Hayek up and down

[gflexor@uol.com.br]

Who care an ideological debate?

Remember Schumpeter, the more you read the less deeper insight you have.
But
that is an another story. Let me give some observation on some of the
analytical tools of the Austrian School and the relation between
Capitalism,
Market and Democracy. 

With the austrian school of economists, an ahistorical conception of the
individual with purpose and individual knowledge is the point of departure.
Hayek disapproves of the word capitalism to describe the existing or his
ideal society. He writes with a degree of vagueness of the "free system"
and
the "great society" but it is nevertheless clear that he is refering to a
system dominated by market exchanges and individual private property right.


In his last book Hayek sketches a history of the emergence of the market,
suggesting that it is not itself the context of evolution but an evolved
structure or order: a specific outcome of evolution itself. However, this
interpretation leaves open the nature of the context in wich the market
emerges. To assume that the market itself emerges in a market environment
suggets the unaknowledged possibility of a nested set of market structures
in which competitive selection occurs: a market for markets. But if this
the
case there must be another market in which the selection for this market
for
markets occurs, and so on, indefinitely.

To finish, let me introduce this sentence of A.O Hirschman, refering to the
USA: "having been 'born equal', without any sustained struggle against ...
the feudal past, America is deprived of what Europe has in abundance:
social
and ideological diversity. But such diversity is one of the prime
constituents of genuine liberty."

Georges

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