Hayek saw journalists and teachers as idea dealers who shape public opinion

Evidence

To capture political power, they would first have to alter the intellectual climate. … Hayek proposed that political technologies could be developed to engineer changes in the general climate of opinion. These technologies had to operate on those second-tier thinkers he called “intellectuals.” In contrast to the “scholar or expert in a particular field,” he wrote in an essay published in 1949 in the University of Chicago Law Review, those who perform intellectual functions—principally journalists and school teachers, but also media commentators, film makers, writers of fiction, and many others—are “second-hand dealers in ideas” (Hayek 1949). These people control the distribution of expert knowledge to ordinary members of the population. The task of the neoliberal movement was to design its own network of dealerships. By altering the distribution of ideas among the second-hand dealers, neoliberalism would try to change the world. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1908

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Hayek’s key concept of ‘second-hand dealers in ideas’ — the intellectual intermediary layer that opinion-engineering must target.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and the general idea that intellectuals transmit ideology; also to Lippmann’s public opinion work. — connects to: Hayek and Friedman shared faith that ideas could transform political practice — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 560; Hayek founded MPS to build a worldview insulated from immediate policy pressures — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 307; Hayek’s academy aimed to build shared belief rather than only disseminate finished scholarship — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 85 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek held that ideas, not vested interests, ultimately shape political possibility #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2116
• Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society believing ideas, not interests, drive change #corroborates (0.85) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 546
• Academic ideas deliberately seeded among educators eventually shape public opinion #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1461