Hayek on Social Justice

14 Replies to “Hayek on Social Justice”

1. “Social”, “Environmental”, “Economic”, when you put a qualifier in front of Justice, it means you don’t mean Justice.

2. Words cannot convey how much I loathe Bill Buckley. P H O N Y.
   Read an interesting piece at Mises.org recently comparing the trajectory of Buckley with my main squeeze Murray Rothbard. BB has disappeared without a trace. Rothbard is hotter than ever.
   During the phony red scare BB opined that America would have to become a totalitarian camp until the soviets were taken down. Did he not understand that you can’t reverse that?! And the evidence of that truth surrounds us.

3. Buckley certainly played the role of a fatally conflicted conservative while interviewing Hayek. The Austrian economists generally don’t bother with econometric obfuscation but rely on arguments revolving around human action (praxeology). We need more of them.

4. “Buckley certainly played the role…”
   He often did that with his guests. Singing from the same song sheet may produce harmony but it rarely sheds any new light on an issue.
   I know it’s wiki but some of his more well-known quips listed here give a certain measure of what Bill Buckley was about. He was a conservative with an entertaining and original style.
   I liked him, patrician New England accent and all.
   https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.

5. Are their any more ‘dead white males’ to steal from?
   I thought the new progressive tribalism had long since banished us all to Vanuatu?
   Vanuatu rocked by another 6.9 earthquake this afternoon, no tsunami threat
   https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/vanuatu-rocked-another-6-9-earthquake-afternoon-no-tsunami-threat
   Why you be ‘shaking my world’!?!
   when you can be ‘flushed with victory’!
   Vanuatu shows off ‘best toilet in the South Pacific’
   http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-35890860
   A village in the island nation of Vanuatu has opened what it calls “the best public toilet in the South Pacific” in the hope of attracting tourists to help fund local projects.
   Located on the opposite side of the country’s main island to the capital Port Vila, the village of Paunangisu hopes that the newly-opened block will be a convenient stopping point for visitors taking round-the-island road trips, Radio New Zealand reports. Frustrated that tourist buses don’t stop for their market stalls, backers – which include a church in Melbourne – instead turned to an idea that would make drivers hit the brakes.
   “There’s nothing like a sign on the road saying ‘best public toilet in the South Pacific’ to trigger something in the brain,” supporter Robert Latimer told the radio, explaining that once the visitors have stopped, it’s easier to sell other services and offer tours of the area.
   Cheers
   Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
   1st Saint Nicolaas Army
   Army Group “True North”

6. Robert Latimer?
   Hide your disabled.

7. “…it means you don’t mean Justice.”
   Bongo, and by definition if it is not justice then it is injustice.

8. Hayek talks about “social justice” in his 1940s book, “The Road to Serfdom” and said much the same in this interview as what he wrote at that time. All the socialist totalitarian dangers he wrote about that many years ago are coming true. The ideology he warned about then has come right out into the open today and we see it through the NDP LEAP program and in the US through Bernie Sanders.

9. Nope, my son may be disabled but he ain’t hidin’…
   You’ve heard of tongue in cheek…yes?
   Of course the new fascists would prefer to offer ‘assisted suicide’ as a new ‘social justice’…so you can’t be a mere farmer to offer those ‘services’.
   Yer, longevity may vary!
   Round these parts we say those that take fungible assets to procure death are known as ‘assassins’; and in that there is NO SOCIAL JUSTICE.
   Cheers
   Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
   1st Saint Nicolaas Army
   Army Group “True North”

10. When PET sr. was at the LSE Hayek was teaching there, but in PET’s intellectual biography (written by the Nemnis) there is little mention of Hayek. What a pity he didn’t take a course from a Hayek….Canada might be a very different place today.

11. Hans, I thought my comment was tongue in cheek.
    You are so many steps ahead of me that I can’t see your hat for the bend in the earth.
    Maybe I should go to the links you offered. The name Robert Latimer rattled around in my mind loosening memories from ancient times when I used to watch the CBC.
    Cheers right back at ya.

12. Hayek used the term “fatal conceit” to describe what happens when fools think that society should be structured like some giant enterprise to achieve a specific goal. Why do words like Obammy, turdo la doo, Liberals, NDP, Wynne, Notley, Canadian voters, and green energy come to mind?

13. “What a pity [Pierre Trudeau] didn’t take a course from a Hayek….Canada might be a very different place today.”
    Maybe, or maybe he’d have decided he just knew better than anybody else, a principle he relied on rather too often.
    He knew you can always be the smartest person in the room if you choose your room carefully.

14. What was wonderful about WFB was his sense of humour (that and the fact he was the polar opposite of the likes of Gore Vidal) and the National Review will never be what it was under the too serious NeoCons of today!