The Fatal Conceit

So I finally got around to reading Hayek's The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. The more I read Hayek, the more I like him. In this case, he introduced me to a concept that hadn't really occurred to me before, and that I hadn't yet seen elsewhere. In retrospect, it's logical, and it certainly fits in with other things that I've thought, but I'd never gotten to quite this idea.

The idea is that capitalism is a product of evolution. It's not that capitalism has evolved over time, which is a statement with almost no real content. It's that capitalism is a self-generated order in the same sense that life is a self-generated order (for those who see evolution as a reasonable theory.) And capitalism has survived these many thousands of years because it's a viable system, a system that provides for an efficient allocation of resources based on the information that it produces. As an economic/social system, it has competed with other systems and won because it's a better system.

In contrast, socialism is a creation of those who think they are perfectly capable of designing, from the ground up, a better system. This is the fatal conceit of the title, the idea that socialism can achieve results superior to a system that developed naturally and survived.

Of course, the socialism that's addressed in the book is "sincere" socialism. As we're all too well aware of, those currently in power who are advocating socialism aren't sincere socialists. They simply want the power socialism will give them.