The Muscular Hayek

A better link to Amazon for the book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (number 1 on the list) is this: http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-... There are more options for purchasing the book and more reviews.

Good luck to Esperanto :)

It's a pity that many people do not know that it has become a living language.

Your readers may be interested in http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-883743...

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

Unfortunately, Hayek couldn't be reached to provide comment on Caplan...

I wonder what a native Germanic speaker would think of Caplan's German...

Prof. Caplan is being generous with Hayek. 5 original ideas? No: three less than that. Hayek said of himself that he had had only TWO original ideas in his whole life. One of them was his proposal of "demarchy", an alternative to democracy (see "Law, Legislation and Liberty"); I can't remember the other, but I think it was "The Use of Knowledge in Society". (I also can't remember where he said that, but I think I got it in the book "Hayek no Brasil", which recounts the three times he visited my country.)

What is amazing is that nobody around Café Hayek has analyzed the demarchy idea. I have posted on this website asking Prof. Boudreaux about this and got not reply. I e-mailed Prof. Roberts, and he replied that he had not looked into the question (his answer demonstrated elegance and humbleness -- two characteristics also prevalent in Hayek's character).

There are very few original ideas out there and it is not necessary to have many of them to become a great thinker, as Hayek certainly was. He himself said many times that it was the responsibility of the intellectual to put the timeless truths that were discovered throughout the ages in words that the present generation could understand. This he certainly did, and liberated an untold number of people -- including myself -- from the warped and nefarious stranglehold of the socialist mindframe.

Caplan's "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" view of Hayek strikes me as foolishness. He is difficult to read, but is that his fault or mine? Consider this gem:

“One need not be a profit to be aware of impending dangers. An accidental combination of experience and interest will often reveal events to one man under aspects which few yet see.”

Simple.

Wow, I love that. Thanks.

Funny that #3 links to Taleb. To be remembered for something in history takes some luck. History, like anything else is not a pure meritocracy. I'm guessing many over time who spouted Hayek's ideas, but largely to random factors he's remembered for them.

To me, it seems that the Founders of the U.S. understood Hayek's ideas very well, some 100+ years before Hayek was born.

Yes Hayek's writing style is irritating, but so what? Almost every page of "The Constitution of Liberty" contains insights worthy of several Econlog blog posts.

I have long since lost patience with Bryan Caplan.

"My advice for Bryan is to have more patience."

Humility is easy to understand, but difficult to attain. Time is probably the best teacher. Hayek had it in spades.

I see Mr. Caplan's points. However I also believe that for many, language is their second language (For Hayek it was at least his second), in that they think in pictures. I know I do. Often when I read what for many people seems a convoluted or complex paragraph, it makes all the sense in the world. Likewise, when I read a very simple sentence, it seems over simplistic and misses addressing the many corollaries of thought that go with it.

When I read Hayek, this is the feeling I get. I know I often see a picture of thought with multiple painted scenarios cascading off in the distance so that it is difficult to put into words. Perhaps that means I'm not as intelligent as others tell me I am. Perhaps I am a muddled thinker.

I prefer to believe that Hayek was on a different wavelength and was honest enough to earnestly share his thoughts so others could critique them.

Sure he is long winded. I mind more reading someone who is applauded with nothing much to say. And there is no scarcity of those people around in modern print these days. I shall refrain from naming names, but the NYT is a fertile ground for them.

I have to say I completely agree with you, whiskeyJim. Honestly, the first thing that appealed to me about Hayek was his writing style. I did not yet agree with his ideas but I was drawn in by how clearly and carefully they were expressed. Now he's my favorite scholar and I can't get enough of him. His sentences require a few reads but there is something so beautiful about them.

However, I personally would never, never try to imitate his style, because it ends up sounding like blathering. Chalk it up to Hayek's unique mind I suppose that he was able to wield it successfully.

I'll do it: Kruggie boy.

Hayek didn't think in short, concise predicates strung together by rigorous application of a simple, predicate calculus. Neither does God (Nature or what have you), and that's precisely (or metaphorically) Hayek's point.

Hayek could have disciplined his prose as Caplan likes. He wasn't incapable of it. Maybe he didn't appreciate the virtue of it, or maybe he chose not to affect a manner of thinking that didn't really occur in his head. As a compulsive self-editor prone to the same affliction myself, I know it's a hell of a lot easier with a word processor. Caplan probably knows it too.

Editing Hayek:

"During the last hundred years, man has learned to organize the forces of nature. This learning contributes to a belief that similar control of the forces of society can bring comparable improvements in human conditions. With the application of engineering techniques, the direction of all forms of human activity according to a single coherent plan should be as successful in society as it has been in innumerable engineering tasks. This seemingly plausible conclusion seduces those elated by the achievement of the natural sciences. Countering the strong presumption in favor of this conclusion requires powerful arguments, and these arguments have not yet been adequately stated. Pointing out the defects of particular proposals based on this kind of reasoning is not sufficient. The argument will persuade until economists show conclusively that what has produced advances in so many fields has limited usefulness and can be positively harmful if extended beyond these limits. This task has not been satisfactorily performed, and it must be achieved before this particular impulse toward socialism can be removed."

Still sounds pretty good to me. Note "this particular impulse". Hayek clearly doesn't believe that scientism is the only impulse toward socialism.

Ironically, academics will credit mathematical chaos theory with making the case that Hayek argues is so necessary here, but it won't stop climatologists from predicting the global weather a century in advance, and it won't stop anyone predicting the stock market or planning the economy either.

The paragraph Caplan uses to illustrate his point, and which is reproduced here by Martinbrock, is a timely one. For certainly the financial collapse, and more importantly the fact that the Fed did not foresee it, is a terrible indictment of our financial system in the manner Hayek speaks about. Ironically, I see hardly anyone forcefully making this case. The chorus should be deafening now.

I'm waiting for Bryan's perfect German writings. Maybe one of the millions of his followers as is so with Hayek could enlighten me. When people discuss great economists of the 20th century I have never heard Caplan's name mentioned. So I'll say this keep it up ROOKIE!

The only conclusion to be drawn is that you are even more intellectually uninteresting than Hayek.

I hope that puts you in your place.

Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Hayek at least did economics in the right way. Friedman's hyping of predictions and his free use of aggregates helped to put post-war economics on the wrong track. As for the writing style, that's a cheap blow. English obviously was not Hayek's Muttersprache. Besides, it's not news that social science prose generally does leave something to be desired.

While I agree with Hayek's writing style, he can be forgiven due to the facts that English was not his first language and his background was from an old-school intellectualism that isn't really practiced anymore.

And of course he was wrong on 'some' things; he changed his mind many times. He even admitted he had socialist sympathies in his youth!

In my humble opinion, Hayek's critique of modern liberalism is trenchant and still current, and relies heavily on the very criticism of constructivist rationalism that Mr. Caplan disparages here. Perhaps my understanding of that term differs from Caplan's. To my mind, constructivist rationalism is largely responsible for anti-market bias: solutions to significant economic problems cannot be left to the vagaries of markets, and therefore we turn to "planners" to impose solutions from the top down. I believe Hayek was correct in seeing modern liberals as planners, even if the historical corrective to socialism has reduced the scope of their plans somewhat. What is ObamaCare if not a pathetic attempt at planning which springs from constructivist rationalism? If anything, this demon is making a very spirited comeback, against all evidence. Hayek never lets us forget the pervasiveness of human ignorance, the reality of which is foreign to such as Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

As for Hayek's writing style, I don't have much trouble with it, especially when compared to the likes of Rawls, who is all but unintelligible to me.

Russ - Caplan's next book "Myth of the Rational Economist," an autobiography.

Well it's a good thing we have a choice and not subjected to Caplan's dictate.

Is the California wine industry an example of spontaneous order emerging when people are allowed to pursue their goals without undue burdens and regulations? This ReasonTV video suggests that it is. You can find it on the ReasonTV website, or go to http://teejaw.com/2009/12/14/609/

Spontaneous order, hmmm.

Dynamic coordination

Consensual ordering

Evolved order

Caplan's book can easily be summed up in a wikipedia entry.

Seems to me that the first idea you mention is well established by the very way humans communicate with one another. There are many languages in the world, all of them pretty complex and none except one was designed by anyone. The one that was designed, Esperanto, is spoken nowhere.

I first thought Bryan Caplan's remarks were a spoof. So he is serious? Well.

Ken, You need a serious update.
You may start with Arika Okrent's: In the land of invented languages.
Remuŝ

Pedantry alert....

There are some native speakers of Esperanto; not many, but some. A couple of hundred thousand people speak Esperanto (thought it isn't their native tongue).

There are also other "designed" languages; Klingon being one of the most famous. It is so popular in fact that there is a band which sings in Klingon - Stovokor*: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWD2QlZS_yc

*Stovokor is basically the Klingon heaven; where warriors who die with honor go on to live in the afterlife.

I can't believe I actually followed that youtube link...and watched the video...

Not getting that 4:42 back...

Ha ha ha!

Thanks. I did not know that.

Well, it doesn't really disprove your overall point.

His original, true ideas could have been five good blog posts...

That makes him superior to 99.999999999999% of the human population that has ever lived.

That makes him superior to 99.999999999999% of the human population that has ever lived.

0.000000000001% of the human population that has ever lived is considerably less than one person ...

... since we're being scientistic here.

Yeah, but you got the spirit of my point. :)