A Free-Market Monetary System and The Pretense of Knowledge

Friedrich A. Hayek

Here are two of Hayek's greatest essays in one volume.

The book begins with Hayek's most excellent essay on money. It is also his most radical. He plainly says that central banks cannot be reformed. There can never be sound money so long as they are in charge. He calls for their complete abolition, no compromises accepted. He wants the market in charge of money from top to bottom.

His words predicting crisis followed by wild swings in valuation are up to the minute. He also relates the quality of money with the recurrence of crisis, showing an excellent application of Austrian theory.

Hayek was deeply influenced by Mises, and this shows here in the area of money.

The second essay is "The Pretense of Knowledge," his shocking Nobel speech that explained why the very idea of government in our times is unintellectual, presumptuous, and untenable. He is as critical of socialism as he is of interventionism. He shows that the state is not capable of doing all that it is charged with doing, and why conceding it any role in social and economic management is dangerous to liberty.

It was not the speech everyone expected. But it lived up to Hayek's lifelong commitment to telling truth to power.

A Free-Market Monetary System by F. A. Hayek
Meet the Author
F A Hayek
Friedrich A. Hayek

F. A. Hayek (1899–1992) is undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Austrian economists, and a founding board member of the Mises Institute. Student of Friedrich von Wieser, protégé and colleague of Ludwig von Mises, and foremost representative of an outstanding generation of Austrian School theorists, Hayek was more successful than anyone else in spreading Austrian ideas throughout the English-speaking world. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena."  Among mainstream economists, he is mainly known for his popular The Road to Serfdom  (1944).

Mises Daily Friedrich A. Hayek
The ideal of conscious control of social phenomena has made its greatest influence felt in the economic field, writes F. A. Hayek. The present popularity of "economic planning" is directly traceable to the prevalence of the scientistic ideas we have been discussing. As in this field the scientistic ideals manifest themselves in the particular forms which they take in the hands of the applied scientist and especially the engineer, it will be convenient to combine the discussion of this influence with some examination of the characteristic ideals of the engineers. We shall see that the influence on current views about problems of social organization of his technological approach, or the engineering point of view, is much greater than is generally realized. Most of the schemes for a complete remodeling of society, from the earlier utopias to modern socialism, bear indeed the distinct mark of this influence.
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References

Mises Institute, 2009