Alan O. Ebenstein - Hayek Quotes

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Indeed, Hayek's later monetary work constitutes some of his most creative practical policy suggestions, though his thought in the area was, by his own admission, undeveloped.

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'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
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
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
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
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'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
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 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
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
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
Expressed egotism is, of course, no reason necessarily to disregard someone's work, but it is a warning signal. If someone can evaluate his work so poorly, is the work itself likely to be better? In many of his areas of intellectual interest, Popper's work is wanting.
Hayek did more to advance Popper professionally early in his career than anyone else, and Popper remembered his personal debt to Hayek. Over the years, he wrote him a number of appreciative letters.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's essential gist in capital theory was that capital is heterogeneous, that it cannot be put to many uses simultaneously or at different times. If these empirical assumptions as to capital's heterogeneity are false, then his theoretical system of economic activity falls. Hayek never established that changes in interest rates primarily and predominantly influence capital production of goods of higher order and their prices.

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

Alan O. Ebenstein
The idea of unarticulated, nonverbal, or tacit knowledge led, in Hayek's mind, to the further idea that legal and moral institutions store, embed, and convey tacit knowledge. Hayek considered the most important of these institutional practices to be the rule of law. The rule of law allows individuals to lead rational lives.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's approach was largely Burkean. He saw much good in inherited institutions, and yet, at the same time, he also saw the desirability and necessity of change.

Alan O. Ebenstein
His emphasis on prediction of the principle or pattern leaves out a great deal. It is not merely that only general predictions can be made—it is that predictions often can be made only of best-guess probabilities, not even of patterns or principles. As Hayek mentioned, patterns can sometimes be expressed numerically as ranges.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Time is basic in Hayek's concept of economic activity and the role of capital. Production occurs over time. The price system is in part an intertemporal valuing system.

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 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 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'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
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 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
His epistemology began from a phenomenalist base. The philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach was very important in Hayek's development and to the atmosphere at the University of Vienna when Hayek was a student there.

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

Alan O. Ebenstein
Hayek's work in philosophy can be considered from another perspective than its methodology. When Hayek wrote that his philosophical studies should precede his political studies, he meant that in order to explain the sort of political system he favored, it was necessary to have greater understanding of the transmission and communication of information and knowledge. This is why he wished to travel to Italy and Greece. He thought that he might understand nonverbal knowledge better in doing so and might better understand the role of institutions in transmitting knowledge and information.

Alan O. Ebenstein
Although Hayek would have protested being characterized as a democratic welfare statist in The Constitution of Liberty, this is what he was. While he favored less government rather than more, government at the local level rather than national level, the provision of social welfare through private charitable organizations rather than government at any level, and the private competitive provision of government services, there was much in his work that any modern, twentieth-century liberal could support.

Alan O. Ebenstein