Mon Dec 11 15:26:33 EST 2006
Andrew Farrant wrote: Hayek does buy the dreadful Misesian cumulative
'logic of intervention' argument though right?
"It is not necessary to review the familiar economic arguments which show
why mere 'interventionism' is self-defeating and self-contradictory, and
how, if the central purpose of intervention is to be achieved,
intervention must expand until it becomes a comprehensive system of
planning" (Hayek [1939] 1997, pp.199-200).
Bruce Caldwell replies:
Andrew quotes from "Freedom and the Economic System," a policy pamphlet
that laid the groundwork for the arguments in The Road to Serfdom. In his
pamphlet, Hayek footnotes a book by Mises (his Kritik des
Interventionismus) - the footnote being attached to the sentence Farrant
reproduces. Neither the statement that Hayek made in the 1939 piece, nor
any reference to this work by Mises, appears in The Road to Serfdom,
though Hayek does list two other books by Mises (Socialism and Omnipotent
Government) in his list of books he recommends to the reader.
One conclusion that one might draw from this is that Hayek reconsidered
this argument, and therefore did not include it in The Road to Serfdom. In
any event, that was the book that Doug was talking about.
Bruce Caldwell