Friedman had something similar to say about Hayek:
"[I am] an enormous admirer of Hayek, but not for his economics. I think Prices and Production is a very flawed book. I think his [Pure Theory of Capital] is unreadable. On the other hand, The Road to Serfdom is one of the great books of our time".
It's funny that modern Hayek adherents are so militant about preventing things that Hayek himself was completely fine with. He saw a government role in pricing externalities, banning poisons, preventing deforestation and pollution, limiting working hours or other manipulative labor contracts, preventing private fraud, and in wealthy societies, providing minimum food, clothing, housing and social insurance.
That list would make many at Mises scream bloody murder. Man our discourse is just so petty.
As an Austrian I can tell you that these are things that most Austrians agree to without much controversy. Austria is such a small nation that feeling any benefit from destroying parts of its environment or population for profit doesn’t really feel like a good goal to most.
Austrians as those who follow that school of economic thought, not as natives from Austria. Austrians are phenomenal! "Austrians" are often.. not the most pleasant people.. (apologies if I read past some sarcasm)
> He saw a government role in pricing externalities, banning poisons, preventing deforestation and pollution
The way I understand it, is that when Hayek was writing The Road to Serfdom, he was intended to make this book be a general defense of free market and argument against central planning, and reach as much people as possible, so he intentionally moderated the Austrian School's takes on government regulations, etc.
>>It's funny that modern Hayek adherents are so militant about preventing things that Hayek himself was completely fine with. He saw a government role in pricing externalities, banning poisons, preventing deforestation and pollution, limiting working hours or other manipulative labor contracts, preventing private fraud, and in wealthy societies, providing minimum food, clothing, housing and social insurance.
I'm not aware of Austrians being opposed to government pricing externalities, banning poisons, preventing deforestation and pollution or preventing private fraud. The Austrian school is not generally anarchist. From what I gather, the vast majority are minarchists.
Do you have a source for Hayek being "completely fine with" "limiting working hours" or any other interference in private contracts, or "providing minimum food, clothing, housing and social insurance"? I only know of one quote where he expresses support for any kind of government aid to the poor.
"That list would make many at Mises scream bloody murder" - I would say only those who don't understand what Capitalism is. The common misconception is that Capitalism is the system where people are free to do whatever they want, especially those who has a lot of money. That's not true; the system that allows for that is called Feudalism. Obviously Hayek understood the difference.
It is interesting to analyze why so many people fail to understand what Capitalism is. My guess is that unfortunately many modern "western" countries are slowly moving away from Capitalism into some kind of modern version of Feudalism. And people with very deep pockets are indeed able to do what they want - last financial crisis is a good example, although multiple banks were behind it, they didn't go bankrupt, but were saved using taxpayers money.
The end result is that people think that "Capitalism is wrong", "Capitalism is not working", etc. They are just not aware that Capitalism is no longer here.
Capitalism is just the private onwership of the means of production for profit, and the use of wage labourers.
You can say we don't have 'real capitaslism' rightr now but that sounds like the No True Scotsman fallacy to me.
We absolutely do have Capitalism. A heavily unbalanced, unfair and abusive crony capitalism, but it is still capitalism. I honestly can't see how capitalism wouldn't naturally tend towards these things anyway.
I would be surprised if there are more than 50 people alive today who have read Hayek's "pure theory of capital" cover to cover and understand it. I read "prices and production and other works", which was difficult, but pretty interesting and made me understand the major flaws in KeynesIan economics. However, "Pure theory of capital" is over my head though. I am glad to see that even Milton Friedan agrees with me.
Friedman had something similar to say about Hayek:
"[I am] an enormous admirer of Hayek, but not for his economics. I think Prices and Production is a very flawed book. I think his [Pure Theory of Capital] is unreadable. On the other hand, The Road to Serfdom is one of the great books of our time".
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek