{"id":147571,"date":"2023-04-28T02:38:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T10:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=147571"},"modified":"2023-04-28T02:38:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T10:38:04","slug":"hayek-a-life-1899-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=147571","title":{"rendered":"Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950"},"content":{"rendered":"

From LROB<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Hayek was crossing the Atlantic, under radio silence, when the Reader\u2019s Digest article appeared. He had been anticipating a relaxed promotional tour of a handful of American universities, but when he landed in New York he found that he was suddenly famous, and his publishers had booked him for a string of town hall meetings and radio shows. He didn\u2019t like being \u2018pressed into public lecturing\u2019, but soon grew accustomed to people who, as he put it, \u2018were enthusiastic about the book but never read it\u2019. When he told them about the dangers of state intervention they responded with warm applause, but when he went on to argue that governments should \u2018step in where competition cannot possibly do the job\u2019 (financing hydroelectric power for example) and implement a \u2018plan for competition\u2019 (including \u2018unemployment insurance\u2019 and a \u2018minimum-wage law\u2019), he noticed that \u2018the temperature of the room went down at least ten degrees.\u2019<\/p>\n

When Hayek returned to Britain he set about raising money for an international conference to carry on the work of the prewar Paris symposium on neoliberalism. The conference took place in the spring of 1947 at a hotel in the Swiss village of Mont P\u00e8lerin, with Hayek guiding some forty participants \u2013 including an ambitious young American called Milton Friedman \u2013 through a long agenda, under the wary gaze of Ludwig von Mises. They agreed to create a permanent organisation called the Mont Pelerin Society, dedicated to the proposition that a \u2018free society\u2019 depends on \u2018market-oriented economic systems\u2019; but they stopped short of committing themselves to pure laissez-faire capitalism, which led Mises to storm out, denouncing them all as \u2018a bunch of socialists\u2019.<\/p>\n

The fact that the Mont Pelerin Society is still going after 75 years testifies to Hayek\u2019s organisational skill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From LROB: Hayek was crossing the Atlantic, under radio silence, when the Reader\u2019s Digest article appeared. He had been anticipating a relaxed promotional tour of a handful of American universities, but when he landed in New York he found that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t