The previous generation of conservative economists accepted broad government intervention

Evidence

By the early 1940s Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, and Henry Simons in the United States, Wilhelm Röpke in Geneva, and Friedrich Hayek and Lionel Robbins in London all recognized a broad scope for the government to intervene, with benefi cial effects, in the workings of the economy and the distribution of goods. All of them manifested reservations about the effects of unhindered competition and increasing skepticism toward the social and po liti cal viability of laissezfaire. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 466

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s austerity/neoliberalism research: shows the Mont Pèlerin founders were not laissez-faire absolutists, correcting a common caricature. — connects to: Early free-market economists deliberately adopted progressive-sounding positions to shield their deeper agenda — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 137; Early free-market economists legitimized some government intervention; later ones did not — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 375; Behavioral economics repackaged government intervention during the neoliberal era — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 346
• QUESTION: How do these mid-century positions of Knight, Viner, Simons map onto the later Chicago School’s hardening positions?

Broader Connections

• Behavioral economics repackaged government intervention during the neoliberal era #exemplifies (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 346