Whenit becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroyitself.

A democratic assembly voting and amending a comprehensive economic plan clause by clause, as it deliberates on an ordinary bill,makes nonsense.

the basic fact that it is impos-sible for any man to survey more than a limited field, to be aware of the urgencyof more than a limited number of needs.

Eric Zencey wrote that the free market economy Hayek advocated is designed for an infinite planet, and when it runs into physical limits (as any growing system must), the result is a need for centralized planning to mediate the problematic interface of economy and nature. "Planning is planning, whether it's done to minimize poverty and injustice, as socialists were advocating then, or to preserve the minimum flow of ecosystem services that civilization requires, as we are finding increasingly necessary today."[70]

Since publication, Hayek has offered a number of clarifications on words that are frequently misinterpreted: "Socialism", as Hayek used it, refers to state socialism and is used to mean state control of the economy, not a welfare state[39] "Classical liberal ideals", means liberty, freedom and individual rights, as Hayek understood them[40]

It’s clear how relevant Hayek’s warnings remain today. Economic freedom—unlike in the 1980s and ’90s—is in retreat. Faith in “industrial policy” has come to dominate in China, the U.S. and Europe. At the same time, intellectual freedom is under threat as proponents of a woke ideology strive to politicize all of life. Mathematics is now considered “racist” by some, while freedom of speech is under threat. Opponents of economic freedom often oppose intellectual freedom as well.

In 1971, Hayek emphasized that the primary focus of his book was classical socialism, which aimed to nationalize the means of production.

Hayek’s book presents a second important thesis: The loss of economic freedom precedes the loss of intellectual and political freedom.

Instead, he lauds the figure of themarket as a knowing entity, envisioning it as a kind of processor of socialinformation that, through the mechanism of price, continuously calcu-lates and communicates current economic conditions to individuals inthe market.

This idealized vision would go on to rebrand economics asa form of information studies, eventually garnering Hayek a Nobel Prizein Economics in 1974.

FRIEDRICH HAYEK, FROM “THE USE OFKNOWLEDGE IN SOCIETY” (1945)

Hayek's political influence reached its height in 1986, when Mrs Thatcher's government swept away much of the regulation that had constrained the city of London

To Hayek, the market does most good when it's most free

Hayek makes a moral argument that government's attempts to control the economy enslave its people.

Hayek worried they would never let go

more positive-sounding term spontaneous order than the more mystical-sounding invisible hand. Others, however, prefer to use another term. ‘I prefer the term “unintended order” to the more familiar “spontaneous order” because the former conveys that the system of order was not anyone’s intentional design without suggesting, as “spontaneous” might, that there is no way to account for the creation of the system’ (Otteson 2002, 6; see also Otteson 2007, 21).

Hayek is thus informing us that the framework of our analysis should include institutions that are ‘The results of Human Action but not of Human Design’.

Hayek notes that if we confine our arguments to the natural and artificial realms confusion is bound to ensure: ‘... one would describe a social institution as “natural” because it had never been deliberately designed, while another would describe the same institution as “artificial” because it resulted from human action’ (Hayek 1967, 130)

This brings me to the crucial issue. Unlike the position that exists in the physical sciences, in economics and other disciplines that deal with essentially complex phenomena, the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones. While in the physical sciences it is generally assumed, probably with good reason, that any important factor which determines the observed events will itself be directly observable and measurable, in the study of such complex phenomena as the market, which depend on the actions of many individuals, all the circumstances which will determine the outcome of a process, for reasons which I shall explain later, will hardly ever be fully known or measurable. And while in the physical sciences the investigator will be able to measure what, on the basis of a prima facie theory, he thinks important, in the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement. This is sometimes carried to the point where it is demanded that our theories must be formulated in such terms that they refer only to measurable magnitudes.

The particular occasion of this lecture, combined with the chief practical problem which economists have to face today, have made the choice of its topic almost inevitable. On the one hand the still recent establishment of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science marks a significant step in the process by which, in the opinion of the general public, economics has been conceded some of the dignity and prestige of the physical sciences. On the other hand, the economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.

It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences – an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. It is an approach which has come to be described as the “scientistic” attitude – an attitude which, as I defined it some thirty years ago, “is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.”1