[108332] in Cypherpunks
CDR: RE: H-WEB: N Chomsky on Hayek & 'inevitable' Dictatorship (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Choate)
Fri Feb 12 08:42:21 1999
From: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 07:22:01 -0600 (CST)
Reply-To: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
----- Forwarded message from Jim Burnes - Denver -----
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 00:53:22 -0700 (MST)
From: Jim Burnes - Denver <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
Subject: CDR: RE: H-WEB: N Chomsky on Hayek & 'inevitable' Dictatorship
what to read, what coffee is best, etc ad nauseum. To view the
economy is separate from this conglomerated activity is to apply
a kind of 19th century dialectic to it. Here we have the people,
here we have the economy.
They are one in the same.
----- End of forwarded message from Jim Burnes - Denver -----
While I disagree they are one and the same, I do believe they are opposite
sides of the same coin. The problem with Hayek is he also believes these to
be two seperate issues. "Economics and Knowledge" [1] is a perfect example of
Hayek's extoling this dichotomy. Further, he seems to believe they are
indipendant and non-interacting. His incessant drolling about equilibrium
analysis and how individuals know the knowledge they know and how to use it
being some kind of mystery is a clear example of this muddy thinking on
Hayeks part. For example,
"...central question of all social sciences: How can the combination of
fragments of knowledge existing in different minds bring about reslts which,
if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on
the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess?"
Hayek seems unable to grasp that the mechanism that causes this, as well
as price/cost tracking, and many other facets of economics that he considers
problematic if not intractible, is that the individuals share a social
structure that guides their expectations as surely as if they did exist within
a divine control economy. His examples of how people find new applications
for existing ideas and technologies, in this same article, are equaly
broken.
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The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate
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[1] Individualism and Economic Order
F.A. Hayek
ISBN 0-226-32093-6
