Hayek in the classroom

A few years ago Virginia Postrel circulated a letter requesting information on the use of Hayek in the classroom and in different disciplines?  Does anyone ever know what happened with the results of her inquiry?

Last week I received a similar, but slightly different inquiry and I promised to pass it along.  This one has more to do with the substantive content in Hayek's writings and their use for a specific purpose. Philospher Matt Zwolinski writes:

Hi Peter,

I was hoping you and your readers at the Austrian Economists blog might be able to help me out with a difficulty. Perhaps you could pass this on to them?

I'm putting together an anthology in political philosophy, and want to have a reading by Hayek in the section on distributive justice. The problem is - I'm not sure which reading to use.

The most obvious choice seems to be his chapter on "social justice" from LLL. But I really want something that will convey the core Hayekian concepts -- diffused knowledge, spontaneous order, the market as an information-conveying process -- and I'm not sure this reading does the best job of that.

If you were teaching a course on the subject, with students reading Rawls, Nozick and all the other standards, and had room for only one piece by Hayek to fit into this larger debate - what would it be, and why?

Thanks so much. I look forward to the advice!

-Matt

I recommended "Competition as a Discovery Procedure" --- what would you recommend?

I will be teaching Rawls and Nozick very shortly in my Constitutional Economics class, but in the context of that course Hayek's chapter is LLL is used and the bulk of the discussion centers on Buchanan's contributions to the justice as fairness debate.  But I am also using David Schmidtz's outstanding work Elements of Justice in the class as well.

Comments

[Adam]

My choice for a philosophy class would probably be "What is 'Social?' What Does it Mean?" from Studies since you're interested in social justice.

The other option that comes to mind is "The Atavism of Social Justice" from New Studies, though the evolutionary slant, while important, can distract certain students from the central lessons of emergence and such.

Tacking on the Nobel prize address (to either) never hurts either.

[Rafe Champion]

How about "Why I am not a conservative?" but it is not really a fair call to ask for one paper from a scholar who made so many contributions in different although related areas.

On the topic of Hayek in the classroom, one could argue that anyone who has been through a half decent liberal education should be aware of the main themes and leading ideas from people like Hayek, Popper,Barzun and Suttie (devastating critic of Freud). One is tempted to add Mises as well.

Round about 1989 when Australia had 21 universities (before all the teachers colleges and art schools were promoted) I surveyed the course outlines and reading lists from the schools of philosophy, sociology and political science. Hayek was practically invisible. Things have improved in the meantime but I suspect not much because Kevin Rudd, red hot favorite to become out next PM, ventured into print with a critique of Hayek which should have got him a reputation as a comedian. But only the usual "neoliberal" suspects protested.

[Jeffrey Friedman]

Is it possible that the reason Zwolinski has trouble finding an appropriate reading from Hayek--connecting Hayek's epistemic concerns to his argument about distributive justice--is that there *is* no connection?

Hayek's distributive-justice argument is: It's a "mirage" to think that "society" per se exists. Therefore, there's nobody to "distribute" things like Rawlsian primary goods.

Hayek's epistemic argument, on the other hand, is *not*: it's a "mirage" to think that "central planners" per se exist. Therefore, there is nobody to "plan" society.

Instead, his epistemic argument is that there's nobody *competent* to plan society, because the needed knowledge is dispersed, tacit, complex, etc. This is a consequentialist argument about the bad results of (necessarily) incompetent planning, not an ontological argument about the existence of "planers" per se.

Conversely, even if society per se "existed," "it" wouldn't "know" any more, or less, than, central planners would.

Apparently, then, Hayek's distributive-justice argument is unconnected to what I agree with Zwolinski are the "core" Hayekian concepts, which are epistemic.

If Hayek had any epistemic arguments against Rawls--his main target in LLL vol. 2--the "mirage" argument isn't it. Wealth is a "primary good" for Rawls because people can decide for themselves how to use wealth--thereby utilizing any dispersed, tacit, or other knowledge they might have.

I think the problem Hayek faced is that "the road to serfdom"--or at least the case for social democracy--turned out to be paved with egalitarianism, not with the "planning mentality" against which he spent most of his life arguing. A planning mentality could be beaten back by his (Austrian) epistemological argument. But that argument seems irrelevant to answering the question not of "How do we replace market prices," but "How do we keep market prices, but ensure that everybody benefits from them?"

Basically, Hayek isn't taken seriously by the Rawlsians who dominate political philosophy because Hayek was talking past Rawls.

[Peter Boettke]

Jeff,

Very good comment, but what about the Buchanan argument that policies are never about particular distributions but always about rules of the game that engender a pattern of exchange, production and distribution. In other words, social justice is NOT about "fair divisions" but rules of the game that are "fair". Hayek's epistemic argument is linked in there, because certain rules of the game produce different epistemic contexts.

Rules of just conduct are informed by the epistemic contexts they enable.

Pete

[Brian Pitt]

I agree Dr. Boettke!

May I, also, bring to mind the "Constitution of Liberty." There, Hayek explicitly discusses (paraphrasing) that simply because a person (e.g., a minority) does not qualify based on certain academic criteria should not preclude her from the ability to pursue higher education. In turn, because a member of the majority qualifies based on certain academic criteria should not automatically qualify her for admission to pursue higher education.

There, Hayek acknowledged that the knowledge context of admissions, i.e., GPAs and GREs, for the most part, hermetically seal important (academic) qualities such as hard work, perseverance, and innovation from its "rules of the game." What is more, the aforesaid qualities are probably the most significant in academic life!

[Jeffrey Friedman]

Pete,

Nothing rests on how words like "justice" or "fairness" or "divisions" are defined, as long as we all know what each other is talking about. For some reason, the first mistake economists make when doing philosophy (at least this is true of Buchanan and Hayek) is to think that there's some essence of a word, such that we have to find that essence by getting the "right definition" of the word it in order to know what, say, "fairness" is. This conflates usage (an is) with normativity (an ought). I.e., whatever we're used to calling "fair" has no relevance to what actually is fair. We are free to reject customary norms, as embodied in linguistic usages.

Rawls was saying that a certain very general pattern of outcomes is "fair," and whichever set of institutions and other rules of the game get us there is "just." The Difference Principle describes that "fair" outcome as one that maximizes the production of primary goods such as wealth, and spreads their distribution as widely as possible. Whatever institutions and rules of the game meet that description count as "Rawlsian," which is why I, perhaps hoodwinked by free-market economists into thinking that free-market capitalism would produce outcomes fitting that description, consider myself to be a "utilitarian Rawlsian."

As I understand Buchanan, he is recycling Nozick's objection to patterned or end-state theories of justice such as Rawls's. But does that mean we shouldn't care about outcomes? In that case, why do economics?

I'd like to hear an argument as to why outcomes don't matter, and why processes that may, in principle, produce atrocious outcomes should be considered normative. Such an argument would not involve quibbling over the definition of "fairness" (or, in Nozick's case, "justice"; or, in Hayek's case, "distributive"). Am I misunderstanding Buchanan's argument?

Jeff

[Peter Boettke]

Jeff,

Yes, I would say you are missing the argument because Buchanan's point is precisely about systemic outcomes (as opposed to particular outcomes) and not just some empty notions of "processes".

Rawls has to assume certain empirical realities of economic life (and he cites explicitly the social calculation argument where he thinks the market socialist have established that it is viable to have viable egalitarianism). But what if Rawls's understanding of the empirical realities of economic life are wrong ---- we don't have a fixed pie, but instead pie that varies in size depending on the rules of division. Then in order to realize the max-min result we may indeed have to move significantly away from the way Rawls has been interpreted and instead toward a more libertarian interpretation of the first and second principles of justice.

I don't quite see your point about economists and essentialism --- can you explain?

Pete

[Jeffrey Friedman]

Pete, About Rawls: His theory of justice is entirely separate from Rawls's own left-wing views (shared unthinkingly by most of his followers) about which institutions would actually best satisfy the Difference Principle in the real world. That is an empirical question, or a question of "empirical theory" (such as economics), not normative theory of the sort Rawls was doing.

If free-market economists are right, then the best way to satisfy the DP in the real world is free-market capitalism. Phelps had an excellent Wall St. Journal letter to the editor about this a month or two ago, criticizing the myth that "Rawls = leftism." (If anyone wants to read it, I'll find the URL.) Those who follow Mises or Hayek or M. Friedman in thinking that capitalism is the best remedy for poverty have no need to be "against" Rawls, or to come up with a competing theory of justice.

Re Buchanan, my interpretation of what you said yesterday is that B. is arguing that Rawls errs by defining a pattern of outcomes rather than the process that generates them as "fair." In other words, I understood B. to be trying to come up with a competing theory of justice, and it sounded as if his argument concerns the "essence" or defintion of "fairness"--as a property of rules, rather than of outcomes.

But if that's not what B. is saying--if he's merely saying that the rules that produce just (or "fair") outcomes are, by the same token, just (or "fair) rules--then Rawls wouldn't disagree. And if B. is saying that those rules are, as a matter of empirical fact, free-market rules, then while Rawls the man would have disagreed, there is no basis in his normative theory for such a disagreement. His normative theory is silent on the empirical question of which institutions satisfy the Difference Principle.

Jeff

[Peter Boettke]

Jeff,

Both Buchanan and Hayek point to Rawls not as an intellectual figure of critique but as someone who has positively set up the question in an interesting way.

Thanks for your patience in helping me try to understand these points in political philosophy.

Pete

[Knut]

Is Buchanan's point that agreement on the rules makes the rules fair? And that outcomes per se are irrelevant?