March 23, 2012
The 20th Anniversary of Hayek’s Death
Today we pause to note the 20th anniversary of the death of F. A. Hayek, perhaps the most important social thinker of the 20th century and a man whose ideas…
Posts filed under Friedrich Hayek
February 23, 2012
Can a Defense of Liberalism Be Based on Our Ignorance?
Last week in my Constitutional Economics class we discussed Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty (1960). My favorite chapter in that book is Chapter 2, “The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization.”…
February 23, 2012
On Passing Laws and Pointing Guns
Libertarians sometimes take their analogies too far. From the plausible insight that taxation is like forced labor certain respects, they jump to the entirely implausible conclusion that taxation is forced…
February 13, 2012
Political Philosophy’s Fundamental Question
In this post, my aim is to identify political philosophy’s fundamental question. Yes, I want to attempt this in a blog post, so my answer will undoubtedly be radically incomplete….
September 13, 2011
The Libertarian Critique of Distributive Justice
There’s a common argument that libertarians make against the idea of social or distributive justice. The argument, made by both Robert Nozick and Friedrich Hayek, purports to show not merely…