Alan O. Ebenstein Quotes

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The time component of economic production became vital in Hayek's work in economic theory. Essentially, his economic work could be said to rest on the idea that the price system is a method for coordinating economic activity through time.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek always retained the view that money (at least as it has developed institutionally in advanced economies) causes the departure from equilibrium in fact that does not exist in theory.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's trade cycle theory was not in essence the same as Mises's.

Alan O. Ebenstein
One of the paradoxes of Hayek is that he wrote better than he thought. That is, his writing is often more suggestive and stimulating than the thought that underlaid it. While his writing is, stylistically, difficult, it is also exceptionally profound, and its value lies in its profundity.

Alan O. Ebenstein
The question of Hayek's relationship to the Chicago school of economics raises the anterior question of the Chicago school of economics itself.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's views of Mill fluctuated over his lifetime, from a position of relative support to one of relative opposition, though Hayek's later opposition to Mill was largely based on misinterpretation of Mill.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek was too harsh on Freud. It is, indeed, one of the surprising facts of the development of intellectual thought during the twentieth century that Freud—who was so pervasive and dominating during the first half of that century—virtually dropped off the face of the map during the second half. Hayek was almost the last person still talking about Freud, in the sense of taking him as a serious living influence on civilization.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek was a great historian of economic thought. His reading and writing in the field of economic history were among the influences that shifted his academic research focus from technical economic theory to broader societal thought.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek emphasized the importance of rules. He thought that what society should do is not to direct the individual in his or her particular actions, but to create a metaphysical structure, as it were, enforced by rules or laws, that create stable expectations and thus allow rational action.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Though Hayek decried the practical outcomes of Marx's work and his political philosophy, he had high regard for Marx as a technical economist whose work preceded his own business cycle theory.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek was not primarily influenced by Kant in the area of political philosophy. [...] Where Kant primarily influenced Hayek was in ontology and metaphysics.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's move from economic theory to political philosophy was a natural evolution in his ideas. First, he considered the influence of prices in production. Then he considered the larger question of the role of prices in social life. The conclusion he reached was that law should guarantee to each person a protected sphere within which each could live as much as possible as he pleased. Later in his career, he progressed to the idea that whole societies through their customs, morals, and rules are engaged in macrocompetition, the survivor of which would possess the customs, morals, and rules that are the most materially productive and result in the highest standard of living for the most—the economist's goal.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's essential political philosophy was that liberty is the supremacy of law. To some, this may appear a paradoxical conception of liberty, for liberty is too often considered to be the absence of law. This, however, was the exact opposite of Hayek's view. He thought that liberty is not possible without law. Right law is liberty.

Alan O. Ebenstein
During World War II it was exciting and unexpected for Hayek to find someone else, from Vienna, who was interested in many of the same topics that he was. The Open Society and Its Enemies has three main parts, on Plato, Hegel, and Marx. The next main chapters in Hayek's uncompleted The Abuse and Decline of Reason, on which he was at work then, were to be on Hegel and Marx. In addition, Popper's scholarly style was similar to Hayek's, with extremely extensive notes.

Alan O. Ebenstein
The beauty of evolution is that it is into the unknown. The detrimental aspect of planning is that it is limited to what individuals can conceive at a point in time. It is precisely the virtue of natural and spontaneous evolution that its outcomes are not known to individuals before they occur.

Alan O. Ebenstein
True and false individualism differ, according to Hayek, not primarily about values but about facts. The question of how societies are actually ordered or organized separates them: Are communities created, or do they evolve? The answer is obviously some combination of the two, but the relative weighting is of the greatest importance.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek never really departed from the essential economic theory that he developed during the 1920s, although he expanded and deepened his analysis.

Alan O. Ebenstein
When Keynes's General Theory was published in February 1936, it obliterated all else on the scene in academic economics. Hayek was known to be working on a treatise on capital as Keynes's work was published (the work that became The Pure Theory of Capital). While there was some anticipation in academia for this forthcoming major work, interest even by economists in Hayek's work waned.

Alan O. Ebenstein
His idea was essentially that societies are distinguished by their rules, morals, norms, customs, and laws. These create a stable pattern of interaction that allows individuals to lead their lives rationally.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's practical political thought was flawed not where he postulated too small a role for government, but where he sanctioned too great a role. In his late work, Hayek the classical liberal became Hayek the libertarian.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Although Hayek ascribed a primarily monetary source to economic fluctuations, he was not a monetarist as this term came to be used.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek did not always absorb as much light as he could have from other minds.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Where laws rule, people are free. Conversely, where not laws, but individuals, rule, people are unfree. Law is the indispensable tool for securing personal freedom, because only under the rule of law are individuals able to plan their lives according to known expectations about the social order.

Alan O. Ebenstein
The General Theory is at once both a book of economic theory and a font of economic prejudices—there are probably few academics in economics and political science who do not have an opinion of it, whether they have read it or not. It has reached the status—which it obtained almost immediately—where the fact of its existence is as important, if not more important, than what it actually says.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek had high regard for Marx in technical economic theory and considered him a predecessor in his business cycle theory. [...] It was not in technical economic theory that the classical Austrians disagreed with Marx. So towering a figure in history is Marx that discussion of his thought in summary form is always difficult, for there is so much that he said and that others have said about him. At the same time, so tendentious, ill-spirited, and just plain wrong a thinker was Marx that it is surprising that he may have had some of the influence attributed to him. Hayek's opposition to Marx was in the realm of practical political emanations from Marx's thought. Here he considered Marx's influence to have been wholly pernicious.

Alan O. Ebenstein