The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

Hayek starts out with marking the morally relativistic claim that altruism is just in so far good as it is defined as good. He goes on to argue that man is not able to create a system that maximizes economic output. From the tradition of Rousseau building on Cartesian thought, the assumption that man can create good logically leads to the theory that he should implement a social(ist) system of his pleasing. This notion is to be rejected.

Ethics came into being through evolution of culture, not intelligent design. This is a very nietzschean observation. Hayek goes on to say that it’s dangerous to think that our ‘intelligent’ design might do a better job. In fact, we tried and it self destructed in a couple of decades. That does not seem like a system favoured by evolutionary processes.

Mind does not drive evolution, evolution drives mind.

We are not our own creators, we did not create ethics.

We can trace the evolution of capitalism and trade through the millennia and see that it’s older than agriculture. Man could only spread across the globe, because things necessary for life that was not found in new regions could be imported through presents from the old home (and vice versa).

He explains his observation that many intelligent people are socialists. His is due to intelligent people overvaluing intelligence and therefore preferring a system of intelligent design over a a natural decentralised one. Socialism is the more intelligence focused system, capitalism is the more practical one.

Furthermore, there is the typical argument that every person in the economy knows better what he/she wants than a central agency ever could.

‘Social’ as a word is rather problematic, as it is seen to a an ought instead of an is. Soziale Marktwirtschaft for example was coined by Erhard as a term for a market economy in general, as it already is social through its structure. He saw no reason to make it ‘more social’ through government intervention. Still this term is now used to basically promote socialism. Social justice is even more problematic.

Hayek dismisses (rightly so) the fear of a population explosion, by analysing the birthrates in connection to economic development and the development trajectories of developing countries.

He shows that the humanist account of morals that every life has an innate and equal value is evolutionary not sustainable, as it fails in the extrem. Letting every woman under 35 die to save a larger number of elderly people will destroy human civilisation. Of course we don’t have to make that choice, but this shows us that also humanism is no absolut.

In essence: Morals as well as social structure evolve naturally, it’s arrogant and foolish to believe that human intervention could do a better job.

In the end he makes some statements about religion that are extremely close to Peterson’s argument. He says that useful customs that established them selfs over time in our culture must not be true or verifiable to be useful. Therefore, the widespread existence of religion itself makes a claim to its importance. Science is powerful, but must not be sufficient. Values like family (and of course property) must not be justified scientifically; justification by evolved religion showcases their ‘symbolic truth’. In the Appendix E the Peterson parallels grow stronger. He now talks about the interplay of chaos and order and how children learn order through play.