Hayek’s pessimism about the present coexisted with long-term confidence in his ideas

Evidence

Although Hayek’s writings on the immediate prospects for the economy were unfailingly grim, he retained an extraordinary confi dence in the capacity of his ideas to alter the longterm course of events. Here, at least, he found it salutary for any sources of discouragement to be ignored. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 86

Categorization

• XREF: This long-horizon optimism amid short-term failure is the stance Gramsci’s ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ captures — and recurs in later neoliberal intellectual strategy. — connects to: Hayek’s sudden American celebrity from The Road to Serfdom discomforted him deeply — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 222; Hayek saw collectivist mass politics as the long-standing destroyer of free markets. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 69
• STORYSTEM: The figure who keeps building theory while everything around him disintegrates, sustained by a private confidence others see as delusion — a useful frame for a character.