Talk:Friedrich August von Hayek

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Hayek made the point over and over that a little bit of central planning is not a slippery slope to totalitarianism. Yet, that myth is reproduced in the opening paragraph. The book's newest edition makes that point in the intro as well.

This point could use clarification. Hayek does in fact make this argument TRTS, but this is often straw manned by both proponents and critics into "All regulations and welfare = evil." The difference is that he used central planning to mean economic intervention in order to move society toward some goal, not all intervention (and he supported welfare programs as mentioned as well as other regulations such as anti-pollution laws.) Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:02, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Price-gouging?

The articles says that "[h]is idea of prices as information necessary to solve the calculation problem was very influential, albeit limited in reality to cases where there is no collusion, price-gouging, etc." Isn't price-gouging during emergencies actually a good example of the "price as information"-mechanism that Hayek is a proponent of? This video, for instance, is entirely in compliance with Hayek's line of reasoning as I see it. Whether Zwolinski (and Hayek) are right are, of course, a matter of contention, but I don't think Hayek would have seen "price-gouging" as an example of the "price as information"-mechanism not functioning properly. 83.191.79.217 (talk) 12:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

[edit] This article needs improvement

This article starts poorly, with the following:

"He co-won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 with Gunnar Myrdal, who was a socialist economist. Needless to say, the prize committee's fraternizing with the enemy did not please Austrians."

In support of this, a link to an article by Murray Rothbard is cited. However, far from being an attack on Hayek by an advocate of Austrian Economics, the article is a positive endorsement and congratulations of the acknowledgement of Hayek's work. There is not a bone of ill will in the article whatsoever. Unless a better link can be found, the sentence "Needless to say, the prize committee's fraternizing with the enemy did not please Austrians." should be removed because the current citation does not back the implication.

"Ironically, the most enduring and popular of his works today is not his strictly economic work but The Road to Serfdom,[4] a book describing how the slightest bit of central planning would become a slippery slope to socialism.[5] It shot to number one on Amazon when Glenn Beck mentioned it on his show.[6] This ought to have set off some irony meters as Hayek penned a lengthy essay entitled "Why I Am Not a Conservative."[7] It is perhaps more relevant now in explaining the thought processes of wingnuts than the possibility of a commie takeover in today's post-Cold War world.[8]"

There is so much wrong with this paragraph I'm not sure where to start. Rather than critiquing Hayek's argument's (I will return to this point), you are attacking people that might possibly have sympathy with Hayek's argument's, worse still you are attacking an imagined stereotype of a group of people that might agree in part with Hayek (i.e. to use your parlance "wingnuts").

Secondly, you clearly (or the author of the article) have not read the Road to Serfdom. The book begins by defining central planning, collectivism, the methods of collectivists, and how fascism and socialism are two forms of collectvism i.e. in summary the aims of fascists and socialists may by different, however the methods are almost indentical (e.g. the use of force to curtail freedom and competition).

Hayek then goes on to critique the fallacious arguments in favour of central planning. Hayek clearly shows that these arguments have little evidence backing them other than acceptance through repetition.

For example one of these arguments "as society becomes more advanced central planning and state monopoly are inevitable", Hayek shows to be clearly fallacious, and arguing rather persuasively that this is the result of political power, rather than as a consequence of technological progress. He lampoons a statement made by Mussolini, who stated that "We are the first to assert that the more complicated the forms of civilisation, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become", by pointing outthat if that were surely true (including the necessity of monopoly and eradication of competition as technology advances), Britain would have been the first place in the world to see a rise of central planning and curtailment of freedom. Britain's technological progress and prospertiy was far in advance of Italy during the 19th and early 20th century, and yet it was the likes of much poorer nations such as Germany and Italy that were embracing central planning because their societies were supposedly "so far advanced".

Further, when Hayek discusses central planning leading to authoritarianism, he deals less with communism and instead focuses rather more on the rise of fascism within Europe and which renders the "commie takeover" to be a ridiculous, inaccurate, diversion. He also discusses with regard to the same subject, how central planning and planners replace the rule of law with arbitrary dictat (be they socialist or fascist).

This paragraph is slightly better, in that it discusses the economic calculation problem, and the business cycle, but again offers no proper critique other than weasel words and baseless assertions:

"Hayek's work expanded on Ludwig von Mises' work on the economic calculation problem, i.e., the inherent impossibility of pricing goods in a state-run economy (which itself was an expansion of Max Weber's statement of the problem).[9] His idea of prices as information necessary to solve the calculation problem was very influential, albeit limited in reality to cases where there is no collusion, price-gouging, etc. He also expanded on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), or more accurately, the "Blame the Fed" theory. ABCT was rather forward-thinking at the time for tying the business cycle to credit expansion, although Irving Fisher, a contemporary of Hayek, came up with his debt-deflation theory which did the same during the Great Depression as well."

There's no explanation of "price-gouging" or "collusion", and misses the point that a centrally planned/mixed economy (where prices are set by the state) consists of price fixing on a far grander scale.

The Business Cycle is not a critique of the Federal Reserve, rather it describes the cyclical process of the accrual of savings and then the spending of savings (and so on), and how this explains the observation of higher and slower periods of economic activity.

The business cycle can occur with or without the Federal Reserve and is an observation of human behaviour. Further, at a basic level, Irving Fisher's theory of debt deflation is a description of the contrationary phase of the business cycle. I would however disagree, with Fisher's assertion that re-inflation is required to remedy such an episode, which is exactly what was tried in the depression of the 1930s (albeit under Keynsian ideology), and contradicts with the depression of 1920-21 where prices fell by almost 20%, there was little to no government intervention, and yet activity and confidence recovered within 18 months.

The level of argument and intellectual rigour in the article amounts to little more than "don't read the Road to Serfdom, it's ugly, and people we think are ugly have read it, which will make you ugly too, and by anachronistic association anything Hayek has said is also ugly".86.31.236.35 (talk) 20:27, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Not going to read this text wall, but why don't you fix it if you don't like it? Someone might revert you, but at least you could say you tried. I don't think anyone here want to argue with you about Austrian School economic theory, but maybe you'll get lucky. --Marlow (talk) 22:29, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

[edit] No, that's wrong

Maybe you didn't read the book, but the Road to Serfdom is not a mere slippery slope argument that central planning --> commie wasteland. The argument is that during times of war, various impositions of price-setting, regulation, nationalization, and other "temporary" measures are put in place; after the war, most or all of these measures stay in place rather than be dissolved.

I've heard the interpretation that Road to Serfdom had been wrongly and repeatedly invoked by libertarians who wanted to prove that any regulation will lead to socialism, and that because his "fans" couldn't understand his work the book has become synonymous to everybody as a slippery slope argument even though that wasn't his argument. That being said what you're talking about still isn't really true, since many of the Allies basically had command economies during World War 2 but then cut it out after the war. ClothCoat (talk) 08:55, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
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