Friedrich hayek quotes

1. Price Signals and Spontaneous Order

1.1 Order Can Be Undesigned

Over hundreds of millions of years, order emerged in the natural world. How? It is only human to wonder. “Design arguments” come to mind, but like most philosophers, Hayek considers such arguments fallacious as arguments that we need to posit a designer to explain the emergence of order in nature. (See the entry on teleological arguments for God’s existence.) Hayek, however, was frustrated to find the same fallacy in arguments that we need to posit a designer to explain the emergence of order in society (Hayek 1960, 59).

Just as no one had to invent natural selection, no one had to invent the process by which natural languages evolve. A language is a massively path-dependent process of unending mutual adjustment. Language evolves spontaneously. It would make no sense to call any language optimally efficient, but it does make sense to see languages as highly refined and effective adaptations to the evolving communication needs of particular populations (Hayek 1945, 528).

It

•

About F A Hayek

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) was an Austrian-British economist who won the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking work in understanding the coordination function of prices in economy, formulating new business cycle theory with links to monetary expansion, and investigating how a decentralised free-market economic system is feasible and advantageous over a centralised socialist planning.

F A Hayek served in a field artillery battery on the Italian front during the World War I. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Vienna where he got his first doctorate in law in 1921. His classmates included some future prominent economists, including Fritz Machlup, Gottfried von Haberler, and Oskar Morgenstern. Later, in 1923, Hayek was awarded a second doctorate in political economy. During his years at the University of Vienna, Hayek was influenced by Carl Menger's work on explanatory social science research and Friedrich von Wieser's commanding classroom teaching. He also began working at a temporary government office, wher

•

Friedrich Hayek

Austrian-British economist and philosopher (1899–1992)

Friedrich August von HayekCH FBA (HY-ək, German:[ˈfʁiːdʁɪçˈʔaʊɡʊstfɔnˈhaɪɛk]^ⓘ; 8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-born British academic who contributed to political economy, political philosophy and intellectual history.^[4][5][6][7] Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.^[8] His account of how prices communicate information is widely regarded as an important contribution to economics that led to him receiving the prize.^[9][10][11] He was a major contributor to the Austrian school of economics.^[12][13]

During his teenage years, Hayek fought in World War I. He later said this experience, coupled with his desire to help avoid the mistakes that led to the war, drew him into econ