Who was Friedrich von Hayek and why is he important?
In 1944, when the whole world seemed to be turning left, the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom and laid the foundation for an intellectual and political counter-revolution. Deeply disturbed by collectivist signs in Britain, America, and elsewhere in the West, Hayek proposed a different road—the road of classical liberalism. He listed the personal virtues necessary to travel that road—independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, and "a healthy suspicion of power and authority." At the same time, he accepted a governmental role, carefully limited by law, that encouraged competition and the functioning of a free society.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in economics and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Hayek is regarded as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, the equal and the philosophical opposite of John Maynard Keynes. An active intellectual, he founded the Mont Pelerin Society, which has become the world's leading organization of free-market advocates.
For more on Hayek, see Bruce Caldwell's First Principles essay "Ten (Mostly) Hayekian Insights for Trying Economic Times."
In 1944, when the whole world seemed to be turning left, the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom and laid the foundation for an intellectual and political counter-revolution. Deeply disturbed by collectivist signs in Britain, America, and elsewhere in the West, Hayek proposed a different road—the road of classical liberalism. He listed the personal virtues necessary to travel that road—independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, and "a healthy suspicion of power and authority." At the same time, he accepted a governmental role, carefully limited by law, that encouraged competition and the functioning of a free society.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in economics and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Hayek is regarded as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, the equal and the philosophical opposite of John Maynard Keynes. An active intellectual, he founded the Mont Pelerin Society, which has become the world's leading organization of free-market advocates.
For more on Hayek, see Bruce Caldwell's First Principles essay "Ten (Mostly) Hayekian Insights for Trying Economic Times."