THE 1974 NOBEL PRIZE SPEECH BY THE ECONOMIST F.A. HAYEK

This is too good not to share.  Though it was said in 1974 it is very applicable to the China (COVID-19) virus mania swirling all around us today.  In his 1974 Nobel Prize speech, he warned against the temptation to use collective action with incomplete knowledge, saying such action would likely cause more harm than good:

“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.  The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”

Hayek saw a world that increasingly seemed to believe central planners could solve any and all social problems. Such a worldview carried the seed of great harm, he believed.  We don’t yet know how this pandemic or economic collapse will end, but some have predicted it's shaping up to be a blunder of historic proportions.

The economic historian Phil Magness recently observed:  “The first half of 2020 will go down in history as the largest nationwide public policy failure since the Great Depression.  A part of that failure derives from the largest wide-scale suppression of economic and social liberties in most of our lifetimes, all executed to negligible effect at solving the problem it intended to target.”

If Magness is correct, the crisis, though tragic, may also offer a healthy dose of an elixir Hayek would say humans desperately need:  HUMILITY.  Hayek concluded his address:  “The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society.”

The lockdowns and the nursing home tragedies show just how destructive and fatal such striving to control society can be.  The Democrats in their obsession to control society are intent on bringing society to its knees so like the phoenix they can arise from the ashes with them in everlasting power.