Hayekian neoliberalism requires active rule-design to insulate markets from politics

Evidence

In his late works, Hayek argued that the ‘spontaneous order’ of the market required an appropriate legal regime to insulate it from political intervention. While he argued that the rules governing individual conduct themselves evolve through a process of selection, he believed it was at least possible that the rules on which a spontaneous order rests may be designed. Rather than a doctrine of laissez-faire that precludes all constructivism, Hayekian neoliberalism aimed to fine-tune rules to secure submission to the overall order. … When asked in 1978 whether his account of spontaneous order inherently biased outcomes ‘in favour of past discriminations or past inequities’, Hayek responded bluntly: ‘It accepts historical accidents.’ … For all his talk of spontaneity, Hayek was convinced that ‘favourable accidents do not just happen. We must prepare for them.’ In Chile, Hayek saw the miracle of a state that was prepared to use its powers to prepare the terrain for such favourable accidents by constitutionally protecting the market. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 360

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the core tension in Hayek: spontaneous order is NOT laissez-faire — it requires designed rules and active state preparation.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s austerity/neoliberalism debate — the state activism hidden inside ‘spontaneous order’ rhetoric complicates the common good/bad framing of market ethics. — connects to: Market economies require deliberate political construction, not natural emergence — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 364; The market must be actively constituted by political intervention, not discovered — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1852; Neoliberals wanted international rules to discipline states, not just markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 266 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals pursued an engineered order rather than expecting free markets to emerge naturally #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1907
• Neoliberal order theorists saw authoritarian state coercion as protecting the market’s spontaneous order #exemplifies (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 364
• Neoliberalism holds that markets can solve the very problems markets create #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2134
• Neoliberal market discipline was adopted to pacify unruly democratic publics #corroborates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 122