"The supreme absurdity in Hayek's book is reached in his discussion of opportunity and particularly equality of opportunity (especially pp. 90 ff.). True, it was absurd of Commons and Dewey to spread an ideology that identified freedom with power (if they did); but it is also absurd for Hayek to ignore the close connection between the two. Freedom, correctly conceived, implies opportunity, unobstructed opportunity, to use power, which must be possessed, to give content to freedom, or make it effective. It is a common fallacy to demand power under the name of freedom, and usage badly needs the expression "effective freedom" to take account of power and of knowledge and other dimensions in the scope of voluntary action. The social problem of freedom centers in power and its use in relations among persons and between them and society or its agents. The definition of freedom formally as the opposite (or absence?) of coercion, including fraud (p. 149), does not mention persuasion—a highly important form of power over others that is very unequal and is recognized in law as "duress." Nor does Hayek recognize that unequal power over things confers power over persons, or that the main general problem of freedom is unequal power, practically covering significant human inequality; nor, again, that freedom and power pertain to free beings, that mechanisms neither coerce nor are coerced."