Hayek reframed capitalism’s core problem as knowledge fragmentation, not labor or value.

Evidence

To understand why intellectual property is such a confounding problem within neoliberal theory, it helps to revisit Hayek’s idea of what an economy is and the centrality of what has been called the knowledge problem. As many have pointed out, Hayek rethought the problem of capitalism from one of labor, commodities, or even value, to one of knowledge and information. The world’s knowledge was strewn across the globe’s diverse populations and individual actors. In Hayek’s retelling, the story of capitalism becomes one of how this so-called distributed knowledge was recombined in ways productive for the human race’s survival, propagation and ongoing expansion on the planet. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 168

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘knowledge problem’ as the distinctive Hayekian reframing of economics.
• XREF: connects to: Hayek justified markets by dispersed knowledge, not happiness maximization — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2195; Hayek argued contextual individual knowledge cannot be statistically aggregated — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 211; Hayek’s epistemology made price-generated knowledge local and impossible to centralize — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 68 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek justified markets by dispersed knowledge, not happiness maximization #corroborates (1.00) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2195
• Hayek rejected utility maximization in favor of knowledge dispersion as the market’s justification #corroborates (1.00) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1926
• Markets were valued by Hayek for computing tacit dispersed knowledge, not just coordinating plans. #expands (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 72
• Hayek saw the market as an unrepresentable knowledge network, not a contained machine #expands (0.88) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 171
• Hayek argued contextual individual knowledge cannot be statistically aggregated #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 211
• Hayek’s epistemology made price-generated knowledge local and impossible to centralize #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 68