With the economic downturn usually reported meaninglessly by the media, I was most appreciative of a well written article in the Australian Newspaper entitled “Legacy of Free-Market Thinker Pinpoints Government Failure” by Geoff Hogbin, a senior fellow at the Australian Centre for Independent Studies
In the article Hogbin takes a stance against Kevin Rudd’s proposition that the economic theories of free-marketers such as those expressed by Friedrich Van Hayek have gone the way of Leonard Brezhnev’s totalitarian theories.
The basis of Hogbin’s argument is that workers at the coalface of the market will always know more about the progress, risks, competition, evolution and opportunities their services or products offer than any government policy or incentive could attempt to influence or promote. Hogbin points out that every time the consumer spends a dollar they are voting for those outcomes the worker has produced and this is the ideal incentive to encourage the worker to keep on innovativing and experimenting.
I want to thank Hogbin for drawing my attention to Friedrich Van Hayek’s article The Use of Knowledge in Society written in 1945. For those interested in trying to understand what’s going on in the world economy at the moment this is a must read!!