“Knowledge, Values and the Choice of Economic Organization“

 “Knowledge, Values and the Choice of Economic Organization“

The sacrifice of cognition is particularly easy to detect in objections to the market system induced by discrepancies between one’s desires (usually glorified as social values) and the result of market processes.  One dislikes the results of the market process.  One also is convinced that one knows what the world needs and finds the allocations emerging on the market not satisfactorily tending to these favored needs.  Ergo, the market has failed and should be replaced by an administrative arrangement.  One is always convinced that this arrangement operates in the manner desired by ones’s wishes.  The obvious naiveté of this critique does not preclude its frequency and appeal to many articulators.

Among the valuable insights in this passage from Brunner is the recognition that not only do too many advocates of government intervention fancy themselves to possess some special god-like wisdom, but they also believe in miracles.

Karl Brunner’s 1970 Kyklos article