January 30, 2024
Well, not exactly.
But in revisiting the introduction to The Fatal Conceit, I was surprised to see him frame the problem of comparative political economy similarly to how many Christian economists (myself included) think about our starting point. Hayek references the Creation Mandate.
Hayek:
“This book argues that our civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism. To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection - the comparative increase of population and wealth - of those groups that happened to follow them. The unwitting, reluctant, even painful adoption of these practices kept these groups together, increased their access to valuable information of all sorts, and enabled them to be `fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). This process is perhaps the least appreciated facet of human evolution."
As my GCC colleague, Shawn Ritenour, puts it:
“How we have dominion in a world of aggravated scarcity without starving to death or killing one another in a barbaric struggle for survival?”
That we live in a world that has escaped the Hobbesian nightmare is cause for marvel and gratitude. An underappreciated bit of historical triva is that Mises wanted to title his magnum opus Social Cooperation instead of Human Action. Had he done so, his title would have highlighted that overcoming the Hobbesian dilemma is at the core of economic inquiry.