Hayek's Warning: The Social Engineer's Pretense of Knowledge
"Forty years ago, on December 11, 1974, Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek formally received that year's Nobel Prize in Economics at the official ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden. He delivered a lecture called, "The Pretense of Knowledge," which forcefully challenged all those who believe that government has the wisdom or ability to successfully plan the economic affairs of society. His primary targets were the Keynesian economists at that time who were confident that they could micro-manage the "macro-economy" to assure full employment, economic growth and market stability. His more general antagonists were all those social engineers who wished to redesign and regulate society through the coercive agency of government."
Yet it's obvious to me that today's 'social engineers' have not learned these simple lessons. With computer modeling and the bowels of owls, they continue to attempt to control what they can't even imagine.
Yet it's obvious to me that today's 'social engineers' have not learned these simple lessons. With computer modeling and the bowels of owls, they continue to attempt to control what they can't even imagine.
Good article.
Hayek, much like Bastiat, saw through their hubris.
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
- Frédéric Bastiat
Two of my favorites! Both "Freds." :)
Regards,
O.A.
If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails [such as in the modern market economy], he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible . . .
The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.
Forty years after Friedrich A. Hayek spoke these words and twenty-two years since his death in 1992, society continues to be plagued with those suffering from this pretense of knowledge.
Very prescient.
"harm" and "good" are purely dependent upon his goals in social engineering.
I submit that the most good a man could do to improve the social order is to keep his big nose out of it.
I have a niece who is currently in DC as an intern at an education "think tank." She is a bleeding heart and thinks that her "good intentions" is all that is needed to "make a difference." My daughter, on the other hand, just graduated with a teaching degree and is teaching her first semester in High School. She actually studied education (such as it was - I wasn't very impressed with the curriculum, heavy emphasis on CC) and is actually practicing the profession. It will be an interesting discussion at Christmas time when the families get together. My girl is about as conservative as they come. The saving grace is that my other niece makes up for her sister and is now a trained navy radar operator.