User:Y-S.Ko/Friedrich Hayek

Hayek and constructivist rationalism

 * Since Hayek was radically scornful of human reason, he could not, like John Locke or the Scholastics, elaborate a libertarian system of personal and property rights based on the insights of human reason into natural law. Nor could he, like Mises, emphasize man's rational insight into the vital importance of laissez-faire for the flourishing and even survival of the human race, or of foregoing any coercive intervention into the vast and interdependent network of the free market economy. Instead, Hayek had to fall back on the importance of blindly obeying whatever social rules happened to have "evolved," and his only feeble argument against intervention was that the government was even more irrational and was even more ignorant, than individuals in the market economy.
 * Murray Rothbard, "The Hayek Centenary" (1999)
 * Hayek […] seemingly would severely limit mankind’s ability to design the future through the process of working things out. But Hayek rejects neither reason nor deliberative critique nor constructivism. The exercise of reason in deliberative critique in the service of reconstruction of economy, polity, and society is not only called for but is part and parcel of the Mengerian argument. Constructivism is inherent in the body of social theory developed by Hayek. Constructivism is practiced by Hayek. It is the fundamental logic of his life’s work. In a sense, his own practice constitutes the negation of his own argument.
 * Warren J. Samuels, Erasing the Invisible Hand: Essays on an Elusive and Misused Concept in Economics (2011), Chap. 8 : The Invisible Hand and the Economic Role of Government

Hayek and Carl Menger

 * Hayek’s research programme is grounded in the teaching of Adam Smith and Carl Menger, who sought to understand social order not as the result of conscious design, but as the unintended consequences of individual human action. In addition to the emphasis on spontaneous order, Hayek learned from Menger that individual human action is guided by the subjective valuations of individuals, and that the relevant valuation that individuals make is on the marginal unit of the good or service that is the object of deliberation. Throughout Hayek’s career the puzzle of how a social system can transform the individual subjective perceptions of some into useful information for others so they may co-ordinate their actions to produce an overall social order which yields benefits far greater than any individual in the system intended was at the centre of his research efforts.
 * Peter Boettke, "Hayek and Market Socialism: Science, Ideology and Public Policy", Economic Affairs (2005)