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… is from page 332 of F.A. Hayek’s October 1973 Wincott Memorial Lecture – titled “Economic Freedom and Representative Government [2]” – as the text of this lecture appears as chapter 24 in the hot-off-the-press Essays on Liberalism and the Economy [3] (2022), which is volume 18 (expertly edited by Paul Lewis), of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek [4]:
And since the theoreticians of democracy have for over a hundred years taught the majorities that whatever they desire is just, we must not be surprised if the majorities no longer even ask whether what they decide is just.
DBx: What Hayek here describes is one of the dangerous consequences of anthropomorphizing the collective in a way [5] that creates the impression that when the collective ‘chooses’ through majority-rule voting it acts just as a flesh-and-blood person does when he or she chooses whether or not to have ice cream for dessert and, if so, what flavor to enjoy.