The Open Society vs Politics [What Would Hayek Say?]

Hayek uses many terms to refer to catallaxy: Open Society, Abstract Order, market order, the Great Society. The most important question is: why does he prefer the Open Society to social justice and socialism?

This week's "What Would Hayek Say?" is the fourth part of our Morality and the Market series. We pick up where we left off in discussing Catallaxy vs Social Justice and give four reasons why Hayek prefers the Open Society to social justice. In so doing, we return to some of the themes of the earlier Morality and the Market videos, such as corporate social responsibility and the example of Bill Gates, whose work with Microsoft, one could argue, is far more beneficial and therefore moral than any of his philanthropic activities.

But it's clear that what Hayek would refer to as so many different forms of tribalism - social justice, socialism, nationalism - have their staying power for a variety of reasons. One of them is evolution. But by drawing on some of the work of philosophers Bertrand de Jouvenel, José Ortega y Gasset, and Raymond Aron, we see that the attractiveness of "the social" is also related to our need for belonging in a political community. Fulfilling this need, however, does require we be willing to make certain trade-offs. So too does opting for the Open Society require that we be disciplined and limit our desires for certain outcomes - that we be willing to acknowledge a distinction between liberty and licence. Hayek's philosophy is revealed to be quite optimistic about the nature of man.

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Raymond Aron by Erling Mandelmann is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license.
Source: http://www.erlingmandelmann.ch/portraits_all/viewer.php?sujet=Aron_Raymond&nopage=1

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Scott B. Nelson is Research and Strategy Advisor at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institut in Vienna, Austria. He blogs at https://vienna-symposium.com.

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Видео The Open Society vs Politics [What Would Hayek Say?] канала Austrian Economics Center / Hayek Institut