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Archive 1Archive 2

Article Name

Any strong opinions about what name his article should be under?

The 'von' was dropped from his family name after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He is properly refered to as Hayek, not von Hayek, of course. He published frequently as F.A. Hayek. I personally resort to the simple rule of calling him by his first name and last name, Friedrich Hayek, which has the advantage of conforming to the same convention we use with basically every other human name. So in my opinion he should now and forever be known as Friedrich Hayek, and this should be the title of the article. - Tim

You know, we've been very inconsistent about this. Some people have very sensibly taken to writing out the full names of people who are otherwise known by abbreviations of their names, but I tend more or less to agree with what you Tim wrote lo these many months ago, that we should use the most popular name for a person. So, just as we have Clinton under Bill Clinton (not William Jefferson Clinton) and Paris under Paris (not Paris, France), we should probably have Hayek under whatever name he is most commonly referred under. I've only read one of Hayek's books, so I'm no expert, but I thought F. A. Hayek was correct. This case is somewhat similar to G. E. Moore--we could put that article under George Moore, but in that case, most philosophers really wouldn't immediately recognize who we were talking about, because he is almost always referred to as either Moore or as G. E. Moore (because the latter is the name he always used to publish under). --LMS

Hayek didn't use the 'von' so we won't either.

I deleted this -- "He [Hayek] has been subsequently criticized by socialists for not taking into account the possibility of a democratic government running a Centrally Planned Economy."

How does that possibility affect the economic calculation issue as Hayek raised it, one way or another? If it doesn't, then any socialist who has criticized Hayek on this ground has committed a logical howler. If it does, please explain why. As far as Hayek's view is concerned anyway, planners authorized by majority vote face the same problem that a revolutionary elite would face in terms of making the unmakeable calculations.

That was intended more as a criticism of the fact that "Hayek contended that in Centrally Planned Economies, an individual or a group of individuals decided the allocation of resources for the whole country..." The fact is that most socialists do not want an individual or a group of individuals to decide the allocation of resources for the whole country - they want these decisions to be taken (or at least approved) by the people.
Then it was rather awkwardly put at best, and I thank you for not putting it back. On another point, before you try to rewrite it, allow me to say that Hayek would have agreed (with his usual amiability) that most socialists -- at least, the sort of academic socialists to whom he was accustomed -- probably didn't want resource allocation to be the province of a small elite.
Actually, I have no intention to rewrite anything. I am quite satisfied with the current version, which is mostly Eb.hoop's creation. But, for the sake of the argument, I will reply to your points nonetheless. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 17:18, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
He was trying to explain that their desire for planning would lead them, precisely, to a result that they didn't want. That was rather the point. If economic calculation in the absense of market signals is impossible for anyone, then trying to accomplish the impossible will result in worsening allocations, disrupting people's lives and their ability to be productive, which will in turn result in the collapse of some aspect of the system. This collapse might take a variety of forms: popular revulsion at the polls, as in England in the late 1970s, or the incorporation of the failed system into broader and more market-oriented entities, as East Germany became in time just the eastern part of Germany, and scandanavian systems seem to be melting into Euroland in the early 21st century.
Yes, of course, with "if" being the operative word in this whole scenario. To put it in over-simplified terms, you've just described the way in which Hayek tried to explain that, if socialists are wrong, then socialists are wrong. But as we both know, the dispute between Hayek's Austrian school and the Socialist school(s) of thought is not about what would happen if non-market economic calculation is impossible - it is about whether or not that calculation is, in fact, as "impossible" as Hayek claims.
As for your comments regarding Britain and Scandinavia, I need to remind you that (a) no one ever dreamed about the extent of Margaret Thatcher's reforms before she was elected, and (b) Scandinavia is melting into Euroland because its leaders - including the leaders of the Social Democratic parties - want it to. Meanwhile, the general population despises the EU and the attacks on their welfare state, while the Social Democratic voter base grows more and more dissatisfied with the pro-capitalist policies of Social Democratic leaders. In essence, the views that are being vindicated by current events are not those of Hayek, but those of Rosa Luxembourg and Vladimir Lenin regarding social democracy. They warned a long time ago that by trying to make peace with capitalism, the social democrats (or, to be more exact, their leaders) would grow corrupt and turn into capitalists themselves. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 17:18, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It is also possible that a socialistic system that was once democratic can turn into a dictatorship as the planners decide that 'this is too important to be abandoned to the whims of an inadequately informed populace.' The disappearance of "intra-party democracy" in the early history of the Soviet Union demonstrates roughly this pattern. As planning fails, socialism and democracy, even of the intra-party sort, come into increasing tension, until one of them gives way. Hayek was for the most part seeking to persuade people he believed to be sincere democrats -- that was crucial to this appeal. Read The Road to Serfdom, for example. To say that he has been criticized by (nameless) socialists for not having addressed this issue is to say that he has been criticized by people who didn't read him.
Your argument is completely self-contradictory - democracy was utterly crushed in the Soviet Union long before planning had even the chance to fail (because full central planning hadn't even started to be implemented when Stalin took absolute power). In fact, central planning worked successfully for many decades, and the Soviet economy achieved phenomenal growth rates up until the 1960's.
So how is my argument self-contradictory? It has to contradict itself, to be self-contradictory. You have said that it is self-contradictory, then have slipped into an argument to the effect that it contradicts (your view of) the facts of Soviet history. A different charge. First things first. Where have I contradicted my self? I'm curious. --Christofurio 23:07, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
But let's get back to the point about socialism and democracy. The fact is that, contrary to Hayek's claims, socialism and democracy are strongly correlated. With the notable exception of the Soviet bloc, countries with more socialism always tend to have more democracy, and vice versa. It is debatable which one is the cause and which one is the effect (i.e. does socialism usually bring democracy or does democracy usually bring socialism?), but the correlation is unmistakably there. The introduction of full democracy (i.e. universal suffrage, especially the vote for women) coincided in most places with the introduction of the welfare state. Countries with the most egalitarian distribution of wealth (i.e. the lowest Gini coefficient) tend to be the most democratic (and wealthy) countries on Earth, while countries with high inequalities of wealth tend to be dictatorships, or at least very authoritarian democracies.
Karl Marx once said that "democracy is the road to socialism", and I can't help but agree with him. Is it any wonder that the recent trend towards more capitalism in Europe coincides with the accumulation of power in the hands of unelected EU committes? -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 17:18, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
No wonder at all. The separate nation-states can't maintain their social-democratic apparatus, and seek to make (much of it) affordable by eliminating the frictional costs of currency transactions, etc. It may work for awhile, too, but Ireland will hold out as the Delaware of the new union, and capitalism will prevail simply because water flows down hill. It will be crony capitalism at first (hence those committees) but we can expect that people over time will figure out ways to frustrate the cronies and anarcho-capitalism will prevail. --Christofurio 23:07, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
Of course, all of that probably doesn't affect you in any way, since you oppose both socialism and democracy. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 17:18, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It affects me very much. This is only one planet and we all have to find ways to live on it, even people as different as, say, you and I. Ways that don't involve coercion would be best. This is why I found revealing your comment on another talk page that anyone who believes that "this painting is beautiful" must believe the statement "this painting is not beautiful" to be false. That inference is false. The painting can have many different beholders and many different contexts, after all. And the name of what I oppose is ... sovereignty. Specific manifestations are just kin under the same teepee. --Christofurio 23:07, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
At the very least, allow me to suggest, you might want to provide a name for one of these critics, "One important socialist, Joe Smith, said that Hayek was wrong because blah blah blah," and then we'll discuss whether the paraphrase is accurate. --Christofurio 14:03, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)
As I explained at the beginning of my reply, though, I agree with the current revision, so that probably won't be necessary. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 17:18, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
And, with amiability to equal your own, I will agree with your above characterization of your own remarks as "over-simplified." A little like the story about a falling apple is an "over-simplification" of the work of Isaac Newton. --Christofurio 21:19, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Is really true that European-style conservatism often has "opposed capitalism as a threat to social stability and traditional values"? Hasn't the european meaning of conservatism, at least in most european contries, and in the 20th century, included capitalism? 01:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

On January 9th, a user at '68.4.79.125' removed my reference to Hayek using a Rockefeller scholarship with the comment, 'Hayek did NOT use a Rockefeller scholarship. This arrived after Hayek left America, too late from him to use it'. Fine, I only had a single source for this fact anyway. [1] However, I can't find any source to back the claim that it was late. I'm minded to restore the text the way it was, but I am loathe to start an edit war. Has anyone a reference to this one way or another? As I say, if none shows up I may restore it, based upon the hayek.de page as well as some less credible resources.

Addition to influences

I added a reference to Hayek's relationship with Karl Popper to the Influences section

--Parker Whittle 20:25, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Addition

Whether one agrees that Hayek was a philosopher of note, one cannot very well argue that he did not publish philosophical works, nor that his philosophical views had any less influence than a number of obscure or controversial individuals who have recieved the label.

I have added a section outlining Hayeks as philosopher, in appropriately NPOV, and have restored the categories associating him with philosophy.

--Parker Whittle 21:38, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Social and political philosophy

I have moved a paragraph that was on tacit knowledge page and appears more appropriately under Hayek, probably in the section under this heading. Unfortunately, I do not know anything about Hayek, or economics and do not fully understand the paragraph and do not know who added it. Hopefully someone will amend as necessary. This is my first ever real 'edit' so I am happy to receive help! Jeffrey Newman 08:41, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I moved the passage to the sub-section on "spontaneous order," since I thought it fitted slightly better there. I think it does make a valuable addition to the article. -- Eb.hoop 09:34, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Deletion

I deleted the following:

"Hayek conceded that when competition is not possible (or, more rarely, when competition does not provide efficient outcomes) some degree of direct government control becomes necessary. He also argued that social services are a paramount duty of the state but they should not interfere with the principle of economic competition."

This is false. Hayek never supported the notion that social services are a paramount duty of the state. Hayek, quoting Benjamin Franklin stated: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The Road to Serfdom (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1944), pg. 133.). Obviously, this indicates he does not support state run social programs. So do the following quotes of Hayek:

"...if we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."

"It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regards as the public good." The Constitution of Liberty, p262

Unless you are talking about Hayek's views as a student prior to his reading of Mises' socialism, it is completely false.

I'm not sure if Hayek regarded social services as a 'paramont duty of the state' but he was in favour of a type of social security:
"There is of course no reason why a society which, thanks to the market, is as rich as modern society should not provide outside the market a minimum security for all who in the market fall below a certain standard." (Hayek's italics.)--F. A. Hayek, 'The Principles of a Liberal Social Order', in A. Crespigny & J. Cronin (ed.), Ideologies of Politics (OUP, 1976), p. 72.
"Nor is the preservation of competition incompatible with an extensive system of social services - so long as the organisation of these services is not designed in such a way as to make competition ineffective over wide fields."--The Road to Serfdom (Routledge Classics, 2001), p. 39.

--Johnbull 00:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

'Controversial' that he was prescient re: socialism in Eastern Europe ?

"His analyses of socialist as well as non-socialist societies have been proven prescient by the breakup of communist Eastern Europe (though this is controversial)."

How is this controversial? I'm rewording this; it seems fairly obvious -- without associating any value judgement with the moral merits of a Hayek-guided economy -- that he was correct in analyzing these economies as inefficient. Holmwood 09:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget that his teacher von Mises already proved this in the 1920s. Intangible 04:01, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Well [von] Mises had very powerful arguments (and correct ones). Did he "prove" it in a mathematical sense? That I'm not so sure of, though I happen to agree with Mises' economic calculation problem as a criticism of socialism. I certainly agree with you that powerful intellectually coherent criticism of socialism predates Hayek. I think my point that [Hayek's critique of socialist societies] is not controversial in any intellectual sense is reinforced. Holmwood 09:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
von Mises didn't "prove" anything. Empirically, von Mises criticisms of central planning have been shown to be correct for two reasons, neither of which have anything to do with the ideological content of socialism. First, the "calculation problem" correctly assumed that no single human or group of humans could plan an economy. This doesn't take into account computer technology, which is something von Mises would have no way of knowing anything about. Secondly, von Mises appears prophetic because of the way that "socialism" developed in Europe. With the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia, it became widely assumed that socialism would take on an authoritarian Marxist perspective. Quite naturally, the authoritarian biases of central planning, coupled with a lack of political democracy, hindered the efficiency of the Soviet economy, the only major empirical case study of "socialist" economics.--Sarcastic Avenger 21:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

suggestion that EXTENDED ORDER be merged into this article

I vote NO. This is a biographical article about Hayek; it cannot possibly cover in any detail all of the various concepts and ideas Hayek wrote about. N2e 23:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
(on the other hand, the Extended order article is very weak, and needs wikification. But discussion on article improvement should happen on that talk page, not Hayek's)
Concur with 'no'. Yes, the Extended order article is weak. That doesn't mean the solution is to give up and absorb it in a biographic entry. Holmwood 00:43, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
One more vote NO. It's a seperate concept that should be expanded with time Daniel Olsen 04:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Family background, nationality

There needs to be some statement of Hayek's family background which was of Arab extraction (the Hayek family). Maybe someone more elloquent could add such a part.

Hayek's surname is believed to be of Czech origin, not Arabic. See note at the end of http://www.friesian.com/hayek.htm. -- Eb.hoop 20:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Critics of Hayek: Jeffrey Sachs

If you want a critic of Hayek, Jeffrey Sachs wrote the following letter to the Wall Street Journal. He says, in my reading, that Hayek's predictions have not been confirmed for the Scandinavian societies. I'm giving you the full letter; somebody may want to excerpt it. (This should be on the WSJ free site,and Sachs would probably consider copying this letter fair use for copyright purposes.) Nbauman 17:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[2]

Vibrant Economies With High Taxes and High Social Welfare Spending November 27, 2006; Page A13

William Easterly is correct that Friedrich Hayek wrote "The Road to Serfdom" in 1946 to warn that central planning and state ownership would lead to the collapse of freedom ("Dismal Science," editorial page, Nov. 15). Yet in 1976, in the Preface to the Reprint Edition, Hayek made perfectly clear that he believed that the same outcome would occur through the welfare state. Noting that "socialism has come to mean chiefly the extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the institutions of the welfare state," Hayek wrote that "In the latter kind of socialism the effects I discuss in this book are brought about more slowly, indirectly, and imperfectly. I believe that the ultimate outcome tends to be very much the same . . ." (While the editors at Scientific American used the shorthand that Hayek wrote in the 1940s, my detailed paper on the Nordic economies makes explicit that Hayek's critique of the modern welfare state came in the 1970s, in the Reprint Edition).

Thirty years on, we can see the results of Hayek's prediction. Despite government revenues above 50% of GNP in the Nordic countries supporting an extensive social welfare state, those countries are vibrant democracies with open, competitive, and high-income economies and low rates of poverty. That is precisely the point of my Scientific American piece and a longer scholarly paper that Prof. Easterly wrongly attacks. He actually makes my point for me by pointing out that the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom ranks Finland, Sweden and Denmark as "free economies," with Denmark ranked ahead of the United States, despite the fact of their extremely high rates of taxation and social welfare spending. Similarly, the Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum puts these three countries at ranks two, three and four in global competitiveness, ahead of the United States at rank six.

Mr. Easterly also repeats his favorite canard that I believe in central planning. Anybody who is at all familiar with my life's work and writings knows that I believe in market-led and open economies and was a leading economic adviser on the conversion of the former Communist economies to market economies. I do not believe in pure laissez faire, however. Nor do I believe that an antipathy to foreign aid is correct at a time when millions of children are dying each year as a result of extreme poverty unattended by practical help from the rich countries.

Jeffrey D. Sachs Earth Institute at Columbia University New York

Hmm... Should we accept Sachs' comments blindly? Born and bred in continental Europe, and with some experience of Scandinavia, I see our democracies as anything but "vibrant". Let us admit the process of increasing state intervention seems not to be completed yet, restrictions on free speech are more numerous in Scandinavia than in the US, and the US as well as Asia are leaping ahead technologically. The experience is not concluded; it is unfolding before our eyes. Oberlage 14:44, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Of course not, we shouldn't accept anyone's comments blindly. I'm suggesting that, since no article could be complete without addressing the critics, Jeffrey Sachs would be a good critic to include. Do you have any specific data about the Scandinavian economies to include that would refute Sach's claims? Nbauman 00:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

These are complex topics but, just to give an example, you could refer to per capita GDP growth from the 60's onwards (http://www.demographia.com/db-ppp60+.htm). You can clearly see that Sweden is not catching up with the US, while France is catching up with Sweden. There is nothing there that looks particularly vibrant in the economic performance. But Hayek's point was that this would also progressively lead to the erosion of democratic values. The social democrats have been in power in Sweden during 61 of the past 70 years (http://www.econ.umn.edu/~hhe/TEACHING/ECON4337/swedishmodel.pdf), again is that vibrant? Oberlage 22:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Sachs is promoting a social-democrat political agenda, no more. Assar Lindbeck is an economist born and specialized in Scandinavian economies, and his opinion is that where the Scandinavian economies have had success, they were of an anglo-saxon / free-market nature. Hayek also acknowledged that the socialisms of Germany and USSR were different that those of Scandinavian societies, and he foresaw that the "Road to Serfdom" would happen more slowly under social-democrat (taxation) regimes than under totalitarian regimes. To me, he is proven true as years go by. Asia, not Scandinavia, is the next most prosperous civilization, thanks to free-market reforms. --Childhood's End 15:37, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

but still it's a vibrant democracy acording to the freedom indices of the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indices_of_Freedom according to the facts there Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland are four of the only 12 completely free countries in the world. And asia? chinas gdp/capita is still much lower than in most western nations, including scandinavia, india is even poorer, so saying that asia is the most prosperous place in the world is a bit of a stretch. Furthermore, it's strange to have a page like this without critics, almost all other 'great people' have criticism sections added. Just because you don't agree with the critic doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted. And the bit about the erosion of democratic values in sweden? It's 5% truth and 95% hogwash. In Sweden you can say "The prime minister is a fucking idiot." on TV without state or corporate censorship blotting out words deemed offensive, can americans say the same? Of course there are limits, you can't say "I think all black, jewish and gay people should be killed." on TV, but where can you? Furthermore sweden has become Less unfree over the last 60 years, sterilizations were banned, the death penalty was removed, even during times of war, etc. If the democratic values were being eroded shouldn't sweden be getting less and less free?

what about..

a "critics" section? There seems to be one on quite a few other biographical pages. Surely Hayek had and still has critics.

Have fun trying to get in some critiques of one of the the most idolized free marketeers on fascistpedia —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.227.137.188 (talk) 04:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC).
It isn't very hard to find any. Just about every major contemporary socialist, communist, or anarchist figure was at one point a critic of Hayek. I don't know of any specific works, but I do know the clash was there. --Sarcastic Avenger 21:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I have added George Orwell's comments from his 1944 review of The Road to Serfdom. Since Hayek supporters often refer to this review as "favorable", it should be unobjectionable. --The Four Deuces (talk) 22:33, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Intro: mention being an author

Shouldn't there be a mention of Hayek being an author? -ChristopherMannMcKay 19:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Intro: Summary of Influence

He is considered to be one of the major forces of change from the dominant interventionist and Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century back towards classical liberalism after the 1980s, although many of his objectives, such as the gold standard and miniscule regulation were not put into practice.

This sentence needs major work. It should be edited and improved. As part of the "Intro" it is worth special consideration. Here are my complaints:

  1. "He is ... force of change" is strong for someone who was an intellectual influence on policy makers.
  2. "His objectives" My recollection of Hayek's approach is that he didn't seem to be objective-oriented. He made policy recommendations, but I don't think he had a defined "list of objectives"
  3. "many of ... were not put into practice" - This would be true for almost any academic economist and is fairly obvious. A waste of space in the Intro, in my opinion
  4. "Force of change from X to Y" This begs the question of exactly what X and Y were and exactly how much of a movement from X to Y there really was. This is a serious problem with the quote, because it is a little defocusing, and creates a need for supporting evidence that is in turn controversial.
  5. I don't think he advocated a gold standard (see Reason Interview ) although he may have at one time or another.

My proposal is:

"His work is widely considered to have been a major influence on policy makers in the [date range], [country list], a period that saw a resurgence of free market ideas."

I don't know what the right values for [date range] and [country list] should be. I'd say U.S. and U.K. in the 1980s and 1990s, but I'd prefer to hear from the experts... This proposed sentence also be easily supported by footnotes as I think people from various points of view would all agree that he was influential. (i.e. it is not necessary to define X or Y or the size of the change as in #4 above) Maybe "free market" should be "classical liberal" or something else. However, to say Bill Clinton or Tony Blair were "classical liberals" is more of a stretch than saying they were "free market" -- that's why I recommend using a broader term. (That's if you want to include the 90s.)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Msgilligan (talk • contribs) 10:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Citations

I tagged most of the unreferenced paragraphs in this article. This article is heavily unreferenced, and so I have tagged it appropaitely.--Sefringle 03:20, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Kaldor and Sraffa

My, my. No mention of Kaldor or Sraffa in the section on the business cycle. I wonder why? Could it be that the shrine of Hayek does not take kindly to the fact that his former student (Kaldor) refuted his arguments or that Sraffa's review exposed the limitations of his theories on money and credit. The combined critique made sure that Hayek lost the battle over what caused the Business Cycle to the Keynesians. I do know that Austrian economists have a vested interest in not mentioning these awkward facts, but surely Wikipedia should mention both Kaldor and Sraffa...

Perhaps you'll want to discuss this with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or with Ben Bernanke prior to calling that these two guys have refuted Hayek over business and money cycles. --Childhood's End 15:23, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Because clearly Bernanke has done such a great job with the US economy... James Haughton (talk) 23:38, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Professor Hayek was Roman Catholic

Why is he listed as an agnostic? According to Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Professor Hayek died a Catholic. Earlier in Professor Hayek life he was noted to be "non-religious" but not agnostic. LoveMonkey (talk) 17:49, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

statics?

Re: "family of prominent intellectuals working in the fields of statics and biology." I have no subject knowledge, but surely "statics" is a typo for "statistics"? Bhami (talk) 04:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hayek first discovered statics when he was folding Pinochet's sweaters.70.55.83.28 (talk) 08:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Removing some influences.

I'm removing some of the names listed in the "Influenced" section. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "Influenced by," and "Influenced" sections should reference people who preceded and followed the lines of thought of the subject of the article. In this case, Hayek was a political philosopher and economist. Therefore, the influences should be other philosophers and economists that have followed Hayek and incorporated his ideas into their own theory.

I first removed the following:

Margaret Thatcher, Ludwig Erhard, Ronald Reagan, Keith Joseph, Barry Goldwater, Mart Laar, Vaclav Klaus, Ron Paul, and Jack Kemp

because they are not substantially furthering political philosophy or economic theory. Just because they are well known and influential conservative public officials, who may or may not have made reference to Hayek, does not mean they qualify as relevant "Influenced" people for a philosopher's wikipedia article.

I also removed:

Rush Limbaugh, Bruce Caldwell, and Jimmy Wales

because they too are not substantially furthering political philosophy or economic theory. Just because they're well known people who like Hayek's ideas, does not qualify them to be in this section of a philosopher's/economist's article.

Further still, I question the following:

Alan Greenspan, Konrad Lorenz, and George Will

but I'm not completely sure which way to go with them, so I hope there will be some debate about these three.

Please don't just revert my changes wholesale. If you feel I've made an error in removing some of the names, please think hard about each name you choose to put back on. It seems a little funny to me that Friedrich Hayek would have influenced more relevant people than Locke and Descartes put together. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.167.210.231 (talk) 03:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Hayek's influence on Reagan, Will, Barry Goldwater, Mart Laar, Vaclav Klaus, Ron Paul, and Jack Kemp is well documented. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.4.109.207 (talk) 07:07, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Companion of Honour

I don't see how Hayek's self-described "best day of his life" is "trivia"! I think it actually is pretty important to understanding Hayek the person, not just Hayek the economist/philosopher. Biographies are not just a résumé of one's public life but actually should include a person's social life, is it is notable, as well. Hayek obviously thought it was important!--Johnbull (talk) 16:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Burial place

According to the article Hohenzollern Castle, Hayek was buried there. I don't know how to add this to the infobox. Perhaps someone else can do it. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)\

This is bogus. Hayek is buried in Vienna. I've been to his grave. A picture of his grave site can be googled on the web.

Isn't This a Religious Article?

Shouldn't this article be classified or categorized as a religious or cult article? Stevenmitchell (talk) 14:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Why would it? 70.150.94.194 (talk) 17:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Photo

Note that File:F_Hayek.jpg has been listed for possible deletion at Commons:Deletion_requests/File:F_Hayek.jpg Note this not a vote, it is a discussion to determine if the image is out of copyright. If anyone has relevent information on the actual original source of the photo and/or copyright status, please comment there. -- Infrogmation (talk) 12:29, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Recent Edits

"the son of a municipal doctor in Vienna, is rivaled by only Adam Smith as the preeminent theorist of the market system. Hayek's account of how changing relative prices communicate signals which enable individuals to coordinate their unique plans in an ever changing world is widely regarded as one of the landmark achievements of economic science. This and a host of other important contributions has made Hayek one of the most influential economists of modern times."

This is the most recent intro before i reverted it. This intro seems very clearly biased and did not have good citations. The claim that "[Hayek] is rivaled by only Adam Smith as the preeminent theorist of the market system." seems very controversial at best. Dark567 (talk) 03:35, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

The libertarian editor who reverted your edits didn't fix many of the problems with the intro. What I've changed it to is by no means perfect; however, it removed the fawning adulation and clarified that the source provided for claims that he was one of the most influential economists of all time was, in fact, an undergraduate paper. The editor may, of course, revert my edits again, as he is wont to do. Captainktainer * Talk 16:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Dark567 -- do you know anything about the topic? All sorts of Nobel prize winners in economics rank Hayek as the leading modern theorist of the market economy. Again I ask. Do you know ANYTHING. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.4.109.207 (talk) 07:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Captainktainer -- are you a lefty troll out to wreck this page? Hayek's influence is documents by a simple search of the Nobel lectures of the Nobel prize winners in economics. Or go to the Wikiquote page for quotes on Hayek. Dozens of the leading economists of the last 80 years reference Hayek as a significant influence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.4.109.207 (talk) 07:04, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Prove it with reliable sources and verification, and make sure that you adhere to the rest of our policies. Also, please sign your posts in the future. Also, no personal attacks.Captainktainer * Talk 11:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
I am not doubting the significance of Hayek(as a matter of fact he is probably my favorite economist), but the point remains that any claims about him being the most influential or being influential at all have to have the proper references/citations and be well written. Also I would like to point out the difference between writing that "Hayek was the leading modern theorist of the market economy." As compared to "Hayek was a significant theorist of the market economy." The former needs a lot of good citations and probably would need to be qualified before being included.(and is also probably pretty dubious) The latter is relatively obvious, but none the less should have good citations before being included. Dark567 (talk) 19:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Nationality

A biographical on wikipedia ariticle usually starts out with the subject's nationality, this doesn't. I don't know what would qualify as Hayek's nationality (Austrian? British?), but I think we should find out and get it in there.80.196.102.170 (talk) 03:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


general tone of article

This article is pretty much the embodiment of why wikipedia can never truly be a trusted source. It is well-sourced and does a fair job of keeping the tone seemingly neutral. However, it's clear that the admins are Hayek true-believers and the page reflects this. No earnest discussion of Hayek or Friedman or neoliberalism in general can proceed without acknowledgement of the controversy that has always surrounded his work and a discussion of the critiques and criticisms of it (as well as praise). It's absurd that no such section exists on this page. The critique/criticism sections on the pages for Keynes and Marx (and even Friedman) are extensive. It appears that criticisms of Hayek are removed as violations of neutral POV. This itself is an indication that this page has serious POV issues and needs to be seriously revised and restructured. Wfredmason (talk) 17:50, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

So write it! Wikipedia is for all points of view, just as long as you have verifiable, reliable secondary source citations for any claims you make in the article. That's how Wikipedia works. Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
You got it right, in claiming that "the embodiment of why wikipedia can never truly be a trusted source". The articles concerning neo-liberalism - yes, Hayek is in the core - do embody some critique, but this critique is weighted so that the true knowledge remains a mere dream.

The article about Hayek is a very good example of this: This man was part of the massacre in Chile during Augusto Pinochet years, but even this truth has to be, if not totally hidden, moderated as meaningless. The reason is as you pointed out, that "the admins are Hayek true-believers and the page reflects this". These people do the work of the libertarist international, and many of them get paid for this job. These people do not want other people to know that when receiving his Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize, Hayek's personal friend Milton Friedman was considered as a murderer.

In addition to cleaning the neoliberalism - or, to be exact, colour it's black history white - these people actively forget that these intellectuals, Hayek, Friedman, Mises, Haberler, Machlup etc., were all of Jewish origin. And the big secret of today's world is that in order to understand current phenomena, especially in the field of economics, you have to get rid of that black-and-white picture about history. I mean, that Jews have been - or are - always good and working in the common interest of mankind. No, these neo-liberal seekers of self-interest are constituting a world opposite to a modern welfare state, a state of peculiar economic theocracy. Despite their rhetoric and their little helpers who try to keep that illusion alive.

To be honest, I have to say that by demonizing the 1930-1940's political leaders in Europe and being silent about the dark side of the Jewish economists of that era, libertarists and monetarists have managed to establish a world-wide regime that is extremely disastrous. I have also seen some definite marks that this forced silence, in Wikipedia and other media, have a potential to turn against those people of Jewish origin who do not participate in that neoliberal revolution, as well. Libertarist and monetarist action may shelter the risks of these profit-seekers, but that action brings the collapse of that order closer and closer every day.

To be precise, look what is the fate of Naomi Klein in these Wikipedia articles, concerning neo-liberalism and it's thinkers and implementors. She has done great and brave job in her research in neo-liberalism. Great in digging the archives and providing also details about the interaction between the economists and tyrants. Brave in having the courage to raise a hand against these people - Hayek among them - who share some features of her personal history as well. This has lead her to be among the ones whose contribution is described as a mere lie. But in deleting her contribution, these immoral imposers of neo-liberalism do only raise the value of her contribution.

So, Eisfbnore and MarnetteD. Think about it. You cannot continue hiding these things forever. - Seventyad 28.5.2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seventyad (talk • contribs) 18:07, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

IMHO: Eisfbnore and MarnettD should continue to raise the value of these contributions. hgilbert (talk) 19:59, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Seventyad, as far as I know there are no "admins" for a page in Wikipedia; there are just editors. More importantly, it appears that you are trying to make some kind of claim that there is a conspiracy of Jews seeking to do bad things in the world. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia meant to provide neutral, verifiable information. To the extent that racism or conspiracy theories are expressed in edits you make, it is likely that other editors will undo your edits for violating the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy. To the extent that you cannot cite reliable sources to back up claims made in your edits, other editors will be likely to undo your edits for violating the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. Jytdog (talk) 21:31, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Jytdog, if Naomi Klein is seen as a partisan source, to use Cato Institute in references is more so. Cato is a mere right-wing think-tank propagating and defending Chicago school economics. Editors or administrators, who really cares as this seems to be a battle between limited and more comprehensive knowledge about Hayek.

What comes to your claim about a Jewish conspiracy, it is ridiculous. The workings of Hayek and Friedman, among others, are open to everyone. I also suggest to go for a material like Robert E. Lucas Jr. and the earlier Emile Grunberg and Franco Modigliani material as well. The material known as Political Economy.

Better yet the defended, very limited knowledge article, links Hayek to Mises, and also elsewhere you can connect Hayek with Oskar Morgenstern - who leads to Robert Aumann and so on. The latter ones are known as a pioneers of game theory in economics. There you have it: the planners of the game and the people they govern. Here is the Hayekian "Spontaneous Order" and the conspiracy you refer to.

So spontaneuos order that the deeper knowledge about it had to be erased from the article. You really should leave this track you are on, isolating Hayek's work from his colleaques work in Chicago University. Let me quess: as the remarks of f.e. Naomi Klein have gained the status they will, you have to start cutting Hayek's work in small pieces guarding that door to monetarist ideology. - Seventyad 29.5.2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seventyad (talk • contribs) 21:57, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

SeventyAd do you think Cato Institute cares about Hayek's religion? I just googled for some source that specifically talked about his religion and found that interview, which provided a great, concise statement, and it happened to be on Cato's website so I added the correction to the article and cited the source I found. I would agree that Cato has an economic ideology and ~could be~ considered too POV on economic issues to be a reliable source. You seem to assume that I am some kind of Hayekian, but I have said nothing here to indicate whether I think he is brilliant or dead wrong or some mix thereof; I am however happy to say that I am interested in Wikipedia providing clear and reliable information. Finally, I will not continue the discussion into the relationship you seem to make to make between certain economists' religion/ethnicity and their thoughts, activities, and relationships; everything I had to say about that, I said above.Jytdog (talk) 13:57, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Hayek had a Roman Catholic funeral (source Friedrich Hayek A Biography) He was buried with a cross on his grave. Father Johannes Schasing officiated. "My own curiosity about this led me to spend a great deal of time researching my ancestors. I have full information for five generations in all possible directions. And since they all happened to be first-born children, there's more certainty that they derived from their parents; so as far back as I can trace it, I evidently had no Jewish ancestors whatever." (62) When asked if he regarded himself among the "mixed" Christian-Jewish group in Vienna in the 1920s, Hayek responded, "Not my family, my family is on the purely Christian group." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.41.157.189 (talk) 03:15, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

what needs to be fixed

    In the first paragragh we come across the following formulation. 
    "Hayek's account of how changing prices communicate signals which enable individuals to 
     coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics.' Leave 
     aside the fact that this is not mentioned at all in the footnoted source, but the description
     of Hayek's thesis is clumsy. 
      Hayek does not have an account "of how changing prices communicate signals..." he does have   
    an account of how changing prices communicate INFORMATION. Prices ARE the signals, they don't
    communicate them. I'm fixing that much. (spiker_22 99.167.106.249

(talk) 23:20, 23 August 2011 (UTC))

Postmodernism

"For example, Hayek's discussion in The Road to Serfdom (1944) about truth and falsehood in totalitarian systems influenced some later opponents of postmodernism (e.g., Wolin 2004)."

What does this section have to do with postmodernism, or a critique of postmodernism? As far as I know most of the major postmodernists are fairly stridently anti-totalitarian; though, as is, this sentence would seem to imply that they advocate totalitarianism. Unless this statement is clarified it seems extraneous (and possibly an irrelevent and POV jibe at postmodernism). That is, I have no doubt that Hayek influenced opponents of postmodernism, but to state it as the article does, the article seems to argue that this opposition occurs precisely over the issue of totalitarianism, with postmodernists defending the the practice. Even if this was corrected, I would advise that the statement be made more substantive, so as to avoid merely being extraneous and irrelevent. --MS

I'm trying to see how the phrasing of the sentence implies that postmodernists defend totalitarianism, but I confess that no matter how mcuh I try it takes a pretty torturous path to construe it as implying anything of the sort. Nonetheless, since you reacted so strongly to it, I've rephrased it. I don't see any need to remove it though, since Hayek did influence some opponents of postmodernism and the discussion in RS of truth and falsehood and the use of language is precisely one of the sources of that influence. The sentence is no more or less 'substantive' than other parts of this section of the article, such as those that mention Hayek's influence on Thatcher or Popper. If a sentence such as: 'He had a wide-reaching influence on contemporary economics, politics, philosophy, sociology, psychology and anthropology' can escape the label of 'extraneous and irrelevent [sic]', then a sentence which explicitly states an source of influence on a later work and an example of that later work, most certainly can escape that label. --Calamus 11:29 EST, 16 November 2006
The edit is a good one; it is simple and for the most part eliminates the problem I had with the statement. Just to clarify my original criticism, the article discusses Hayek's criticism of totalitarianism at great length. The statemeny I had a problem with then says that some of his arguments about totalitarian thought influenced the opponents of postmodernism. Without clarification this places postmodernism in an analogous position to totalitarianism just as postmodernism's opponents are analogous to Hayek. It is the explicit mentioning of totalitarianism in the sentence that causes this confusion, and that has been fixed. However, I still maintain that the sentence is basically insubstantial. The references to Thatcher and Popper in the article specify how Hayek influenced them, and actually I think the sentence you quote is insubstantial, which is not to say that it ought to be removed. Instead, I think that it would make a good intro to the section, leading into the more substantial claims as to his specific influence within those topics. The sentence I was complaining about is in and of itself fine now; however, like I said, it is still reletively insubstantial; that is, while it does have the "e.g. Wolin" example, that example does little to clarify to the lay reader how exactly Hayek has influenced opponents of postmodernism. A couple of sentences more specifically detailing this influence would be helpful... but, then again, it might simply make the section cumbersome and tangential, so it might be better to leave the sentence as is or remove it. At any rate, I leave it to those who know more about Hayek to do (or not do) this, as they see fit. MS
"What does this section have to do with postmodernism, or a critique of postmodernism? As far as I know most of the major postmodernists are fairly stridently anti-totalitarian" and "That is, I have no doubt that Hayek influenced opponents of postmodernism..."

The answer is simple but not the most obvious one: Postmodernists deny the existence -or relevance - of objective truth, and weigh the value of information against a measure how good it (information) performs. I do not agree with your "no doubt", because I label Hayek as postmodernist as well.

We have to remember that information and knowledge are not synonymous. Knowledge is what you know and information is what you receive. In this agressively defended limited article on Hayek there is a sentence "These ideas were informed by a moral philosophy derived from epistemological concerns regarding the inherent limits of human knowledge", in addition to a remark that one of the role of the government Hayek allowed was proper information.

So, Hayek was a proponent of both "the inherent limits of human knowledge" and government fed "proper information". With the first of these stances Hayek argued that humans do not know a much - thus repeating Ludwig von Mises - and with the second he argued that it is possible to feed the population with information consistent with the market order and its needs. This renders Hayek - sorry to bring a disappointment among some of you - among the totalitarianists.

To be precise, there is a specific, interesting role for information in the Chicago school economics Hayek - with no doubt - represents too (in addition to Austrian economics). This role is based on the valid claim by Herbert A. Simon that information consumes attention. This is only the point-of-departure claim, but it is sufficient here.

In this harshly defended article on Hayek there is a claim that Hayek's thinking was organized among a certain treatment of time. And yes, information consumes both attention and time, one of the best examples being this neverending attempt to shed some light on what Hayek really said, and was a proponent of. But, a better example of this is the current financial crisis: remembering the von Hayekian and von Misesian claim that people do not know a much, I ask how many of you have actually seen the figures showing the condition of say, Portugal's economy?

Yes, none of you I think. You have only relied on second or third hand information, and based you reasoning on that. Now, I claim that the IMF conditions were planned to be imposed on Portugal and other countries BEFORE the story of the financial crisis was told. There, you have this thinking about dimension known as time that Hayek represents (but has not invented): the reaction to financial crisis existed before the news about crisis, and the latter constituted an explanation for the dismantling of these welfare societies, Portugal among them. That is the Hayek and Mises explanation of the limitations of human knowledge and the utilitarian usability of it.

So, this makes it a very challenging, to explain Hayek as a non-totalitarianist spokesman of western democracy. No doubt that Hayek has "influenced" the ones not very keen on the postmodern condition. - Seventyad 28.5.2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seventyad (talk • contribs) 19:20, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Brackets for Wikipedia Internal References

Aren't brackets for internal references only supposed to be done once in an article? Why are there several redundant bracketed internal references in this article? Stevenmitchell (talk) 22:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe it is because this is a place of solemn worship and subjugation before one's deity - this necessarily requires much repetition.70.55.142.18 (talk) 01:36, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

It's just a stylistic mistake. Please feel free to remove redundant links. --FOo (talk) 18:02, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Rather than limiting internal links to one per article it could be more helpful to readers to allow a term to be linked in each section or screenful ? Is there a policy on this ? - Rod57 (talk) 20:58, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Quotes

According to Wikipedia:RS#Quotations: "Quotations should be cited to the original source if possible; when secondary sources are used, those that cite the original source should be preferred over those that don't. Partisan secondary sources should be viewed with suspicion if they lack neutral corroboration." I made a quick search for these quotes and I wasn't able to corroborate them. -- Vision Thing -- 20:10, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

POV issues

User:J.R. Hercules has made several edits that I believe are tendentious. I disagree with them, but won't reverse them myself. I present them here to let other users determine their propriety and edit if they see fit. He originally added a section (highly POV and very tenuously sourced in my opinion) on Hayek's alleged "support for Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet" which I attempted to reincorporate into the main body and balance (here).

Here he accuses me of "original research" and removes a line I paraphrased from a book's description of Hayek's work in Chile. That cited source (p. 56) says (emphasis added): "Hayek and Friedman publicly supported the Pinochet government economic experiment although they refrained from addressing the problem of its authoritarian practices." (which I restated as "He supported the junta's neoliberal market reforms, but neither condemned nor expressed support for the authoritarian Chilean regime itself"). That is not "original research"; it is called paraphrasing.

In this edit, he replaces what he had earlier sourced to a Counterpunch article with a book written by the same person (Greg Grandin). I do not believe this complies with WP:RS#Quotations ("Partisan secondary sources should be viewed with suspicion if they lack neutral corroboration"). The originally cited Grandin article (title "The Road From Serfdom") seems clearly to be a partisan source for a quotation of an individual it is criticizing (Hayek). Nor do I believe that the same person quoting Hayek in two different places (Grandin's Counterpunch article and Grandin's book) meets WP:RS. The quote itself is not anywhere online other than as taken from the Counterpunch article (Google Google News). I believe the same are true with the quotes Naomi Klein attributes to Hayek. In this edit, he also removed qualification that the only source for the attributed quote is Naomi Klein, and phrased it instead as a statement of fact. That quote cannot be sourced anywhere other than Klein's book.

In this edit and this edit, he removes qualification of Klein's ideological stance (anti-capitalist) which was cited to this article in The Independent. He also engages in a gratuitous ad hominem attack directed at me ("removed an attack article on Naomi Klein placed by some RW zealot"). But the left-wing newspaper The Independent is not exactly a bastion of "right-wing zealotry". In fact, what he calls "an attack article" is actually fawning (excerpt: "Ms Klein is 30 years old, attractive, intelligent, intellectual. She's well-groomed, well-dressed, unthreatening. She is hailed as a spokesperson for the movement she has written about, and it's a role she takes seriously. She knows that her success is due to her calm, unhectoring approach, her lack of extremism, and her acceptability to the mainstream..."). Frankly I don't really care how she is described as long as it is accurate and relevant to her criticism of Hayek (e.g. anti-corporate, anti-globalization, etc.), but I think it is necessary to qualify from what quarter come critics.

His edits also moved a citation (CR #35 to Liberalism and its Practice) so that it appears to back up the quotes attributed to Hayek in the Grandin article, which it does not.

User:J.R. Hercules accuses me of being a "RW zealot", but he is clearly pushing a POV against Hayek by attempting to exaggerate his connections to Pinochet and make them appear closer than they actually were. The only sources for these assertions are leftist, and therefore inherently partisan with respect to Hayek. That isn't bad for a straightforward criticism, as long as it is clear who is making it. When the only support is unverified quotations from a partisan source, that presents a serious problem. It is also unacceptable to use these tenuous quotes as statements of fact (i.e. that Hayek did without doubt say them or said them without further contextualization which would alter its meaning).

I think there is a POV transparent in this edit where the part in emphasis was added to the first sentence in the paragraph: "Hayek visited Chile several times in the 1970s and 1980s during the reign of dictator General Augusto Pinochet, and was so impressed with Pinochet's regime that he even held Société Mont Pélérin meetings there." Why would his opinion of the regime, regardless of what it was, factor into locations of the Mont Pelerin meetings? It seems if he was working there with the Chilean economists, it would be a logical location. How does that imply his support of (or "being impressed" with) the dictatorship itself? Strikehold (talk) 04:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The interview from which the quote is drawn is also available on-line at the Hayek Institute. [3]. The interview is also cited in socialist economist Michael Lebowitz's essay "Ideology and Economic Development" [4]. IMHO Greg Grandin is a solid source. He is a Yale educated, professor of history at New York University. His expert work on Latin America has been highly acclaimed and award-winning. He also participated in the truth commission on Guatemala.BernardL (talk) 11:23, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Your sources confirm the Grandin quotation (it is reworded slightly by Grandin which is why I had trouble confirming it elsewhere). However, that is only a part of the problems I pointed out with the edits, and my other two main concerns remain. That is, the change to the first sentence and the removal of the sourced line.
In the first sentence, J.R. Hercules changed it to say that Hayek was "so impressed with Pinochet's regime", which I do not believe is supported by his actual words or his actions. Whether he was impressed or not, I cannot find him saying, and if he didn't say it himself, it should not be made as a statement of fact, but a criticism leveled at him by someone else and sourced as such (e.g. "critic X said his tacit support..." or similar). Moreover, to say his being "impresssed with" the regime resulted in him holding meetings there is a false cause fallacy. It does not follow that the location of meetings confirms any feelings about Pinochet or his regime.
The other concern is the removal of the line from the book Liberalism and its Practice (Dan Avnon, political science PhD from UC Berekeley, FWIW). It, I think, provided balance as it illustrated that Hayek was not necessarily a supporter of Pinochet. If you read the original source as I demonstrated above (second para of original post), I think it is a fair representation of what it said. J.R. Hercules removed it citing "original research", which I believe is clearly not the case. If someone is not satisfied with my paraphrase, then I invite others to rephrase it, but wholesale removal is not justified in my opinion.
Also, is anyone able to confirm the quotes cited by Klein? From the Google Books excerpt, it appears footnoted, but I don't own the book and you cannot preview the footnote section. Thoughts on reliability of Klein as a source? Strikehold (talk) 14:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


I find that most of your objections here are quite weak. Since Greg Grandin meets wp:RS requirements and he is in fact the source for the phrase “he was so impressed” there is not much you can do to suppress his interpretation of the issues even if you do not agree with Grandin’s interpretation of them. I will deal with some of your other points later but I think that at this time it is worth quoting the relevant passages from Grandin’s book. Grandin's interpretation of Hayek’s disposition towards Pinochet’s Chile is based on more than just the infamous interview (which I suspect Grandin researched in its original Spanish version). I have also included Grandin’s footnotes as they suggest that a significant part of Grandin’s interpretation is based on investigation of primary sources characteristic of historical scholarship. The bold emphasis is my own.

“Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian émigré and University of Chicago professor whose 1944 Road to Serfdom dared to suggest that state planning would produce not “freedom and prosperity” but “bondage and misery,” visited Pinochet’s Chile a number of times. He was so impressed that he held a meeting of his famed Société du Mont Pelerin there. He even recommended Chile to Margaret Thatcher as a model for completion of the free market revolution she was leading in Britain. The prime minister, at the nadir of Chile’s 1982 financial collapse,. agreed that Chile represented a “remarkable success” but believed that Britain’s “democratic institutions and the need for a high degree of consent” made “some of the measures” taken by Pinochet “quite unacceptable.” (21)

Like Friedman, Hayek glimpsed in Pinochet an avatar of true freedom, who would rule as a dictator only for a “transitional period,” only as long as needed to reverse decades of state regulation. “My personal preference,” he told a Chilean interviewer, “leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism.” (22) In a letter to the London Times he defended the junta, reporting that he had “not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende. (23) Of course, the thousands executed and tens of thousands tortured by Pinochet’s regime weren’t talking. (Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, Henry Holt and Company,2006, p.172-173)”

Notes:

(21) Hayek Collection, Box 101, folder 26, Hoover Institution Archives, Palo Alto, Calif. (22) El Mercurio, April 12, 1981. (23) London Times August 3, 1978.

Incidentally in the El Mercurio interview[5] Hayek argues that the reason why Republican administrations were discredited in the aftermath of the Vietnam war was that during the war U.S. forces did not attack enough and that the U.S. fought a “purely defensive” war of “self-defense” in Korea and Vietnam. This reasoning is beyond grotesque. In the course of their “purely defensive” war in Indochina, U.S. forces were responsible for massive destruction and loss of human life in three countries Laos, Camobdia, and Vietnam. We now know the barbaric carpet bombing campaigns in Cambodia, exceeded, in terms of total tonnage, the entire tonnage of bombs dropped by all axis and allied powers in the context of the global theater during the course of World War II. It makes one wonder what might be left of the world if the U.S. had followed Hayek’s absurdly inhuman recommendations?BernardL (talk) 23:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

(I might as well reply to this now then, before you make the rest of your comments) Clearly Grandin said that, but Hayek did not, as far as I know. It is improper to interpret someone's emotions or thoughts and then construe them as fact. You say "Grandin meets WP:RS requirements", but I have not seen that established as it relates specifically to Hayek. Grandin is clearly a partisan source on Hayek, and as such is not necessarily reliable for an interpretation of Hayek's thoughts or emotions. What you are suggesting is to use a left-wing source to support an unqualified statement of fact about a right-wing figure (at least as he is interpreted today). You don't see a conflict of interest there?
Grandin wrote that Hayek "visited Pinochet’s Chile a number of times. He was so impressed that he held a meeting of his famed Société du Mont Pelerin there." And you want to use that to support (current wording in the article, emphasis added): "[Hayek] was so impressed with Pinochet's regime that he even held Société Mont Pélérin meetings there." Aside from being an overly close paraphrase, that says something different than the original. One could travel to Iran or Israel or the United States and "be impressed", but that does not necessarily mean anything about an opinion of the government.
Regardless, any statement that Hayek "was impressed" with Pinochet or his regime needs to be attributed, not left unqualified. I don't believe Hayek said it, but if he did, then source it. If not, then it needs to be attributed to who holds the opinion that "Hayek was impressed with Pinochet". If it's accepted that Grandin feels that way, then that should be explicit. So fix it in the article if you feel it merits inclusion.
As for the Vietnam War, I think this only tangentially relevant since Hayek mentioned it rather parenthetically, but I feel I have to address your comments about it because they seem rooted in misconception. For whatever it's worth, here is what Hayek says in the source you provide:

"(Spanish not totally clear here, Translator's Note) For me the United States' big mistake was this: if you go into a war, you have to go in to win it. But firstly in Korea, and then in Vietnam, the North Americans attempted to conduct a purely defensive war. And you can never win a purely defensive war. To win a war, you need to attack. But the Americans were never really convinced of the need to carry off an offensive war. Which is why they never truly tried to defeat the enemy. It is simple: you cannot triumph simply by self-defence."

I happen to know a little bit about that war, and Hayek's argument is absolutely correct and it seems pretty uncontroversial. In fact, the same sentiments are echoed in the Weinberger Doctrine and the Powell Doctrine. I, of course, cannot speak for Hayek, but to me his point seems pretty straightforward. He doesn't mean here "offensive war" as in the aggressor, which is what I assume by your reaction you might be thinking. Hayek's was a common argument by military planners, who proposed to invade North Vietnam in order to rapidly end the conflict. This was rejected because of the fear of direct Chinese and Soviet intervention, but the alternative was a protracted unconventional war, which resulted in far more civilian and military casualties than a conventional war against North Vietnam itself would likely have caused. The communist military forces in South Vietnam were almost entirely North Vietnamese regulars. North Vietnam continually resupplied, rearmed, and reinforced the communist forces in South Vietnam through the Ho Chi Minh Trail which was a sophisticated network of roads and trails that ran through the ostensibly neutral nations of Laos and Cambodia and into South Vietnam. The US military was politically constrained, and the limited bombing campaign against the North was strictly controlled by political leaders. The US did indeed expend a massive amount of ordnance, for example in Arclight missions, (a little more than twice as much as the US used on average in WWII) but most of the bombing (and all of the carpet bombing that you mention) targeted the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the unpopulated jungles of South Vietnam and eastern Cambodia and Laos. There is no parallel with World War II, where bombing was largely directed at population centers. Your statement of "It makes one wonder what might be left of the world if the U.S. had followed Hayek’s absurdly inhuman recommendations" is a little outlandish, and I'm not sure what you mean exactly by it. Hayek's recommendation probably would have been vastly more humane than the policies that were carried out instead. Strikehold (talk) 01:34, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
I am monitoring the discussion on POV issues in the talk here, but have become just a bit confused by the longish explanations in the discussion above. I will be happy to weigh in, with an analytical view on the matter with rationale once the various positions have been fully argued and we are ready to attempt consensus. N2e (talk) 05:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
The article on Naomi Klein is only tangentially related to Friedrich Hayek; the only reason to link it was to attempt to impeach the source. Did you identify Larry Summers as "misogynistic and a proponent of laissez-faire economics" when his speech is quoted as an example of Hayek's influence? Well, no. Is that behavior generally repeated elsewhere on Wikipedia? No.
For the purposes of the article, nobody should give a crap whether Hayek was "brilliant" or whether his arguments were "correct," or whether they were actually full of crap, and this talk page is explicitly not for that purpose. Take it to Digg or MeFi or whatever.
As for this Grandin issue, his writings are a substantial part of how Hayek's decision to enable or not enable dictatorial regimes in the name of right-wing economics is interpreted, and he's generally well-respected in his field. His interpretations carry a lot of weight. You're generally right that it would be better to identify him as the source of the interpretation that Hayek was impressed by Pinochet's regime, but trying to whitewash away the whole Pinochet episode of Hayek's career would be a bad idea. BernardL's additional citation/quotation is a good place to start as a way to broaden the information provided in the article about it.
Now both of you, lay off the namecalling and the personal attacks and the throwing around of wikithreats. It's not helping anything.Captainktainer * Talk 21:08, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
There is no "Pinochet episode" in Hayek's career. What there is are a few sentences in one interview. Let's keep this in perspective.--Britannicus (talk) 21:48, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Strikehold, your comments on Vietnam were interesting, nevertheless I think they are quite wrong and in many cases your arguments are a generously apologetic and speculative spin on Hayek’s words. Perhaps we should follow up on this sometime with a discussion on our individual talk pages. For facts contrary to your characterization of the bombing of Cambodia I refer you to this article by Ben Kiernan and Talyor Owen. [6] For a reference on the many authentically humanistic resolutions that existed right up until 1966 as well as the failure of strategies of aggressive attack see “Intervention” by George McT. Kahin.

So now that the existence and content of the El Mercurio interview has been established to a reasonable degree, where are we at with the controversy surrounding Hayek’s support of Pinochet’s Chile?

I would suggest reducing it to a couple of basic issues, perhaps you have others to add.

1. Is Greg Grandin to be considered a reliable source in this case? To me it would seem to be the case. He is a notable (award-winning, reputably published, influential) expert on modern Latin American history. It has been demonstrated that he has actively researched Hayek’s views on Chile during the time of the Pinochet regime; it was an initiative that included going to the Hoover Institute to research its Hayek Collection. His interrogation of Hayek is made in the context of an analysis of the roles and relationships of neoliberal intellectuals to the authoritarian Latin American regimes. (The same chapter includes an analysis of the role of Milton Friedman.) The interpretation of someone’s “thoughts and emotions” as you tend to characterize it, or rather, the interpretation of someone’s “expressed views and their actions” as I would characterize it, by a reliable scholar, is actually a commonplace in the social sciences, not only in the fields of psychology and biography, but also in everyday social and political analysis. Is representation along these lines somehow outlawed from Wikipedia? I can show you numerous examples demonstrating its pervasive use throughout Wikipedia. We know from WP:RS that statements of opinion are acceptable. It seems to me like we simply have to add something like "according to historian Greg Grandin."

Although some might disagree with the interpretation that says that Hayek "was so impressed" with Pinochet's Chile I do not think it is beyond the bounds of reason for a scholar informed of Hsyek's views and actions at the time to draw this conclusion. Hayek visited Chile several times, he defended the junta in the London Times, he promoted Chile's policies to Thatcher, and he selected the site of Chile for the Mont Pelerin meeting in 1981, at the height of the dictatorship. If Hayek had anything other than a favourable view of Chile at the time, perhaps criticism or ambivalence towards Pinochet that is on the public record, it would be good to know about it. But right now, all evidence from reliable sources suggests he had a favourable and uncritical disposition not only towards the economic regime but also towards Pinochet's political dictatorship at the time.

2. Is it permissible to present the arguments of a notable critic on this page? If not why? You argue that Greg Grandin is “clearly a partisan source on Hayek.” Every source has a POV, but the point I believe is to achieve overall balance in the article. This article lacks such balance. To quote, WP: RS "Wikipedia articles should cover all major and significant-minority views that have been published by reliable sources." To quote Wp:NPOV - "Neutrality requires views to be represented without bias. All editors and all sources have biases (in other words, all editors and all sources have a point of view)—what matters is how we combine them to create a neutral article". It seems to me that the proposed Grandin quote also complies with WP:V, which also notably suggests that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Hayek has in fact been criticized by many notable scholars but you would never know it from this article. There are certainly many opinions here from pro-partisan sources. Yet, there is hardly any criticism in this article at all. This differs drastically from the articles of left-wing icons who have large sections, even entire pages, dedicated to criticism that sometimes originates from crass right-wing ideologues or from bloggers. I believe that the time has come for a serious well-sourced separate criticism section.BernardL (talk) 23:40, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Note that the page on Keynes has a large section of "critiques," including one from Hayek. This page is right wing propaganda, a shrine to Hayek--not unexpected or unique in wikipedia-land, just saying. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.228.189.150 (talk) 02:04, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

This line from the main article is a sweeping generalization but with no source: "Hayek, of course, had lived his early life under the mostly liberal, but mostly non-democratic, rule of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, and Hayek had seen democracy descend into illiberal tyranny in a host of Central and Eastern European countries." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.105.80.60 (talk) 05:50, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was page moved.  Skomorokh, barbarian  10:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Friedrich Hayek → Friedrich von Hayek — His name is von Hayek, not Hayek camr nag 16:23, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
  • Weak support. We use Friedrich Schiller, not Friedrich von Schiller, although the von is the same; I believe in this case the von is customary in English. But this should not lead to the barbarism Also on his mother's side, von Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein... Use Hayek for the surname alone, as English idiom requires. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:27, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. My particular view in this is that von is important in three ways: because it would respect german language customary usage, because it denotes certain social status, and simply because it would be like having the article "Miguel Cervantes" or "Chris Donnell".--camr nag 20:11, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose When Freidrich Hayek was born, he was Friedrich von Hayek when he died he was Friedrich Hayek and had been Friedrich Hayek for most of his life. In 1919 the Adelsaufhebungsgesetz (Law on the Abolition of Nobility) in Austria legally changed his name, stripping away associated name tiles such as von or zu. So in the interests of being perfectly accurate, you could says 'Friedrich August Hayek born Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), was an Austrian and British economist and philosopher....' Thus you'd have his name, plus the contextual information that he was loosely related to austrian nobility and that at some time during his life his name legally changed. It's a bit tedious, and not all that important, but in the interests of accuracy, his name was Friedrich Hayek for most of his life.--Sparkygravity (talk) 03:06, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Personal life

Was he married? Gay? Have children? Cause of death? According to a PBS summary he was [7] married, but nothing else is forthcoming. It's not easily googled as I tried that. Not super important but I was playing the Game 20 questions [8] and the game has you pretend your a famous or prominent historical figure and trys to guess who you are.... The game asked if I had children... So did Freidrich Hayek have children?--Sparkygravity (talk) 03:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

criticism

The discussion went stale in March, and then a new topic related to Pinochet was added in July. That material (added in July) was moved to a new section at the bottom of this page. This was done to facilitate discussion. Please add comments at bottom "Hayek & Pinochet", not here.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

there seems to be no section called "criticism" which would describe some criticism which hayek may have atracted over the years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greg.loutsenko (talk • contribs) 17:23, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

That may be because Hayek has never been substantially criticized in any way. History vindicated him while destroying his primary philosophical opponent, Keynes. PokeHomsar (talk) 07:33, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah ... none of that is true. BigK HeX (talk) 07:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
Agree partially. Keynes does have strong criticisms against him but he was not "destroyed" in fact Hayek praised him at the end. Hayek has plenty of criticisms - I shall add those when I have confirmed valid sources in my research Hayek. RVRLaw (talk) 20:29, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The equivalent of calling me a name. Seriously, have any actual criticism of Hayek on an economic level? PokeHomsar (talk) 05:10, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Well no Hayek has been criticised fairly relentlessly and the article does allude to some of this albeit in a diffuse manner. I find the triumphalist tinge that I detect in your remarks slightly odd incidentally. Surely someone who has failed to attract any serious criticism –as you suggest is the case with Hayek- is hardly worth bothering about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.26.187.185 (talk) 02:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, Hayek and his style of "liberalism" have been consistently criticized due to his readiness to praise dictatorship, most specifically his strong sympathetic views towards dictators like Pinochet in Chile. Farrant et al note that Hayek had been offering similar encomia to Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar as early as 1962.

Further to this, Hayek and his mentor were quite sympathetic towards other well known fascists in Italy, Austria and the Iberic Peninsula.

Hayek consistently praised people like Franz Josef Strauss, a right-wing German politician, who had visited Chile in 1977 and met with Pinochet. His views were roundly repudiated by both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats in Germany. Hayek apparently wanted to help Strauss become chancellor of Germany. For a detailed analysis, see the article: Preventing the “Abuses” of Democracy: Hayek, the “Military Usurper” and Transitional Dictatorship in Chile? By ANDREW FARRANT, EDWARD MCPHAIL, and SEBASTIAN BERGER [American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 3 (July, 2012). © 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.]

A great academic source with plenty of original evidence and fully documenting these efforts at whitewashing Hayek's legacy can be found here: http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/08/hayek-von-pinochet/ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/09/but-wait-theres-more-hayek-von-pinochet-part-2/ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/11/friedrich-del-mar-more-on-hayek-pinochet-and-chile/

The initial edits that tried to document these criticisms of Hayek have been systematically removed, time and again. Lame. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.159.180.101 (talk) 03:19, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Very systematic editing from Srich32977 (talk | contribs)‎ . . (83,108 bytes) (-3,221)‎ . . (Reverted to revision 502071621 by Srich32977: revert POV pushing. (TW)) (undo) ignores repeated request to consider linked sources and the facts listed being based on Hayek's own original documents, including his own Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) letters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.159.180.101 (talk) 17:13, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Title of this page -- Hayek's legal name

Hayek's legal name was Friedrich Hayek.

After 1919 it was against the law for people to use titles such as "von" in Austria.

Whoever changed the title of this entry screwed up BIG TIME. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greg Ransom (talk • contribs) 16:28, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I support the article name change. I just came on this name change today, some weeks after the change was made, but will note that it always struck me odd that the WP article had the "von Hayek" in the biography. I was assigned some Hayek to read in grad school and all of his work after mid-20th century was signed by F.A. Hayek or Friedrich A. Hayek. N2e (talk) 13:13, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Hayek was a Catholic

"I was born a Catholic. I was baptized. I was married in the church, and they will probably bury me as a Catholic. But I have never been able to be an effective Catholic, a faithful Catholic."

Quotation from an interview given by Hayek to "El Mercurio" (p. D8-D9), 12 April 1981, Santiago de Chile

http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=121 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gezley (talk • contribs) 23:55, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Ridiculous, you have just shown that Hayek was NOT Catholic. - Seventyad 29.5.2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seventyad (talk • contribs) 22:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Hayek and the depression

Hi I read this article today and I was shocked that the term "depression" didn't occur in it one time. Not only was Hayek an economist, but he cut his teeth during the Depression working his craft. I added a bit of text on what he said during the depression, but if there any folks who are well schooled in his thought and work, a major section on Hayek and the Depression is warranted. Did he foresee it? During it, what did he advocate that governments and citizens should do? What did he say afterwards, and did his point of view change? Big, gaping hole in this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jytdog (talk • contribs) 20:50, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, so somebody at address 68.4.190.240 made a couple of edits with comments copy/pasted below:

06:11, 31 October 2010 68.4.190.240 (talk) (65,754 bytes) (→Student and economist: Hayek was NOT address the Depression in the U.S. -- he was specifically addressing the 7 year old British slump) (undo)
(cur | prev) 06:07, 31 October 2010 68.4.190.240 (talk) (65,625 bytes) (→Student and economist: This isn't true. Hayek developed his theories prior to and independently of the Great Depression, which played little role in his theoretical work.) (undo) (Tag: references removed)

This was in response to a sentence that currently reads: "The global Great Depression formed a crucial backdrop against with Hayek formulated his positions, especially in opposition to the views of Keynes.[11]" (NB: The version to which 68.4.190.240 objected did not have the word "global" in it. I added that when I reinstated it.)

After 68.4.190.240 deleted the sentence, I re-added it and wrote in the edit-reason field: "I reinstated the "crucial backdrop" sentence, which has a citation. If you want to claim that the WORLDWIDE depression had no influence, cite it! Let's take this to talk.)"

So, 68.4.190.240... I provided a citation (which was one of several that I found), that the global Great Depression and the debate with Keynes over what to do, had a fundamental, shaping influence on Hayek. (And when you think about it.. the depression shaped the lives and habits of millions of people, with effects lasting years afterwards. How could such a massive event not have a huge influence on an economist's thinking, especially one at the very beginning of his career?) So, what is the basis for your counter-intuitive claim that the depression played "little role in his theoretical work?" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jytdog (talk • contribs) 12:36, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

"Best Known"?

After reverting a "talking in article" edit, I've tagged this statement as dubious. "Best known"? Perhaps in economic circles. But this flat out statement goes to far. Rather than deleting, I invite discussion. --S. Rich (talk) 18:34, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there a better known Austrian Economist? It might not be the best phrasing, but as far as I can tell it seems accurate. Dark567 (talk) 07:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm just going to take the whole "known" info out. It is weasel wordy to begin with. (And the source for this phrase does not say "Austrian Economist".) In any event, if a particular reader knows or doesn't know about Hayek or the Austrian School, putting this info in our article does not help the reader, especially when there are other Austrians who are probably better known. Mozart was Austrian and is certainly better known than Hayak or Hitler. --S. Rich (talk) 15:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
There is a distinct difference between Austrian economics and economists of Austrian nationality. Friedrich Hayek is the best known adherent of the Austrian school of economics, who also happened to be of Austrian nationality. Most current adherents of the Austrian school of economics are actually of American nationality.--  Novus  Orator  11:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Yeah. There is certainly a difference between the Austrian School and being Austrian. Hayek is almost certainly the most well known member of the Austrian School. Maybe something along the lines of "The most well know member of the Austrian School of Economics" would be better? Dark567 (talk) 05:54, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Extraneous information in introduction

I don't understand why all of this is in the introduction: He took his first position in 1927, the same year that Joseph Stalin consolidated his power in the Soviet Union by expelling Leon Trotsky from the Communist Party. That same decade, communist rebellions took place in several countries in Europe. A different form of totalitarianism, fascism, was at the same time rising in Germany and Italy. Additionally, the Great Depression began in 1929, at the very start of Hayek's career. While all of those events may have influenced Hayek in some way, why would they need to be mentioned here? The reader can look them up elsewhere. --N-k (talk) 13:16, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Um, he was the first guy to predict the fall of the Soviet Union in the way it actually happened. This was back in 1940-1943, when he wrote the book. His 'ultimate version' of "The Road to Serfdom" was all a big "I told you so" that he ended his career on. He died shortly after it was published in the '90s after the USSR finally collapsed. PokeHomsar (talk) 05:10, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I added that info in the introduction. Why? I only recently learned that he existed and the overall shape of his thought. I am a student of history and one question I always ask of ideas and the people who generate them is, "What is the context of this?". I would say that the historical context provided by that info (which I took pains to link to events in his career rather than just providing dry facts) is very useful for understanding why issues of socialism and collectivist thought were so important for him. Not extraneous at all, but central to the man and his thought! Jytdog (talk) 11:50, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Conditions for a Free Market to work properly

I remember reading somewhere (I don't remember where) that Hayek described various conditions that must be met for a free market to function at its best. I remember thinking this was important and I would like to add a section on it, but I don't have a reference. Does anybody know where I can find this? —MiguelMunoz (talk) 07:40, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The Fatal Conceit is probably a good place to start. PokeHomsar (talk) 05:07, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll look that up, but I'm skeptical. The Fatal Conceit is a very late work of Hayek's, and it's subject appears to be Socialism. His work on how free markets function is much earlier, and it's part of his study of capitalism. —MiguelMunoz (talk) 08:00, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

The Road to Serfdom argues the conditions necessary for a free market to operate as well as what will cause a free market to not be free. I think it's as early as the introduction that he lays out this thesis for the entire book and then elaborates for the rest of the book. Nodrogj (talk) 22:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a look. —MiguelMunoz (talk) 08:38, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it should be noted that Hayek renounced a lot of things he said in "The Road To Serfdom" when he got older. By the time he died he was most certainly a believer in laissez faire. 68.84.235.198 (talk) 05:31, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Heading over photograph

Why does the photograph have a red banner prominently displaying "Austrian School" ... I thought this was a biography of Hayek not a text book discussion of Austrian economics.Danleywolfe (talk) 14:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I believe that's the banner for all members of the Austrian School. —MiguelMunoz (talk) 23:40, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Article Title

In 2009 there was a request to move the article to Friedrich von Hayek, which was successful. However, it seems that a year later, User:Greg_Ransom moved it back to Friedrich Hayek on the grounds that "his name was not "von Hayek" -- a name banned by law since 1919". Now notwithstanding the Austrian Law on titles (and it must be noted that Hayek lived most of his life outside of Austria), the Nobel Prize committee refers to him as Von Hayek http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/, as the London Gazette also does http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/49768/supplements/4, which would indicate usage of Von Hayek. Is there any reason not to revert to the previous consensus regarding the title of the article?

Atchom 23:17, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

A Google search for the phrases gives 1.3M hits for the current title versus 182K hits for the "von" title, so I would tend to prefer keeping the current title. –CWenger (^ • @) 00:34, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I think the point has been made many times before: Google search numbers do not prove much. See this e.g.
Atchom 02:39, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Not definitive, admittedly, but a 7× preference for the current title certainly means something. The link you provided is an essay, and it talks about notability anyway, not article titles. –CWenger (^ • @) 03:16, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

First impression

This is the first time I've looked at this article. In an overview paragraph, we have Hayek in Austria, we mention 1927 and 1929, and then jump to 1974. Don't we need an early mention of WWII? -- Jo3sampl (talk) 15:33, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I guess the 1938 British citizenship covers it. -- Jo3sampl (talk) 19:14, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

later career

This edit includes the sentence, "After 1941, he continued to publish works on the economics of information, political philosophy, the theory of law, and psychology, but not on macroeconomics.". Hayek in the 1970's and later wrote on free banking and competing privatized money (here, for instance). I'm not sure how substantively that disagrees with the sentence. My suspicion is that, for Hayek, any such sentence will need to be qualified with a "mostly" or something like that. CRETOG8(t/c) 22:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Influnced

The infobox claims that Hayek influenced several people about whom his influence is not well documented. Particularly, is there any evidence that Hayek influnced Leontief or Kantorovich, even negatively? I do not doubt that he influenced many of the people in the column, since some are attested to in the article. Still, a cleaning of this section might be necissary for accuracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.71.89.15 (talk) 16:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

The infobox has been culled.--S. Rich (talk) 18:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Othmar Spann

The page for Othmar Spann claim's that Hayek was a student of his, but there is no mention of such here. I would assume such to be rather notable. Nagelfar (talk) 12:36, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Why is this categorized under the liberalism portal?

Now I understand that he was correctly categorized as a classical liberal, but modern liberalism seldom has any relationship to lassie fair economics. He was pro Austrian school, against socialism, planned economies, market interference, etc. Shouldn't he be categorized under a conservative libertarian, or similar portal? Does he even belong in a portal? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.96.242.66 (talk) 07:53, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree to some extent with the above comment. I don't think this article fits under the Liberalism Portal. Modern liberalism is drastically different than classic liberalism. Hayek points out that a side effect of a liberal state is uneven wealth and income distribution. He was clearly comfortable with this, as long as the said incomes were derived from a free market. Generally, modern liberalism isn't so comfortable with the uneven distribution.
However, I disagree with you and with Walter Block that Hayek supported laissez-faire. He did not. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek says "It is important not to confuse [liberal] opposition against this kind of [central or socialist] planning with a dogmatic laissez faire attitude." [Words in brackets are mine]. He also writes "the term laissez faire is a highly ambiguous and misleading description of the principles on which a liberal policy is based." You're right to say that modern liberalism seldom has any relationship to laissez-faire economics...but according to Hayek, classical liberalism doesn't either.
That being said, modern liberalism is derived from classic liberalism, is it not? So maybe it does have a place in that portal. I'd be interested to learn what others think. --Lacarids (talk) 14:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Keynes Quote

This seems to have been inadvertently deleted, so I'm restoring it. Dawakin (talk) 04:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

"Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States." - John Maynard Keynes in a letter to Hayek.[1]
  1. ^ Hoover, Kenneth R. (2008). Economics as Ideology. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 152. ISBN 0742531139.

Claim that Hayek was one of the most important economists of the 20th century

I have removed the claim that Hayek was one of the most important economists of the 20th century from the lead.[9] Firstly, no page number is given for the citation. I have looked through the book but see no backing for this claim. I searched using google books for the word "important" in the book, and didn't find anything either. Lastly, even if an editor or a contributor to a book on Hayek makes the claim that "Hayek was one of the most important economists of the 20th century" this is not enough to include such an exceptional claim in Wikipedia's voice. Appropriate sources for such a strong claim may be: a general poll of professional economists, nomination by the AER, being referred to as such by some well-respected economics textbooks or specialized books on economic history, or cited as such by the Nobel or other award committee. Hence, I feel that the reference given was inadequate for such an extraordinary claim. LK (talk) 06:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, I just went to the library again, and have checked out the book, and have it in front of me. On the page given in the cite, page 13, there is nothing that can possibly support the statement in the lead. The citation is also inaccurate, in that it gets the year wrong, it should be 2006, not 2007, and the author of the article that includes page 13 is Bruce Caldwell, who is not mentioned in the cite. The cite mentions Edward Fesser. Fesser is the editor, and he did write an introduction to the book. I have gone through it, and there is nothing there that can back a statement like "Hayek was one of the most important economists and philosophers of the 20th century". The closest thing is where Fesser, who is clearly a supporter of Hayek, writes that Hayek was "almost certainly the most consequential thinker of the mainstream political right in the twentieth century. It is just possible that he was the most consequential twentieth century political thinker, right or left, period." It looks to me like the person who put that statement, that "Hayek was one of the most important economists and philosophers of the 20th century", just made up a fake reference to a book on Hayek in the hopes that no one would check it. LK (talk) 09:07, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
BTW, as to who Edward Fesser is, this is from his 'About' box on his blog: "I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective." LK (talk) 09:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
It is important to consider who is the publisher. In this case it is Cambridge University Press who is considered to be among most reliable sources. This is from their description of the book: "F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) was among the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. He is widely regarded as the principal intellectual force behind the triumph of global capitalism, an 'anti-Marx' who did more than any other recent thinker to elucidate the theoretical foundations of the free market economy." [10] -- Vision Thing -- 13:52, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
The advertising blurb for a book is not a RS. There is nothing in the book itself to support "Hayek was one of the most important economists of the 20th century", it is a false reference. LK (talk) 14:49, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Agreed about this being a blurb. (I mis-read.) I'll revert. But what does the book say?--S. Rich (talk) 14:54, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
In the introduction, Fesser writes that Hayek was "almost certainly the most consequential thinker of the mainstream political right in the twentieth century. It is just possible that he was the most consequential twentieth century political thinker, right or left, period." The rest of the book is pretty dry. LK (talk) 15:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
The text now says "a major economist and political philosopher", this is not the same as "most consequential twentieth century political thinker". Political thinker does not equal "economist and political philosopher", political philosopher perhaps, but not economist. Kindly fix. Thanks. LK (talk) 15:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I am unclear on what needs fixing. He got the No-Bull for econ, he's described as a political thinker. Do you want to say he was not a major economist? Perhaps you want "a major economics and political philosopher" or "a major political and economics philosopher". --S. Rich (talk) 15:59, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
I guess he is objecting to inclusion of "major economist". I have added a reference for it, although it's not really need. -- Vision Thing -- 12:29, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The quote may be from the London Times, who had Hayek on the front page with F.A. Hayek: The greatest economic philosopher of of the age" this was in 197775.73.114.111 (talk) 15:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Business cycle theory vs. political issues

One or more editors have recently added political critiques of Hayek to the subsection which was intended to summarize criticisms of his work on the theory of the business cycle. This is not appropriate, as the two kinds of criticisms are really quite distinct. For example, Milton Friedman strongly defended Hayek's views on things like the relation between economic and political freedom (and Friedman was even more of target of Naomi Klein's denunciation of "disaster capitalism"), but Friedman did not agree at all with Hayek's work on the business cycle, as the article explains and documents. I will therefore remove the political material that is currently in that subsection and copy it here. If someone wants to incorporate it into a more appropriate place in the article, please do so. - Eb.hoop (talk) 16:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Benoist

This was in the business cycle section, where it does not belong:

Alain de Benoist of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right) produced a highly critical essay on Hayek's work in an issue of Telos, citing the flawed assumptions behind Hayek's idea of "spontaneous order" and the authoritarian, totalizing implications of his free-market ideology.[1]

See above. - Eb.hoop (talk) 16:41, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

This probably belongs in a general criticism section, but I can find none. Certainly a figure as prominent and controversial as Hayek should have a Criticism section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.64.2.58 (talk) 21:20, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Hayek & Pinochet

[The following was cut from the older (2011) criticism section of this page. Moved to facilitate discussion. --S. Rich (talk) 17:38, 13 July 2012 (UTC)]

Furthermore, Hayek and his style of "liberalism" have been consistently criticized due to his readiness to praise dictatorship, most specifically his strong sympathetic views towards dictators like Pinochet in Chile. Farrant et al note that Hayek had been offering similar encomia to Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar as early as 1962.

Further to this, Hayek and his mentor were quite sympathetic towards other well known fascists in Italy, Austria and the Iberic Peninsula.

Hayek consistently praised people like Franz Josef Strauss, a right-wing German politician, who had visited Chile in 1977 and met with Pinochet. His views were roundly repudiated by both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats in Germany. Hayek apparently wanted to help Strauss become chancellor of Germany. For a detailed analysis, see the article: Preventing the “Abuses” of Democracy: Hayek, the “Military Usurper” and Transitional Dictatorship in Chile? By ANDREW FARRANT, EDWARD MCPHAIL, and SEBASTIAN BERGER [American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 3 (July, 2012). © 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.]

A great academic source with plenty of original evidence and fully documenting these efforts at whitewashing Hayek's legacy can be found here: http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/08/hayek-von-pinochet/ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/09/but-wait-theres-more-hayek-von-pinochet-part-2/ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/07/11/friedrich-del-mar-more-on-hayek-pinochet-and-chile/

The initial edits that tried to document these criticisms of Hayek have been systematically removed, time and again. Lame. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.159.180.101 (talk) 03:19, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Very systematic editing from Srich32977 (talk | contribs)‎ . . (83,108 bytes) (-3,221)‎ . . (Reverted to revision 502071621 by Srich32977: revert POV pushing. (TW)) (undo) ignores repeated request to consider linked sources and the facts listed being based on Hayek's own original documents, including his own Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) letters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.159.180.101 (talk) 17:13, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

[IP is referring to the following which I had deleted.--S. Rich (talk) 18:05, 13 July 2012 (UTC)]:

Hayek's Praise and Support of Fascist Dictatorships: Austria, Italy, Portugal, Chile.

Hayek and his style of "liberalism" have been consistently criticized by author such as Naomi Klein Naomi Klein [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9827.html http://books.google.com.au/books?id=PwHUAq5LPOQC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=%22including+Friedrich+Hayek+himself,+who+traveled+to+Pinochet%27s+Chile+several+times+and+in+1981+selected+Vina+del+Mar%22&source=bl&ots=IkGtGGbGCB&sig=sR6G7wujYagQ7uQ2zhTq1WKnaa8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oez8T_j0E8ni0QGki53FBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22including%20Friedrich%20Hayek%20himself%2C%20who%20traveled%20to%20Pinochet%27s%20Chile%20several%20times%20and%20in%201981%20selected%20Vina%20del%20Mar%22 "The Shock Doctrine: 

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism"] Picador(2008), due to his readiness to praise and support authoritarian methods to impose his theorized models.

As of 2012 Hayek has become the topic of further books and much ongoing research Angus Burgin [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674058132 "The Great Persuasion:

Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression"] Harvard University Press(2012)., Angus Burgin [ http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9827.html "Masters of the Universe:

Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics,"] Princeton University Press(2012). most specifically due to his strong sympathetic views towards dictators like Pinochet in Chile. Farrant et al note that Hayek had been offering similar encomia to Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar as early as 1962.

Further to this, Hayek and his mentors were quite sympathetic towards other earlier well known fascists in Italy and Austria, later also in the Iberic Peninsula.

Hayek consistently praised people like Franz Josef Strauss, a right-wing German politician, who had visited Chile in 1977 and met with Pinochet. His views were roundly repudiated by both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats in Germany at the time. Hayek apparently wanted to help Strauss become chancellor of Germany. [For a detailed analysis, see the article: Preventing the “Abuses” of Democracy: Hayek, the “Military Usurper” and Transitional Dictatorship in Chile? By ANDREW FARRANT, EDWARD MCPHAIL, and SEBASTIAN BERGER [American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 3 (July, 2012). © 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.]

Academic Corey Robin is another great source with plenty of source-material evidence and who is also fully documenting the whitewashing of Hayek's legacy. Further documented original sources can be found in archives at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where the papers of both Hayek and the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) reside, all compiled in Corey Robin's website Corey Robin "Hayek Von Pinochet" Blog(2012), "Hayek Von Pinochet - Part 2" Blog(2012), "Friedrich-Del-Mar" Blog(2012).

The relevance of the opinion of 'a critic of liberalism, free markets' on Hayek

Imho it is not relevant how 'a critic of liberalism, free markets' sees Hayek, in the same way that there is no relevance for an encyclopedia in the opinion of 'a critic of socialism, government intervention' on a 'left-wing' economist. That a left-wing (right-wing) critic has negative views on right-wing (left-wing) economists etc. is in itself simply not relevant -- and I don't see critiques like these added to the articles of 'left-wing' economists on en.wiki. LevelBasis (talk) 15:30, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there is even no "criticism"-section at all in the articles about Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Paul Samuelson, etc. LevelBasis (talk) 15:35, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The most natural comparison, Keynes, has a "critiques" section. (I'll rename the one here.) IOW, the fact that some articles don't have criticism sections does not help in this case. What do the guidelines say in this regard? – S. Rich (talk) 17:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
WP:BALANCE says "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence.". From that perspective, it is clear to me that the opinion of a left-wing critic on a right-wing economist, with the substance being little more than "he disagrees", is not relevant for this article. LevelBasis (talk) 03:55, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I agree, BALANCE says we need to assign weight, etc. In this regard, we do not have enough non-ad hominem criticism, and the stuff about Chile may actually be POV pushing. But these can be remedied with more/additional focused and pertinent critiques. The section is tagged for improvement, so I think the removal of sourced info is not the way to go, particularly in light of the fact that other econ guys have critique sections. – S. Rich (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
Please compare this section to the critiques-section at John Maynard Keynes, then you'll see that the latter does not include 'a dime a dozen'-opinions such the one from Alain de Benoist. Benoist is a left-wing critic and wrote an article in which he disagreed with the 'right-wing' economist Hayek. So what? Is that relevant information for an encyclopedia? I could easily find hundreds of articles in which academic writers disagree with Hayek. This is very different from the critiques-part at John Maynard Keynes which only includes the opinions, often even positive, from well-known economists, not from 'a dime a dozen'-critics. LevelBasis (talk) 17:06, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
See changes. The dime a dozen critic now has a lower position in the article & the expand section tag is moved up. If we find academics who disagree with Hayek, we can include them in order to achieve balance. But we must watch out when we let our own POVs about a particular critic influence overall editing decisions. (BTW & OAS, some of your edit summaries include the term "NE". I do not see it in WP:G. Would you explain please. Thanks.) – S. Rich (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
(As far as I know, NE means Non-Encyclopedic -- but I can't find this abbreviation either in the linked list, so I won't use it again.)
Concerning the critiques-part: I am not saying there should be no critique mentioned at all, I'm just saying some critiques are not relevant enough for mentioning. Imho the dime a dozen critic should still be removed: critiques like this are never relevant, neither in articles about 'left wing'-economists.
LevelBasis (talk) 19:21, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize

It is acceptable to include the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize material. It is proper to use the organization's link as the reference (compare, the Nobel Prize website is used as a reference here and in many other articles). It looks like the HMSP is a high level honor in Germany, given the selection committee, etc. Moreover, Hayek himself has happy to receive the prize -- he gave an address at the presentation ceremony. – S. Rich (talk) 16:31, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of work as political theorist, economist

The article needs to do a better job distinguishing Hayek's recognized contributions to economics from his contributions to political reflection/philosophy. The Road to Serfdom, for instance, is not a work principally about economics, but rather a work of political philosophy. Though its thesis is largely an empirical one: namely, that economic planning will lead to regimes like the Nazis and Soviets, it is not a work of economics. (Incidentally, that thesis, while not implausible at the time he presented it, has (obviously) been falsified in time since he wrote it. Highly collectivistic economic regimes of Western Europe are not falling prey to Nazism or analogous forms totalitarianism.)

Another thing: Hayek's views on econometrics and economic policy should be presented in a more nuanced fashion, rather than simply describing him as an "austrian" and a "libertarian." In contrast to later Austrians, he did not reject empiricism in principle. He was highly skeptical of econometric models bc of the information coordination problem, but this "skepticism" did not mean he thought statistical modeling was meaningless (like Mises and Rothbard); he only thought such models shouldered a heavier burden of proof, and that the 'local, unarticulated' knowledge of laborers and employers should be accorded some epistemic weight and policy consideration. (Probably true to some extent, and one of his important contributions to political economy.) That's the basis of his general argument for markets.

Incidentally, while uncritically presented as a "libertarian" in the article, Hayek would be considered a social democrat or perhaps a communist by contemporary (American) libertarians. He endorsed socialized medicine, for christ's sake! He was a libertarian compared to the Keynesians, New Dealers, Social Democrats, Socialists, and Communists who dominated the academy at the time. Steeletrap (talk) 19:48, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The celebrated disagreement between Keynes and Hayek were long past by the end of WW2. Although he was not particularly noted within the academic community for his later work, a popularized version of his political philosophy took root thereafter. Like Friedman and others considered to be social conservatives or to espouse classical liberal views in the mid-20th Century, Hayek would by today's calibration be viewed as a mainstream social democrat. There should be RS discussions of this material for editors who have the time and inclination to research them. SPECIFICO talk 19:55, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Right. They both knew how to throw red meat to the fellow travelers -- the 'populist' libertarians who would buy their books -- but even Friedman would be viewed as an unacceptable deviationist by today's GOP. He supported a Negative Income Tax, for example. For revisionist accounts of these two men, written from a radical libertarian perspective, see the polemics leveled by radical anarcho-capitalist Hans Hoppe's and Murray's Rothbard's against Hayek and Friedman, respectively.Steeletrap (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
Ok, so what specific changes would improve the article. MilesMoney (talk) 04:14, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ de Benoist, Alain (1998). "Hayek: A Critique". Telos (110).
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