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… is from page 136 of Vol. II (“The Mirage of Social Justice” [2] [1976]) of F.A. Hayek [3]’s great work, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (footnote deleted):
The possibility of men living together in peace and to their mutual advantage without having to agree on common concrete aims, and bound only by abstract rules of conduct, was perhaps the greatest discovery mankind ever made.
DBx: We denizens of modernity – we beneficiaries of the enormous prosperity and opportunities for human flourishing made possible only by the market-driven worldwide division of labor – take our good fortune for granted. Our glass is 99.96 percent full, a fact that causes us to notice only the 0.04 percent that’s absent, and to complain bitterly about this failure of heaven to materialize here on earth.
Unfortunately, of course, one consequence of such uninformed and ungrateful complaining is that it might well usher in attitudes and institutions that substantially drain our glass.
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Today – May 8th, 2021 – is the 122nd anniversary of the birth of F.A. Hayek [4].