I, Pencil

Hayek’s argument was predicated upon the premise that knowledge is always ‘local’ and all attempts to aggregate it are bound to fail. The world, in his eyes, is too complex for its essence to be distilled in some central node; e.g. the state. If we hardly understand our own preferences and capabilities, how on earth can we hope to aggregate the kn

But somehow, untutored intuitions about self-regulation without central direction do not carry over to the artificial systems of human society. I retain vivid memories of the astonishment and disbelief expressed by the architecture students to whom I taught urban land economics many years ago when I pointed to medieval cities as marvelously pattern

A postindustrial society must and can be so constructed that no one person’s ability to express him-or herself in work will require as a condition the enforced labor or the enforced learning or the enforced consumption of another.

Government operated through coercion, clumsiness, and deceptive intention; the invisible hand of the market, however, was the realm of freedom, choice, and possibility.