It appears in the forthcoming issue of Critical Review. for now, all the papers except Jeffrey Friedman’s are gated. In the symposium, Karen L. Vaughn writes,

While Hayek overtly focused on the price system as the means of achieving economic coordination, in fact, prices will only do their work if the complex of market institutions within which action takes place is relatively stable. The coordination problem is solved by both the price system and the complex of rules, practices, and routines that characterize the market order. Moreover, the market order evolves over time as people find better “solutions” to their problems.

This seems to me to anticipate George Gilder’s description of high-information entrepreneurial activity occurring within a low-information channel of rules and regular behavior.

Daniel Kuehn writes,

the relative lengthiness of the capital structure in growth years, and the relative shortness of the capital structure in recessions, does not mean that it is too long during growth years and just right during the recession (as Hayek theorized). It may be the case that it is just right during growth years and too short during the recession.

Michael Strong writes,

[Hayek] realized that, just as constraints on freedom of expression limit our search for the truth, constraints on freedom of action do so as well. In fact, limiting freedom of action can lead to long-term reductions in human well-being insofar as innovation is necessarily based on the cognitive rewiring that takes place from encountering specific new situations.

In short, people learn from experiences that contradict their preconceptions, and limiting their experiences means limiting their ability to learn.

Andrew Gamble writes,

The growth of public-sector employment and bureaucratic private corporations has meant that most individuals, including Hayek himself, have been security-seeking employees, rather than risk-taking market entrepreneurs. As Hayek noted, a nation of employees is likely to be averse to risk and prone to seek safety, valuing security more than enterprise

Peter J. Boettke and Kyle W. O’Donnell write,

Given the impenetrable shroud of time and ignorance, trial-and-error experimentation through the competitive market process is among the only established methods for assessing the value to society of alternative courses of action. The effectiveness of this trial-and-error method is analogous to the theory of biological evolution by natural selection

Jeffrey Friedman writes (not gated),

the adaptive aspect of Hayek’s approach to interpretation can explain erroneous interpretations without invoking irrationality (as is so often done by social scientists, especially economists). Hayek’s explanation for error juxtaposes the wider objective world against expectations that we form on the basis of local objective conditions (as reflected by the stimuli we notice)…Hayek’s account of learning describes the correction of our subjective interpretations by further experience with the objective environment.

…we can be sure that everyone has what they view as good reasons for their beliefs, even when these beliefs seem, to us, to be obviously mistaken.

Friedman goes on to say that Hayek mis-speaks when he talks about local “knowledge” rather than local opinion. Read the entire essay.

We know that Balaji Srinivasan is an advocate. He links to a story in May that makes Google’s Larry Page sound like a fan. He also links to an October 3 interview with Marc Andreessen.

“I think there is going to be double, triple, quadruple countries in the coming years,” Andreessen told Sarah Lacy at Thursday night’s PandoMonthly in San Francisco.

Sheldon Richman writes,

Undoubtedly the nonlibertarian will respond that government officials were duly elected by the people according to the Constitution, or hired by those so elected. Thus they may do what is prohibited to you and me. This reply is inadequate. If you and I admittedly have no right to tax and regulate others, how could we delegate a nonexistent right to someone else through an election? Obviously, we can’t.

Read the whole thing to get the context. Or read Michael Huemer’s book to get an even lengthier treatment of the argument.

I think that most people want their own liberty, but they fear the liberty of others. I like to use the acronym FOOL, which stands for Fear Of Others’ Liberty. I think that many of us are FOOLs. I count myself a FOOL, at least to some extent.

Once you are a FOOL, then you may be willing, yea, eager, to delegate the job of constraining someone else’s liberty. We don’t all want to be policemen or prison guards, but most of us are glad that there are people doing those jobs.

If I delegate the job of constraining someone else’s liberty, then, unless I happen to be a despot, those who have the power to constrain someone else’s liberty have the power to constrain my liberty as well. That is roughly what we mean by equality before the law.

In short, I think it is reasonable not to be persuaded to become a libertarian by the sort of arguments Huemer or Richman make. Instead, a FOOL can say, “I do not want violent criminals running around free. I want to delegate to someone else the power to arrest and incarcerate them. I understand that this power might be used against me, but I am willing to live with that.”

Consider Paul Romer:

Across the world, public safety is the most important task facing city governments. In many poor countries, crime holds back the kind of urbanization essential for economic development. Closer to home, Detroit shows us that if they can, people will flee a city that fails to provide basic public safety.

Of course, one day you concede to the government the power to arrest and incarcerate violent criminals, and the next thing you know you have created an institution with the power to penalize people who sign contracts that provide “inadequate health insurance.”

It frustrates me that there are so many FOOLs who support the government using its power to penalize people who sign such contracts, or to penalize people who sell big-gulp soft drinks, or what have you. In short, whatever consensus that might have once existed in favor of limited government has evaporated.

Sometimes, the FOOLs want what amounts to despotism. It happened to Germany in 1933. There seems to be an echo today in Venezuela (the term “enabling law” has a chilling ring to it).

Perhaps there is no way to maintain a consensus for limited government, in which case there is not much middle ground between anarchy and despotism. But to most people, it is plausible that there is a middle ground, and you have to recognize their point of view if you want your arguments to register with them.