"It is not merely the outside critic who has difficulties with Hayek's rule-bound Evolutionism. Hayek has difficulty himself. If there is an inbred wisdom, not apparent to the naked eye, in the evolution of common law or common custom, why deny this hidden wisdom to more interventionist or authoritarian structures? After all, institutions such as rent control, price control, a large nationalised sector, and heavy progressive taxation have existed in many countries for generations and have often evolved gradually. Might they not contain their own wisdom, not obvious to Hayek when writing as an economist? And will not, say, the abolition of rent control in Britain—let alone the reproduction of capitalism, or free elections, in the Soviet Union—set in train all sorts of events not foreseeable by the simple-minded democrat or free-market economist who looks only at immediate consequences?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Samuel Brittan, "Hayek, the New Right, & the Crisis of Social Democracy", Encounter (January 1980)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Law%2C_Legislation_and_Liberty
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Law, Legislation and Liberty
62 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Law, Legislation and Liberty →
Related Quotes
"There are two ways of looking at the pattern of human activities which lead to very different conclusions concerning …"
"In civilized society it is indeed not so much the greater knowledge that the individual can acquire, as the greater b…"
"The fact that an increasing number of social scientists confine themselves to the study of what exists in some part o…"
"The errors of constructivist rationalism are closely connected with Cartesian dualism, that is with the conception of…"
"Thus constructivist rationalism, in its endeavour to make everything subject to rational control, in its preference f…"
"This particular function of government is somewhat like that of a maintenance squad of a factory, its object being no…"
"Individual freedom, wherever it has existed, has been largely the product of a prevailing respect for such principles…"
"Although probably all beneficial improvement must be piecemeal, if the separate steps are not guided by a body of coh…"
"The preservation of a free system is so difficult precisely because it requires a constant rejection of measures whic…"
"It would be no exaggeration to say that social theory begins with—and has an object only because of—the discovery tha…"