Friedrich Hayek’s essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” published in 1945 in the prestigious American Economic Review, is often hailed as an important contribution to economics. Rightly so, because it provides important “meat” to the price theory “skeleton.” However, Austrian economists often exaggerate its importance in ways that risk undermining Austrian economic theory.

Here in the West, particularly in countries such as the United States and Canada, we have experienced radical political and cultural changes over the past several years, and the pace of these changes seems to have accelerated since 2020. In the minds of many, there is an almost palpable feeling that a switch has been thrown and that the relationship between citizens and the state has been permanently altered.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Joe Biden have nine days left to reach a spending deal before the U.S. defaults on the debt and everything falls apart… or do they? Three weeks ago, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the so-called X-date, when the U.S. would begin to default, would be Thursday, June 1st.

A concrete example of an anarchic order existed within Spain, on the current border between Spain and Portugal, in the kingdoms of Castilla and Galicia. By “anarchy” I mean the abolition of centralized power, not the abolition of authority as leftists conceive it to be. One such regime was called Coto Mixto. It was a small territory located in the basin of the Salas River. Coto Mixto’s residents avoided the control of Spain and Portugal from approximately 1143 to 1868.