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Maddy\’s doing political philosophy

And as you would expect, it\’s not looking good.

Hayek\’s legacy, which now lies in ruins all around us, is still brightly promoted, but its claims to fairness and freedom have been utterly discredited.

Given that we\’ve not had a Hayekian order the current problems cannot be blamed on Hayek nor can they be used as a disproof of his ideas.

But don\’t look to economists to get us out of this hollow mould of neoliberal economics and its bastard child, managerialism

For example, to think that Hayek was about managerialism is really rather absurd. And of course managerialism has really taken hold in the public sector: Ed Balls knowing how to run every school in the country as an example. Very much not neo-liberal economics nor Hayek.

No, it doesn\’t get better either.

10 thoughts on “Maddy\’s doing political philosophy”

  1. The excursion into the morality of the shop assistant was a bit bizarre and overall it was more the sort of thing \I would expect to hear at a provincials debating society than read in a National Paper nonetheless I shall take issue with you here young Timothy . I think that in her dippy Liberal way the lady is feeling her way towards a real problem

    She is right that there have to be coherent values and that markets , when they escape social context ( problem internationally then) are inhuman and often destructive . The market has no feelings , it does not care if a community is destroyed or that a church might have some value a multi storey care park has not .
    Her analysis is that there must be a top down socialist collectivism of the hearts ..so to speak and here is where she has baked her noodle .Government by exhortation and elite pontificating has been tried and tested to destruction , it can never work and the result of state incursion has been to destroy precisely the valuable invisible strings that hold us together . This is exactly why we need less state .

    Conservatism and Hayek are philosophies in a creative dialogue , Conservative would approve of the dispersed knowledge of the market but as it also approves of the dispersed knowledge and evolved solutions in traditions and institutions the market must be in a balance . This is why Hayek did not like Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher ( despite her claim ) only used it as a weapon against collectivism .You gave a really good summary recently which included spontaneous order , perhaps the one which starts with family extends to community and then imagined community of Nation. Allowing space for these human qualities is the answer and it will never be perfect one .Legislating against , bad and in favour of good is clearly a disaster ant worst and a joke at best.
    So it is a real problem and one to which Libertarians have no answer in my humble . Conservatives do.

    This is why it is the duty of everyone man and woman to vote for David Cameron at the next General Election.

  2. I have read quite a bit of Hayek, and I do not remember the bit about fairness.

    Hayek is about freedom and efficiency surely.

  3. The reference to Hayek’s legacy being ‘in ruins’ thanks to the current crisis is really quite odd. Hayek’s work on business cycles would suggest, if anything, that the current crisis has vindicated his ideas.

    Friedman would have probably been a better target. However, knowing that would involve reading what these thinkers actually wrote rather than relying on what you think they wrote.

  4. Jimmy Hill is absolutely on target. Anyone familiar with the Austrian business cycle that Hayek and von Mises espoused would not have been remotely surprised by recent events.

  5. “Conservative would approve of the dispersed knowledge of the market but as it also approves of the dispersed knowledge and evolved solutions in traditions and institutions the market must be in a balance . This is why Hayek did not like Conservatives”

    Hayek certainly approved of evolved traditions and institutions.

  6. Hayek certainly approved of evolved traditions and institutions.

    Lets say the market is applying pressure to sell off school playing fields . The Conservative instinct would be to shore up the institution of schools sport , although regrettably not always in practice .

    Hayek says let the market decide , as I understand it , mind you I only know the head lines on Hayek never read any of it

  7. The “problem” and the “explanation” are really simpler than indicated thus far. “The market” (and its price structure) are a composite of every desire, preference, and opinion about all things vendible by all those prepared or actually engaged in expressing such desires, preferences, and opinions by their actions in the market. All those people express themselves as perfectly as they are able and, in so doing (in the absence of violent interference), determine not only the price of everything but the employment of every resource and all capital. Their expression can never be perfect with regard to future conditions (or even of their own desires, preferences, and opinions in that future) but that “gap” in ability to predict the uncertain future is routinely filled by a special class of actor we call “entrepreneur,” who, speculating about that future with his own funds, provides everyone else with a “hedge” against adverse developments in that future–profiting when he is right and losing when he is wrong (at no cost to the market participants generally).

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