Hayek and Friedman rejected ready-made formulas in favor of case-by-case, tentative market reasoning

Evidence

One need look no further than Hayek’s first MPS speech when he said that “Patents, in particular, are specially interesting from our point of view because they provide so clear an illustration of how it is necessary in all such instances not to apply a ready-made formula but to go back to the rationale of the market system and to decide for each class what the precise rights are to be which the government ought to protect.” One thinks here also of Milton Friedman’s description of economics as “a body of tentatively accepted generalizations” rather than ironclad laws of nature (and the neoliberal rejection of naturalism described in Beddeleem’s contribution to this volume). By this understanding, the attitude of the neoliberal intellectual is not that of dogmatist but shares some of the traits of alertness they themselves attribute to the entrepreneur (see Plehwe’s contribution to this volume). — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 194

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the neoliberal intellectual posture as entrepreneurial alertness and anti-dogmatism rather than fixed prescription — a useful corrective to the doctrinaire stereotype.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: ‘the anti-formula principle’ — how self-declared pragmatism about rules was itself a core neoliberal doctrine, not a departure from it.