and Americans and about the 20th century reversion to statism
[C]umulatively these various social worlds of civil society [in which each individual participates], with all the relationships within each of them and between them, create what the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek called the spontaneous social order. He called it a spontaneous order because the institutions, associations and activities among men that are the elements of this order are not the result of any prior plan or regulated design; instead, they arise, evolve and maintain themselves as a result of the independent actions and interactions of the members of society.
The Invisible Gnomes and the Invisible Hand: South Park and Libertarian Philosophy, by Paul Cantor, 4 Dec 2006
General discussion of
South Park with more detailed review and discussion of the season 2 "Gnomes" episode
Hayek noted [the] tendency to misinterpret normal business activities as sinister:
Such distrust and fear have ... led ordinary people ... to regard trade ... as suspicious, inferior, dishonest, and contemptible ... That a mere change of hands should lead to a gain in value to all participants, that it need not mean gain to one at the expense of the others ..., was ... intuitively difficult to grasp ... Many people continue to find the mental feats associated with trade easy to discount even when they do not attribute them to sorcery, or see them as depending on trick or fraud or cunning deceit.
Is Edward Snowden a Lawbreaker?, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 28 Jun 2013
Considers, in the light of the writings of Lysander Spooner in his "A Letter to Grover Cleveland", whether Edward Snowden "broke the law" by his disclosures of NSA telephone and internet data collection
[Snowden] may have violated the terms of legislation passed by Congress and signed by a president (criminal intent would have to be proved), but a venerable line of thought says legislation is not the same thing as law. (F.A. Hayek drew the distinction, obviously, in Law, Legislation, and Liberty, volume 1: "Unlike law itself, which has never been 'invented' in the same sense, the invention of legislation came relatively late in the history of mankind.")
Israel M. Kirzner and the Austrian Theory of Competition and Entrepreneurship, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
Freedom Daily, Aug 2001
Written on occasion of Kirzner's academic retirement at age 71; begins with biographical summary and then focuses on Kirzner's understanding of entrepreneurs in the market "process" and the detrimental effects of government intervention in the market
Over the years, many internationally renowned economists, including Friedrich A. Hayek, participated in the [Austrian economics] colloquium [at NYU] sessions ... [W]hy should the discovery and earning of such profits be considered "good" from the wider social point of view? Part of Kirzner's answer is a development of Hayek's insight that corresponding to the division of labor in society is an inevitable division of knowledge ... Hayek emphasized that the coordination of the actions of millions of specialized producers and consumers around the global market is brought about through the price system.
The life and times of F.A. Hayek, who explained why political liberty is impossible without economic liberty, by
Jim Powell,
LibertyStory.net, 2000
Lengthy biographical essay, with extensive quotes; alternate version of "The Worst on Top" chapter of
The Triumph of Liberty (2000)
Hayek was an extraordinarily learned man. His knowledge and insights spanned not only economics, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1974, but also philosophy, history and even psychology ... Stephen Kresge, Editor of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ... likens Hayek's global reputation to that of the physicists Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein ... He was a thin, distinguished-looking man who stood an inch or two over six feet. He had a small gray moustache and, in his later years, neatly-combed white hair. He spoke in a slow, thoughtful manner with a thick Austrian accent.
Related Topics:
Capitalism,
Democracy,
Milton Friedman,
Government,
Frank Knight,
Law,
Rule of Law,
Liberty,
Carl Menger,
Ludwig von Mises,
Money,
Mont Pelerin Society,
Nobel Prize,
George Orwell,
Karl Popper,
Socialism,
Thomas Sowell,
Vienna
Life of Liberty: Robert Nozick, R.I.P., by
Richard A. Epstein,
National Review Online, 24 Jan 2002
Memorial tribute, comparing Nozick to Hayek and discussing some of the arguments he made in
Anarchy, State and Utopia
Hayek was an economist by training who wrote against the backdrop of the failed experiment of European socialism. He championed the decentralized systems of decision-making and rebelled against the planned economy that rested on dubious social calculations. Hayek was not a believer in the power of reason to think our way to sound social conclusions. He believed that markets worked well because prices allowed people to signal to each other as to the value they attached to certain resources, without having to give lengthy explanations as to the uses to which those resources were put.
Milei's First Year: Liberty, Less Regulation, Low Inflation, by Michael Munger,
The Daily Economy, 29 Jan 2025
Summarizes the accomplishments of Javier Milei's administration in Argentina in 2024, the first year of his presidency
The other aspect of Milei's program has been putting an end to the anarchy that had characterized Argentinian economic and industrial policy. FA Hayek's Road to Serfdom famously argued that the problem with central planning and price controls—which is what Hayek meant by the generic term "socialism"—lead to a cascade of regulations that fix the distortions caused by the previous round of regulations that fixed distortions of the original policies. Trying to achieve social goals by managing prices blocks the information function of a freely adjusting market system ...
Module 11: The "Austrian" Case for the Free Market
Eleventh module of the Cato Home Study Course, includes link to listen or download audio program (2:56:27), questions and suggested readings
As F. A. Hayek later noted, 'When Socialism first appeared in 1922, its impact was profound. It gradually but fundamentally altered the outlook of many of the young idealists returning to their university studies after World War I. I know, for I was one of them. ...' ... Hayek devoted great attention to understanding the proper role of law in guaranteeing rights and became convinced that law itself was a discovery process, analogous to the market process. Just as market institutions evolve, so the legal order is the result of an evolutionary process. The market is a spontaneous order that cannot be planned in advance.
Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 32: Friedrich A. Hayek and the Case for the Denationalization of Money, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
Freedom Daily, Aug 1999
Shows the progression of Hayek's thinking on money from 1945 when he was agreeable to central monetary control to 1976 when he advocated a system of private competing currencies
In April 1945, [Hayek] appeared on an NBC radio broadcast ... Fifteen years later, in his treatise The Constitution of Liberty (1960), [he] argued, "The experience of the last fifty years has taught most people the importance of a stable monetary system ..." ... Another 15 years later ..., [his] views on money and monetary policy radically changed. About a year after being awarded the Nobel Prize ..., he delivered a lecture on "International Money" ... at a conference in Switzerland. In early 1976, it was published ... as a monograph under the title Choice in Currency: A Way to Stop Inflation.
Money and Banking, by Lawrence H. White,
The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 15 Aug 2008
Discusses some of the issues regarding money, whether state- or privately issued, and banking, including central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking and free (fully unregulated) banking
F. A. Hayek reintroduced the idea of the "denationalization of money" in the context of fiat (unbacked) monetary standards. Hayek argued that competition among private producers of fiat money would keep its purchasing power more stable. Other libertarian monetary economists endorse Hayek's call for an end to legal restrictions against private money, but they question his predictions that dozens of distinct monetary units would circulate in parallel in the same economy or that the public would prefer unbacked private money to the more traditional sort of commodity-backed private money.
Mont Pelerin: 1947-1978: The Road to Libertarianism, by
Ralph Raico,
Libertarian Review, Jan 1979
Reviews the presentations and discussions at the 1978 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, with an overview of the Society's history and particularly the 1958 meeting which had similar themes
In addition to presenting material to appear in the third volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty, F.A. Hayek presented a postscript on "The Three Sources of Human Values." He examined the errors of sociobiology, the evolution of self-maintaining complex structures, rules of conduct, the discipline of freedom, and the reemergence of suppressed primordial instincts; and criticized both Marx and Freud ... Hayek set the atmosphere for the rest of the meeting by his optimistic attitude toward the change in the intellectual climate. The intellectual world, he said, is witnessing a reversal of the dominance of collectivist ideas.
The Mont Pelerin Society's 50th Anniversary, by Greg Kaza,
The Freeman, Jun 1997
Historical and anecdotal essay about the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society and its first meeting, including insights on post World War II Germany
In 1944, Hayek wrote a seminal book, The Road to Serfdom, which argued that government central planning inevitably led to the rise of the totalitarian socialist state ... After writing [it], Hayek toured the United States. The trip contributed to his decision to issue a call to free-market advocates to meet ... "I have been surprised," Hayek said in his opening address ..., "by the number of isolated men whom I found in different places, working on essentially the same problems and on very similar lines ... they are, however, constantly forced to defend the basic elements of their beliefs ..."
My Life as a Libertarian, by
D. T. Armentano, 21 Jul 2003
Lengthy autobiographical essay, describing among other things, how he took an interest in antitrust policy and wrote several books and articles on the subject, and his disappointment when attempting to stop Connecticut from imposing a state income tax
What is notable about [the 1975 Austrian Economics Conference at Hartford], aside from some path-breaking papers by John Hagel and Walter Grinder, among others, is that F.A. Hayek was in attendance for several days. I remember driving him around Hartford in my small Honda. Sadly, although Hayek had recently been awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics, I could not convince either of Hartford's two newspapers to send a reporter up for an interview. Such was the dismal intellectual state of the world in 1975!
On Keynes as a Practical Economist, by
Julian Simon,
The Freeman, Aug 1996
Brief discussion of the predictions made by Keynes, in his 1919 book
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, about probable shortages of certain natural resources in the United States and Europe after World War I
Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel-prize winner and Keynes's greatest opponent of the 1930s—but also a personal friend—said of Keynes much later, however, that 'He was so convinced that he was cleverer than all the other people that he thought his instinct told him what ought to be done, and he would invent a theory to convince people to do it.' ... F. A. Hayek, Hayek on Hayek—An Autobiographical Dialogue edited by Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 97.
On the Origins of the Modern Libertarian Legal Movement [PDF], by Roger Pilon,
Chapman Law Review, 2013
Historical survey of libertarian influences on constitutional and other areas of law, from the mid-1970s to recent decisions
No event precisely marks the rebirth of modern libertarianism—remnants of the classical view endured, to be sure ... But a useful marker is of course the 1944 publication of F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, a withering critique of central planning. An Austrian economist but in truth a polymath, Hayek would go on to publish broadly philosophical works—The Constitution of Liberty in 1960 and the three-volume Law, Legislation, and Liberty in the 1970s, among much else ...
Popper, Karl (1902-1994), by
Jeremy Shearmur,
The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 15 Aug 2008
Biographical and bibliographical essay
When living in Vienna, Popper was a socialist, and The Open Society reflected its radical character. Nevertheless, both he and F. A. Hayek were struck by strong similarities between some of its features and Hayek's Road to Serfdom. In later years, Popper's views became closer to those of Hayek, and he became convinced that the political pursuit of equality was a danger to liberty ... Popper's political views did not change substantially ... Although he recognized free markets as useful, he did not share Hayek's optimism about the self-coordinating characteristics of a market-based social order.
The Pretense of Regulatory Knowledge, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 3 Oct 2008
Written shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, amidst calls for "re-regulation" of financial markets, contrasts regulation and central planning vs. the market discipline
F.A. Hayek described the knowledge problem in his seminal 1945 paper, "The Use of Knowledge in Society." There he wrote,
The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess ... [T]o put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.
Private Property and the Rule of Law: Paul Craig Roberts III and The Spirit Of Friedrich Hayek [PDF], by Michael D. White, 1992
Commentary introducing the 1992 Frank M. Engle Lecture, "'Takings,' the economy, and legal and property rights", delivered by Paul Craig Roberts at The American College, Bryn Mawr, PA, on 11 May 1992
Another Nobel Laureate, Friedrich Hayek (who was born two years after Frank Engle), now seems ahead of his time for his prescient recognition of the dangers of encroaching government regulation and control. He advocated a climate of freedom for the cultivation of human dignity, prosperity, and economic security. For this reason he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom shortly before he died in March of this year. Hayek was a leader of the Austrian school of economics, which affirmed the philosophical and qualitative nature of economic thought, not just mathematical modeling and statistical analysis.
Rand, Ayn (1905-1982), by
Chris Matthew Sciabarra,
The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 15 Aug 2008
Biographical and bibliographical essay, also examining Rand's relationships with several leading thinkers
By contrast [to Ludwig von Mises], Rand did not take well to the writings of F. A. Hayek. Hayek, a student and associate of Mises and an eventual Nobel laureate in economics, had published The Road to Serfdom in 1944. In her Marginalia, Rand expressed the conviction that Hayek's work was "real poison" because it compromised the case for freedom with various "collectivist" and "altruist" justifications. For Rand, such compromises made Hayek a "pernicious enemy" of the individualist movement; nothing less than a full, moral defense of unadulterated laissez-faire capitalism would do.
Reading the Literature of Liberty, by
Roy A. Childs, Jr., May 1987
Childs' selection of "great books" on liberty and libertarianism, including works by Hazlitt, Bastiat, Rose Wilder Lane, Nock, Ayn Rand, Friedman, Hayek, Rothbard, Mises and Nozick
Next I'd recommend the works of F. A. Hayek. His seminal work The Road to Serfdom was first published in 1944 and has become a classic warning against the dangers to freedom inherent in the planned economy; it's as powerful today as the day it was written. Chapters like "Why the Worst Get on Top" and "The End of Truth" are both provocative and chilling. Don't pass this one up! Then move on to not one but two other masterpieces by Hayek: The Constitution of Liberty and the three volume set Law, Legislation, and Liberty. These are among the most richly rewarding books you will ever read.
Related Topics:
Frédéric Bastiat,
For a New Liberty,
Milton Friedman,
Henry Hazlitt,
The Law,
Libertarianism,
Man, Economy, and State,
Ludwig von Mises,
Albert Jay Nock,
Ayn Rand,
The Road to Serfdom,
Murray N. Rothbard
Socialism, by Robert Heilbroner,
The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Describes socialism by reviewing policies in the USSR from the 1917 revolution to the
perestroika of 1987 and then discussing the central planning arguments between Mises, Hayek and Lange
In the mid-1930s, while the Russian industrialization drive was at full tilt, few raised their voices about its problems. Among those few were Ludwig von Mises ... and Friedrich Hayek, of much more contemplative temperament, later to be awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in monetary theory ... [T]he information ...—"produce this, not that"—needed for a coherent economy ..., Hayek emphasized, emerged spontaneously in a market system from the rise and fall of prices ... Mises called socialism "impossible" ... Hayek added additional reasons of a sociological kind ("the worst rise on top").
Szasz on the Liberal Tradition, by
David Gordon,
The Mises Review, Sep 2004
Review of Szasz' book
Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices, highlighting his criticisms of J.S. Mill, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard and Nozick
In like fashion, Hayek's insistence on the rule of law has implications that Szasz finds congenial. The rule of law, as Hayek conceives it, requires that legislation group people in objective categories. Absent this, they stand vulnerable to the arbitrary acts of government agents. If one accepts Szasz's view that there are no objective criteria of mental illness, it at once follows that the law can take no account of it. Hayek declined to draw this conclusion, and Szasz has no patience with his acceptance of the 'doctrinal claim' that those diagnosed as mentally ill bear no responsibility for their actions ...
The Undiscountable Professor Kirzner, by Roger W. Garrison,
The Freeman, Aug 1997
Review of Kirzner's 1996
Essays on Capital and Interest, a collection of three previously published essays
The right triangle, which Hayek introduced in his Prices and Production, gave him a leg up on Keynes, who paid no attention to production time. Consumer spending was represented by one leg of the triangle. This macroeconomic magnitude had the attention of both Keynes and Hayek The other leg tracks the goods-in-process ... The Hayekian triangle allows us to show that (1) increased saving can make for more output but only in the more-distant future and (2) monetary expansion can deceive the market and derail the process that would otherwise keep production plans on track with intertemporal consumption preference.
Up From Freedom: Friedrich von Hayek and the Defence of Liberty, by
Richard M. Ebeling,
ama-gi, 1996
Opens with biographical and bibliographical details and then discusses Hayek's insights. concluding that he was fortunate to witness the collapse of communism which "demonstrated the practical impossibility" of social engineering
Born on May 8, 1899, Professor Hayek served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War ... At the end of the war, he returned to Vienna and earned a doctorate in law with an emphasis in economics ... In 1929 ... he was invited by the London School of Economics to deliver a series of lectures ... The success of these lectures also resulted in him being appointed the Tooke Professor of Economics and Statistics at the University of London ... In 1950, Hayek moved to the University of Chicago as professor of social and moral philosophy, a position he held until 1962.
Venezuela Reminds Us That Socialism Frequently Leads to Dictatorship, by
Marian Tupy, 4 Apr 2017
Comments on the political events and economic situation in Venezuela, and Hayek's warnings against central planning
Last week's episode is only the latest reminder of the tendency of socialism to lead to dictatorship, as identified by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. In 1944, when he wrote his book, Hayek noted that the crimes of the German [Nazis] and Soviet Communists were, in great part, the result of growing state control over the economy ... Hayek was fortunate enough to live to see the defeat of both ... totalitarian regimes. Unfortunately, there are still places where Hayek's most dire warnings remain relevant. Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela is one such place.
Where Free-Market Economists Go Wrong, by
Sheldon Richman,
The Goal Is Freedom, 1 Feb 2008
In view of the early 2008 economic stimulus proposals, admonishes free-market economists and libertarians who fail to point out that the current economic system is not truly a free market but rather a corporatist, government interventionist system
F.A. Hayek never spoke more wisely than when he said, "What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible." ["The Intellectuals and Socialism", The University of Chicago Law Review, Spring 1949]
Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism, by Peter G. Klein,
Mises Daily, 15 Nov 2006
Examines the underlying reasons why so many academics support socialist ideas, not reflecting those of the general population, and how this changed from the mid-20th century
F. A. Hayek offered a partial explanation in his 1949 essay "The Intellectuals and Socialism." Hayek asked why "the more active, intelligent and original men among [American] intellectuals ... most frequently incline toward socialism." His answer is based on the opportunities available to people of varying talents ... Hayek argues that exceptionally intelligent people who favor the market tend to find opportunities for professional and financial success outside the Academy ... Those who are highly intelligent but ill-disposed toward the market are more likely to choose an academic career.
