Tag Archives: hayek

Sudha Shenoy: The Evolution Of Accounting (Bibiliography)

Posted on by

Organizations and Markets has a brief bibliography of the evolution of accounting by the distinguished libertarian economic historian, Sudha Shenoy. Accounting emerged without state intervention as a type of Hayekian spontaneous order:

“Someone asked whether accounting conventions can be interpreted as a kind of “spontaneous order,” in Hayek’s sense, or if the standard rules are the result mainly of state intervention. Sudha replied with these reading suggestions (lightly edited by me): Continue reading →

Hayek and Bork On Intellectuals

Posted on by

In an earlier blog, I expressed my disagreement with a common criticism in libertarian circles that socialism was motivated mostly by envy and spite. I made the point that most socialists I’ve known have had honorable motives, but, in my view, are superficial in their analysis of events. I cited Michael Oakeshott to that effect.

In this debate between noted legal scholar (and former corporate attorney) Robert Bork, Hayek makes the same point, only in relation to intellectuals: They confuse the intelligible with the rational.

Hayek on the Inadequacy of Mathematical Economics

Posted on by

“There is something fundamentally wrong with an approach which habitually disregards an essential part of the phenomena with which we have to deal: the unavoidable imperfection of man’s knowledge and the consequent need for a process by which knowledge is constantly communicated and acquired. Any approach, such as that of much of mathematical economics with its simultaneous equations, which in effect starts from the assumption that people’s knowledge corresponds with the objective facts of the situation, systematically leaves out what is our main task to explain. I am far from denying that in our system equilibrium analysis has a useful function to perform. But when it comes to the point where it misleads some of our leading thinkers into believing that the situation which it describes has direct relevance to the solution of practical problems, it is high time that we remember that it [equilibrium analysis] does not deal with the social process at all and that it is no more than a useful preliminary to the study of the main problem.”

— Friedrich Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” VII, 31