Hayek’s epistemic turn made market-derived hostility to markets a central puzzle

Evidence

When Friedrich Hayek intervened in the socialist calculation controversy by reconceptualizing the economy from a system of allocation to a system of communications, this brought knowledge and information under the purview of economics for the first time. Markets would now be praised for their epistemic virtues. But for neoliberals, this would raise thorny questions: how could the market—the best method of organizing and disseminating knowledge hitherto known to humankind—give rise to knowledge that was hostile to its very operation? Why had the intellectual tide moved against them? — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 101

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how exactly does Hayek’s knowledge-as-communication framing generate the ‘why do people think wrongly’ puzzle differently than older welfare economics did?
• XREF: connects to: Hayek’s epistemology made price-generated knowledge local and impossible to centralize — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 68; Hayek’s market argument rests on an epistemology of dispersed tacit knowledge — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 72; Hayek located rationality in impersonal market processes, not individuals — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 223 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek’s epistemology made price-generated knowledge local and impossible to centralize #expands (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 68
• Hayek grounded free-market economics in a theory of human ignorance #expands (0.93) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 278
• Hayek’s market argument rests on an epistemology of dispersed tacit knowledge #expands (0.92) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 72
• Hayek rejected utility maximization in favor of knowledge dispersion as the market’s justification #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1926
• Hayek justified markets by dispersed knowledge, not happiness maximization #expands (0.88) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2195
• Hayek located rationality in impersonal market processes, not individuals #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 223
• Hayek grounded freedom in the inevitability of ignorance #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 221
• Hayek saw the market as an unrepresentable knowledge network, not a contained machine #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 171
• Hayek’s epistemology denied others the holism his own vision required #complicates (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 242