Comments on: Hayek (and Fukuyama) on the Use of Knowledge in Society

By: Tamiflu.

Tamiflu. — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:15:59 +0000

Tamiflu….

Fda tamiflu reactions….

By: Eidolon

Eidolon — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:34:27 +0000

I must confess I find myself often falling into the category of individual that, having gone through a curriculum that is as much about learning to learn as it is learning to ply a particular trade, believes that I could learn to do most anything. I am a computer engineer.

That said, such a statement must be tempered by obvious reality. My mind and physical talents will naturally be bent toward one trade over another, and hence I am an engineer rather than an artist or musician by trade. And while I believe that I could well learn to be an artist, the lack of talent in that particular arena would mean I would spend years learning a base set of skills that another individual would be able to master in mere months or even days. For disciplines closer to my own, my mind will be sharper and more apt. For those further beyond the scope of my knowledge and experience, the time required to learn and ply that trade will rise proportionately, perhaps even exponentially.

It is also worth stating, then, that it is highly likely that the individuals upon whose trade I look and say, "I could do that," could as well, given the time and education, do my job!

That set of talents with which every individual is born, however, makes certain career paths easier or more likely. It is worth noting, for instance, that I spent my time in grade school connecting fans and switches and wires for the mere fun of it! I was doomed to be an engineer from an early age.

Your experiences in childhood and early adulthood truly are critical. As a youth, I spent years assisting my father with sound and video production in my home church. That knowledge and experience are still with me and I am able to begin picking up the workings of a new sound system in mere minutes, while an individual without that same experience learns more slowly simply because their mind has never been previously bent to such a task.

Hence, I would posit that there are two key factors in the typical specialization of labor:
1. Personal inclination and talent
2. ... shaped and molded into a far more specific pursuit by experience and opportunity.

Of course, my entire post does raise a question. Are there certain skills that simply cannot be taught? By this I mean the creativity of an artist or the pitch-sensitive ear of a master musician.

By: Randal Samstag

Randal Samstag — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:05:32 +0000

I had a quite different reaction to Fukuyama's review. I found it tragically ironic that the author's praise of the skills of the industrial working class comes from someone with a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and who, according to Fukuyama, was a fellow of the Committee on Social Thought. This environment, the US refuge for F. A. Hayak, as readers of this blog well know, is the home of the US version of monetarism, which J. M. Keynes called "simply a campaign against the standard of life of the working classes" and a bastion of the doctrine of free trade, which has cheered the de-industrialization of Britain and now the US. Could it be that the author's "progressive republican" (small r) views as presented in the book are a rebellion against his mentors, rather than a recapitulation of their beliefs, as Fukuyama and other contributors here seem to think? Otherwise how to explain the apparent contradictions? Perhaps we should all read the book.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:12:32 +0000

This is something the schemers will not concede lightly because it completely invalidates the idea of any form of central planning. Ask Bernanke why the rates he comes up with are better than what the market would set based on the combined decisions of all lenders and borrowers and his head would probably explode.

By: Martin Price

Martin Price — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:41:23 +0000

This reminds me very much of Leonard Read's essay "I, Pencil". I really, really wish more people could grasp the concept that groups of people can do amazing things without waiting for detailed instructions and coordination "from above".