13 ms·

Friedrich Hayek on Evolution and Spontaneous Order (1983) [video]

113 points by eigenvalue 6y ago

eigenvalue 6y ago
It's a bit hard to focus on because of his accent and slow speaking style, but if you can stick with it, this is a fantastic lecture filled with interesting and stimulating ideas. I hadn't realized prior to listening to this that Darwin had in fact gotten many of his ideas on evolution from the social sciences, particularly Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
- thoughtstheseus 6y ago
  Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is surprisingly readable to laypeople.
- SllX 6y ago
  Friedrich Hayek put the Austrian in Austrian Economics; the term was invented by the Germans and was meant to be disparaging towards him and others like him. Hayek has an extensive body of written work, the jewel of which is “The Road to Serfdom”. Russ Roberts of the Hoover Institute has hosted an ongoing podcast called EconTalk[1] that while not studying Hayek specifically, often brings a Hayekian viewpoint to his discussions with guests. [1] https://www.econtalk.org/ https://www.econtalk.org/
  - eigenvalue 6y ago
    This an interesting interview with Hayek from 1982: https://www.cato.org/policy-report/february-1982/interview-fa-hayek https://www.cato.org/policy-report/february-1982/interview-f... His quote here makes me think he would have rejoiced at the idea of Bitcoin: "Well, I have despaired of ever again finding a way of restraining government abuse of any money which it issues. My proposal to denationalize money was always in a sense Utopian because governments will never freely allow competition in this business. I believe there are ways around this, and my present view—which I hope before long to state in detail—is that there is probably a possibility of not issuing currency but starting with credit accounts under some other name—say, call the unit a “stable” and promise to redeem it with enough of whatever current monies are required to buy a certain list of raw materials. So it doesn’t involve issuing any circulating money, but it enables the holder to keep a stable unit in the form of a credit. Once you’ve succeeded in this, the next step would be issuing credit cards on these accounts. And then you have circumvented the whole monopoly of government. Since it is politically impractical to deprive the government of its monopoly, you have to circumvent it."
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
      > His quote here makes me think he would have rejoiced at the idea of Bitcoin: Except for the “stable” part
    - SllX 6y ago
      Bookmarked (well, saved to Instapaper). Thank you for link.
    - neilwilson 6y ago
      If you’ve ever tried paying your taxes in Bitcoin you’ll have discovered the limitation of this viewpoint. The government monopoly isn’t over money. You can use and issue whatever money you can get others to accept. The monopoly is over the denomination required to extinguish the liability that government has the legal power to impose upon you and while you live in its sovereign area. Aka taxation Ultimately you cannot circumvent state money while there are states that control land areas. You will always need their money to pay taxes and that need is sufficient to allow a state to provision itself - since the only place to get the denomination is from the state in exchange for goods and services
      - TomMarius 6y ago
        > You can use and issue whatever money you can get others to accept. Nope. You can't just issue money, and you have to accept the state currency in most places on Earth. Paying taxes using Bitcoin is mostly easier than using cash thanks to services that will do a bankwire for you, so what.
        neilwilson 6y ago
        "Nope. You can't just issue money," Look up "contra entry". http://desktophelp.sage.co.uk/sage200/sage200standard/Content/Concepts/MoneyInOutContra.htm http://desktophelp.sage.co.uk/sage200/sage200standard/Conten... All business credit is issuing money, and as the contra shows you can easily settle debts with it. "Paying taxes using Bitcoin is mostly easier than using cash" Where do those services get the state money from? The service are providing the exchange for you. That's not paying taxes in Bitcoin. That is paying an exchange service to pay your liability in dollars for you. Exchanging a liability isn't extinguishing it. The Treasury account at the Fed doesn't accept Bitcoin. At that's ultimately the bit you've missed. Follow the transactions through transitively and see if you can eliminate state money from the process completely. You won't be able to.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    In the same vein: https://cafehayek.com https://cafehayek.com
  - nickik 6y ago
    > Friedrich Hayek put the Austrian in Austrian Economics No he didn't. The concept of 'Austrian Economics' was applied to Carl Menger a central part of the marginal revolution of the late 1800s. His books 1871 – 'Principles of Economics' and 'Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics'. Are the foundation stone of Austrian economics.
    - SllX 6y ago
      Hmm, if that’s the case then my understanding here was shallower than I thought and I have some reading of Menger to do.
      - nickik 6y ago
        If you want some more detail, the term Austrian specifically was defined by the German Historical School. It was over a debate of method. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodenstreit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodenstreit The most important Austrians you might want to study are: - Carl Menger (Microeconomics, Methodology) - Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (Capital Theory, Famous for Marxist critics) - Friedrich von Wieser (Oppertunity cost) - Ludwig von Mises (Methodology, Buissess Cycle Theory, Political Philosophy) - F.A. Hayek (Buissess Cycle Theory, Information Economics, Political Philosophy) - Joseph Schumpeter (Austrian educated but went his own way in many ways) - Fritz Machlup (Buissess Cycle Theory, Trade) - Israel Kirzner, not actual Austrian (Entrepreneurship) - Murry Rothbard, also not Austrian (Political Philosophy) Of these Hayek, Schumpeter, Machlup and Mises all eventually tought in the US and Kirzner and Murry are US studends of them. There are books on the topic: - The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, & Institutions Today there is split between those influence by Murray Rothbard, who has a perticular interpretation of Mises and very extrem views in many ways. The 'Ludwig von Mises Institute' is pushing this view, they are partly a lobby organisation. I don't think much of them. They tend to dislike Hayek. There is the more traditional more academic branch, tody mostly represented by George Mason University.
  - krrrh 6y ago
    Another good place to start is with his 1945 paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society [1]. It’s readable in a single sitting, and packed with insights that go far beyond economics. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Soci... https://www.fee.org/articles/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society https://www.fee.org/articles/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society
seibelj 6y ago
The Road to Serfdom should be required reading for anyone who considers themselves a thinking person. I am a libertarian but have read a lot of philosophy from the major thinkers who encompass all points on the political spectrum. If you consider yourself educated and convicted in your beliefs, you should especially focus on those who disagree with you to ensure you truly believe in your principles. The Austrian School of economics has a niche diehard following but I'm not sure how seriously they can be taken for several reasons. However, I am a fan of their opinions on "hard money", and do not like governments printing endless "fiat" currency, which is also why I have devoted several years of my life to cryptocurrency. Don't dismiss Hayek out-of-hand. Give him a fair shake, even if you are on the left. Edit: amused by the downvoted from lurkers. People don’t like to read about views that disagree with their own, in these monoculture times.
- erostrate 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more, as someone very much on the left. I read The Road to Serfdom and along with Smith and Basquiat it made me a libertarian early on. Later I turned and I'm now very much on the left but still respect Hayek's ideas and arguments.
  - incompatible 6y ago
    Libertarianism has left and right variants: the right retains private property, and the associated government functions, while the left is also known as anarcho-communism. We really need special economic zones for experimenting with alternative economic and social systems. Unfortunately, the tradition has been to have a single system for an entire country, and if not all people want it, too bad.
    - SllX 6y ago
      So a little SEZ if you want to experience what it was like to live under the Divine Right of Kings and its associated aristocracy and serfdom[1][2], a little SEZ if you want to experience Christian theocracy[3][4], a little SEZ if you want to experience a degenerate lawless unproductive commune without domestic agriculture[5], and a little SEZ if you want to live free[6]? States don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re constantly experimenting as it is, if you want to call politics experimenting, and every new law or ordinance passed, every new executive order issued, every new opinion written by the courts and every new verdict reached by a Jury changes the “system” a little. You could call it the ultimate experiment in reflective social programming if you want to get nerdy about it, but I wouldn’t use such terms myself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
Hayek deserves so much more recognition. Now more than ever - we need people to understand the fundamental inadequacy of central planning.
- wavefunction 6y ago
  The problem I have with your particular statement is that you seem to be using a conspicuous lack of central planning as evidence that it's completely ineffective while past episodes involving central planning applied to deal with somewhat similar circumstances have shown it to be effective in tackling issues like ebola outbreaks, swine flu or other pandemics that do not respect federalism, "local control" or pure ideology divorced from rational thought.
  - SllX 6y ago
    Missions would be inefficient if they weren’t centrally planned. Markets would be inefficient if they were centrally planned.
  - jesuschroist 6y ago
    But this is just what Hayek's work is all about: to show _why_ central planning is ineffective. It works with theoretical arguments and there is no need to use real-life examples.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Federalism reflects a principle that works even in a pandemic response, which is that local units of government are better equipped to evaluate the local situation and respond accordingly. The federal government was too big and ponderous to quickly react to the situation in NYC (which after all comprises a mere 2.5% of the US population). Meanwhile, other states locked down too quickly and for hard because that’s what was required in NYC. Note that when the pandemic hit, the EU room a back seat to the National governments, even though the EU has a CDC itself. And in Japan success was largely due to local effort: https://fee.org/articles/did-japan-beat-covid-19-with-a-decentralized-response/ https://fee.org/articles/did-japan-beat-covid-19-with-a-dece... See also: https://www.hoover.org/research/decentralize-covid-19-response https://www.hoover.org/research/decentralize-covid-19-respon...
blockchainman 6y ago
Very surprised to see F.A Hayek on HN. I would recommend the Road to Serfdom to anyone who is interested in learning more about his viewpoint. Also reading Thomas Sowell wouldn’t hurt either.
- Karishma1234 6y ago
  Surprised me as well. Milton Friedman's Free to Choose (book and tv) remains so much relevant reading in 2020. Hayek was very hard to comprehend because his writing is information dense. You have to read a sentence carefully few times to full comprehend it.
- miles 6y ago
  There have been a number of Hayek posts, though sadly few of them gained much traction: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hayek https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hayek For those new to Hayek, here is an entertaining overview: Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  I agree that the Road to Serfdom is an interesting read. Even if you don't share the really conservative view of the author (and the Austrian school as a whole), it gives you the ideological background that underlied the dismantling of the western Welfare State (which is what Hayek calls “road to serfdom”) during the 80s and 90s.
  - nickik 6y ago
    In Raod to Sefdom Hayek acknowledges that basic welfare, health and retirment polices are consistant with a liberal state. What it gave a backround to was dismanteling a lot of the idioitc regulatory structures and inflationary spending of the 1970s.
    - littlestymaar 6y ago
viburnum 6y ago
Why is spontaneous order desirable? Pandemics are spontaneously ordered too. IIRC, when pressed on this, Hayek resorted to a kind of crude biopolitcs -- market societies had more population growth so that made them better.
- jaekash 6y ago
  > Why is spontaneous order desirable? Because it is not order obtained through force? What other means are there to obtain order?
  - viburnum 6y ago
    Hayek himself recognized that people are forced to submit to the market. He just approved of that kind of submission. I got bad news for you guys, Hayek was just making excuses for rich people running the world.
    - jaekash 6y ago
      > Hayek himself recognized that people are forced to submit to the market. How are you forced to submit to the market? I really don't get it. If you don't want to participate, don't.
- nickik 6y ago
  Because many thing, perticularly complex system can only be 'created' by spontaneous order.
- tomhoward 6y ago
  > Why is spontaneous order desirable? Pandemics are spontaneously ordered too. I don't think it's a question of what is "desirable", but rather a question of what is inevitable. Sure, bacterial/viral/parasite outbreaks are part of natural systems, and have their own spontaneous order, but the way their host systems react and respond is also a manifestation of spontaneous order. In modern society this is true whether we're talking about planned/centralised economies or more laissez faire ones. I.e., even in a relatively centralised society like China, grassroots decisions and actions still play a highly significant role in overall activity, including in the pandemic. It's a subject of ongoing study and debate as to the effectiveness and efficiency of centralised attempts to control organic processes.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
Hayek was influenced by Bastiat's idea of Economic Harmony -- a story of spontaneous order. Also, Hayek was influenced by Henry Charles Carey, who wrote about harmony in economics and the unity of sciences. He was Abraham Lincoln's economic advisor and put in place "The American System". Both theorists offer a classical middle ground between completely free trade and government control. They identify the objective principle as harmony and indicate the way to get there is through liberty -- and a sprinkling of protectionism.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Hayek was a puppet of the Mont Pelerin Society, who were horrified by the evils of Keynesianism - mostly because they had to pay higher taxes - and set out to destroy its really rather successful economic record of relative stability and prosperity. The Road to Serfdom is - ironically, given the title - directly responsible for the modern horrors of the gig economy, systemic student and other debt, mass bankruptcies caused by monopolistic privatised healthcare, and the regular fraud/boom/bust cycle that has replaced real game-changing technological progress with dysfunctional financialisation, and "innovation" which consists of the consumerised repackaging of game-changing inventions that were mostly funded by state-sponsored research.
- logicchains 6y ago
  Do you have any actual criticisms of the policies he proposed? > systemic student and other debt The student debt problem is due to student loans not being dischargeable in bankrupty; this is certainly not something Hayek argued for. >by monopolistic privatised healthcare The cost of healthcare is to a significant degree driven by artificial limitations on the supply of doctors due to the government granting the AMA a monopoly on deciding who gets to be a doctor (and artificially limiting the number of medical places per year). This is also not something Hayek supported. >fraud/boom/bust cycle that has replaced real game-changing technological progress A lot of people would disagree that there has been less technological progress in the past decade or two than in earlier time periods. Even a decade ago, it was unthinkable that a machine could beat a human at Go. > set out to destroy its really rather successful economic record of relative stability and prosperity. The US experienced a higher rate of economic growth in the 1800s and early 1900s, before Keynesian policies were adopted, than it did afterwards.
- markhollis 6y ago
  The Mont-Pelerin society was established in 1947 by Hayek to promote more liberty with the world elites. There are pictures of him on the first conference with Mises. I'm genuinely curious what relative stability and prosperity you refer to. This was after the second world war.
bsenftner 6y ago
Friedrich Hayek is a Republican poster boy. There is no way to have an objecting conversation about Hayek in the United States, as his reputation has reached god-like status among the "free independent thinkers".
- dawg- 6y ago
  Yawn. Boring. I'd rather discuss his actual ideas than his misuse by party politics bullshitters.
- anm89 6y ago
  What a brilliant critique...
  - bsenftner 6y ago
    Not a critique, just pointing out discussion of his ideas is not possible in the States due to irrational elevation of Hayek by Conservatives.

113 points by eigenvalue 6y ago

It's a bit hard to focus on because of his accent and slow speaking style, but if you can stick with it, this is a fantastic lecture filled with interesting and stimulating ideas. I hadn't realized prior to listening to this that Darwin had in fact gotten many of his ideas on evolution from the social sciences, particularly Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

thoughtstheseus 6y ago
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is surprisingly readable to laypeople.
SllX 6y ago
Friedrich Hayek put the Austrian in Austrian Economics; the term was invented by the Germans and was meant to be disparaging towards him and others like him. Hayek has an extensive body of written work, the jewel of which is “The Road to Serfdom”. Russ Roberts of the Hoover Institute has hosted an ongoing podcast called EconTalk[1] that while not studying Hayek specifically, often brings a Hayekian viewpoint to his discussions with guests. [1] https://www.econtalk.org/ https://www.econtalk.org/
- eigenvalue 6y ago
  This an interesting interview with Hayek from 1982: https://www.cato.org/policy-report/february-1982/interview-fa-hayek https://www.cato.org/policy-report/february-1982/interview-f... His quote here makes me think he would have rejoiced at the idea of Bitcoin: "Well, I have despaired of ever again finding a way of restraining government abuse of any money which it issues. My proposal to denationalize money was always in a sense Utopian because governments will never freely allow competition in this business. I believe there are ways around this, and my present view—which I hope before long to state in detail—is that there is probably a possibility of not issuing currency but starting with credit accounts under some other name—say, call the unit a “stable” and promise to redeem it with enough of whatever current monies are required to buy a certain list of raw materials. So it doesn’t involve issuing any circulating money, but it enables the holder to keep a stable unit in the form of a credit. Once you’ve succeeded in this, the next step would be issuing credit cards on these accounts. And then you have circumvented the whole monopoly of government. Since it is politically impractical to deprive the government of its monopoly, you have to circumvent it."
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > His quote here makes me think he would have rejoiced at the idea of Bitcoin: Except for the “stable” part
  - SllX 6y ago
    Bookmarked (well, saved to Instapaper). Thank you for link.
  - neilwilson 6y ago
    If you’ve ever tried paying your taxes in Bitcoin you’ll have discovered the limitation of this viewpoint. The government monopoly isn’t over money. You can use and issue whatever money you can get others to accept. The monopoly is over the denomination required to extinguish the liability that government has the legal power to impose upon you and while you live in its sovereign area. Aka taxation Ultimately you cannot circumvent state money while there are states that control land areas. You will always need their money to pay taxes and that need is sufficient to allow a state to provision itself - since the only place to get the denomination is from the state in exchange for goods and services
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      > You can use and issue whatever money you can get others to accept. Nope. You can't just issue money, and you have to accept the state currency in most places on Earth. Paying taxes using Bitcoin is mostly easier than using cash thanks to services that will do a bankwire for you, so what.
      - neilwilson 6y ago
        "Nope. You can't just issue money," Look up "contra entry". http://desktophelp.sage.co.uk/sage200/sage200standard/Content/Concepts/MoneyInOutContra.htm http://desktophelp.sage.co.uk/sage200/sage200standard/Conten... All business credit is issuing money, and as the contra shows you can easily settle debts with it. "Paying taxes using Bitcoin is mostly easier than using cash" Where do those services get the state money from? The service are providing the exchange for you. That's not paying taxes in Bitcoin. That is paying an exchange service to pay your liability in dollars for you. Exchanging a liability isn't extinguishing it. The Treasury account at the Fed doesn't accept Bitcoin. At that's ultimately the bit you've missed. Follow the transactions through transitively and see if you can eliminate state money from the process completely. You won't be able to.
- kgwgk 6y ago
  In the same vein: https://cafehayek.com https://cafehayek.com
- nickik 6y ago
  > Friedrich Hayek put the Austrian in Austrian Economics No he didn't. The concept of 'Austrian Economics' was applied to Carl Menger a central part of the marginal revolution of the late 1800s. His books 1871 – 'Principles of Economics' and 'Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics'. Are the foundation stone of Austrian economics.
  - SllX 6y ago
    Hmm, if that’s the case then my understanding here was shallower than I thought and I have some reading of Menger to do.
    - nickik 6y ago
      If you want some more detail, the term Austrian specifically was defined by the German Historical School. It was over a debate of method. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodenstreit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodenstreit The most important Austrians you might want to study are: - Carl Menger (Microeconomics, Methodology) - Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (Capital Theory, Famous for Marxist critics) - Friedrich von Wieser (Oppertunity cost) - Ludwig von Mises (Methodology, Buissess Cycle Theory, Political Philosophy) - F.A. Hayek (Buissess Cycle Theory, Information Economics, Political Philosophy) - Joseph Schumpeter (Austrian educated but went his own way in many ways) - Fritz Machlup (Buissess Cycle Theory, Trade) - Israel Kirzner, not actual Austrian (Entrepreneurship) - Murry Rothbard, also not Austrian (Political Philosophy) Of these Hayek, Schumpeter, Machlup and Mises all eventually tought in the US and Kirzner and Murry are US studends of them. There are books on the topic: - The Austrian School of Economics: A History of Its Ideas, Ambassadors, & Institutions Today there is split between those influence by Murray Rothbard, who has a perticular interpretation of Mises and very extrem views in many ways. The 'Ludwig von Mises Institute' is pushing this view, they are partly a lobby organisation. I don't think much of them. They tend to dislike Hayek. There is the more traditional more academic branch, tody mostly represented by George Mason University.
- krrrh 6y ago
  Another good place to start is with his 1945 paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society [1]. It’s readable in a single sitting, and packed with insights that go far beyond economics. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Use_of_Knowledge_in_Soci... https://www.fee.org/articles/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society https://www.fee.org/articles/the-use-of-knowledge-in-society

seibelj 6y ago

The Road to Serfdom should be required reading for anyone who considers themselves a thinking person. I am a libertarian but have read a lot of philosophy from the major thinkers who encompass all points on the political spectrum. If you consider yourself educated and convicted in your beliefs, you should especially focus on those who disagree with you to ensure you truly believe in your principles. The Austrian School of economics has a niche diehard following but I'm not sure how seriously they can be taken for several reasons. However, I am a fan of their opinions on "hard money", and do not like governments printing endless "fiat" currency, which is also why I have devoted several years of my life to cryptocurrency. Don't dismiss Hayek out-of-hand. Give him a fair shake, even if you are on the left. Edit: amused by the downvoted from lurkers. People don’t like to read about views that disagree with their own, in these monoculture times.

erostrate 6y ago
Couldn't agree more, as someone very much on the left. I read The Road to Serfdom and along with Smith and Basquiat it made me a libertarian early on. Later I turned and I'm now very much on the left but still respect Hayek's ideas and arguments.
- incompatible 6y ago
  Libertarianism has left and right variants: the right retains private property, and the associated government functions, while the left is also known as anarcho-communism. We really need special economic zones for experimenting with alternative economic and social systems. Unfortunately, the tradition has been to have a single system for an entire country, and if not all people want it, too bad.
  - SllX 6y ago
    So a little SEZ if you want to experience what it was like to live under the Divine Right of Kings and its associated aristocracy and serfdom[1][2], a little SEZ if you want to experience Christian theocracy[3][4], a little SEZ if you want to experience a degenerate lawless unproductive commune without domestic agriculture[5], and a little SEZ if you want to live free[6]? States don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re constantly experimenting as it is, if you want to call politics experimenting, and every new law or ordinance passed, every new executive order issued, every new opinion written by the courts and every new verdict reached by a Jury changes the “system” a little. You could call it the ultimate experiment in reflective social programming if you want to get nerdy about it, but I wouldn’t use such terms myself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago

Hayek deserves so much more recognition. Now more than ever - we need people to understand the fundamental inadequacy of central planning.

wavefunction 6y ago
The problem I have with your particular statement is that you seem to be using a conspicuous lack of central planning as evidence that it's completely ineffective while past episodes involving central planning applied to deal with somewhat similar circumstances have shown it to be effective in tackling issues like ebola outbreaks, swine flu or other pandemics that do not respect federalism, "local control" or pure ideology divorced from rational thought.
- SllX 6y ago
  Missions would be inefficient if they weren’t centrally planned. Markets would be inefficient if they were centrally planned.
- jesuschroist 6y ago
  But this is just what Hayek's work is all about: to show _why_ central planning is ineffective. It works with theoretical arguments and there is no need to use real-life examples.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rayiner 6y ago
  Federalism reflects a principle that works even in a pandemic response, which is that local units of government are better equipped to evaluate the local situation and respond accordingly. The federal government was too big and ponderous to quickly react to the situation in NYC (which after all comprises a mere 2.5% of the US population). Meanwhile, other states locked down too quickly and for hard because that’s what was required in NYC. Note that when the pandemic hit, the EU room a back seat to the National governments, even though the EU has a CDC itself. And in Japan success was largely due to local effort: https://fee.org/articles/did-japan-beat-covid-19-with-a-decentralized-response/ https://fee.org/articles/did-japan-beat-covid-19-with-a-dece... See also: https://www.hoover.org/research/decentralize-covid-19-response https://www.hoover.org/research/decentralize-covid-19-respon...

blockchainman 6y ago

Very surprised to see F.A Hayek on HN. I would recommend the Road to Serfdom to anyone who is interested in learning more about his viewpoint. Also reading Thomas Sowell wouldn’t hurt either.

Karishma1234 6y ago
Surprised me as well. Milton Friedman's Free to Choose (book and tv) remains so much relevant reading in 2020. Hayek was very hard to comprehend because his writing is information dense. You have to read a sentence carefully few times to full comprehend it.
miles 6y ago
There have been a number of Hayek posts, though sadly few of them gained much traction: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hayek https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hayek For those new to Hayek, here is an entertaining overview: Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
littlestymaar 6y ago
I agree that the Road to Serfdom is an interesting read. Even if you don't share the really conservative view of the author (and the Austrian school as a whole), it gives you the ideological background that underlied the dismantling of the western Welfare State (which is what Hayek calls “road to serfdom”) during the 80s and 90s.
- nickik 6y ago
  In Raod to Sefdom Hayek acknowledges that basic welfare, health and retirment polices are consistant with a liberal state. What it gave a backround to was dismanteling a lot of the idioitc regulatory structures and inflationary spending of the 1970s.
  - littlestymaar 6y ago

viburnum 6y ago

Why is spontaneous order desirable? Pandemics are spontaneously ordered too. IIRC, when pressed on this, Hayek resorted to a kind of crude biopolitcs -- market societies had more population growth so that made them better.

jaekash 6y ago
> Why is spontaneous order desirable? Because it is not order obtained through force? What other means are there to obtain order?
- viburnum 6y ago
  Hayek himself recognized that people are forced to submit to the market. He just approved of that kind of submission. I got bad news for you guys, Hayek was just making excuses for rich people running the world.
  - jaekash 6y ago
    > Hayek himself recognized that people are forced to submit to the market. How are you forced to submit to the market? I really don't get it. If you don't want to participate, don't.
nickik 6y ago
Because many thing, perticularly complex system can only be 'created' by spontaneous order.
tomhoward 6y ago
> Why is spontaneous order desirable? Pandemics are spontaneously ordered too. I don't think it's a question of what is "desirable", but rather a question of what is inevitable. Sure, bacterial/viral/parasite outbreaks are part of natural systems, and have their own spontaneous order, but the way their host systems react and respond is also a manifestation of spontaneous order. In modern society this is true whether we're talking about planned/centralised economies or more laissez faire ones. I.e., even in a relatively centralised society like China, grassroots decisions and actions still play a highly significant role in overall activity, including in the pandemic. It's a subject of ongoing study and debate as to the effectiveness and efficiency of centralised attempts to control organic processes.

dr_dshiv 6y ago

Hayek was influenced by Bastiat's idea of Economic Harmony -- a story of spontaneous order. Also, Hayek was influenced by Henry Charles Carey, who wrote about harmony in economics and the unity of sciences. He was Abraham Lincoln's economic advisor and put in place "The American System". Both theorists offer a classical middle ground between completely free trade and government control. They identify the objective principle as harmony and indicate the way to get there is through liberty -- and a sprinkling of protectionism.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Hayek was a puppet of the Mont Pelerin Society, who were horrified by the evils of Keynesianism - mostly because they had to pay higher taxes - and set out to destroy its really rather successful economic record of relative stability and prosperity. The Road to Serfdom is - ironically, given the title - directly responsible for the modern horrors of the gig economy, systemic student and other debt, mass bankruptcies caused by monopolistic privatised healthcare, and the regular fraud/boom/bust cycle that has replaced real game-changing technological progress with dysfunctional financialisation, and "innovation" which consists of the consumerised repackaging of game-changing inventions that were mostly funded by state-sponsored research.

logicchains 6y ago
Do you have any actual criticisms of the policies he proposed? > systemic student and other debt The student debt problem is due to student loans not being dischargeable in bankrupty; this is certainly not something Hayek argued for. >by monopolistic privatised healthcare The cost of healthcare is to a significant degree driven by artificial limitations on the supply of doctors due to the government granting the AMA a monopoly on deciding who gets to be a doctor (and artificially limiting the number of medical places per year). This is also not something Hayek supported. >fraud/boom/bust cycle that has replaced real game-changing technological progress A lot of people would disagree that there has been less technological progress in the past decade or two than in earlier time periods. Even a decade ago, it was unthinkable that a machine could beat a human at Go. > set out to destroy its really rather successful economic record of relative stability and prosperity. The US experienced a higher rate of economic growth in the 1800s and early 1900s, before Keynesian policies were adopted, than it did afterwards.
markhollis 6y ago
The Mont-Pelerin society was established in 1947 by Hayek to promote more liberty with the world elites. There are pictures of him on the first conference with Mises. I'm genuinely curious what relative stability and prosperity you refer to. This was after the second world war.

bsenftner 6y ago

Friedrich Hayek is a Republican poster boy. There is no way to have an objecting conversation about Hayek in the United States, as his reputation has reached god-like status among the "free independent thinkers".

dawg- 6y ago
Yawn. Boring. I'd rather discuss his actual ideas than his misuse by party politics bullshitters.
anm89 6y ago
What a brilliant critique...
- bsenftner 6y ago
  Not a critique, just pointing out discussion of his ideas is not possible in the States due to irrational elevation of Hayek by Conservatives.