It is necessary in the first instance that the parties in the market should be free to sell at any price and buy at any price at which they can find a partner to the transaction, and that anybody should be free to produce, buy and sell anything that may be produced and sold at all.

When Hayek says "anything that may be produced and sold at all" he does not mean anything that can physically be produced or sold. He means anything that the law allows to be produced or sold. Hayek is not advocating the buying and selling or babies or body parts — that’s closer to the ‘universal commodification’ approach of Chicago School economists like Becker and Posner (Margaret Jane Radin has a good critique of that position).

Hayek goes on to explain that prohibiting "certain poisonous substances", limiting working hours and OH&S laws are perfectly consistent with his approach (p 39). As far as I can see, there’s no contradiction here. None of these things interferes with the price mechanism and the laws apply equally to everyone.

What Hayek was opposed to were attempts by governments to set prices and incomes for particular products and particular occupations. He was opposed to laws that gave members of a particular union an exclusive right to perform certain tasks.

I think Rudd has some interesting things to say about Hayek. But I also think that some of his attacks would be more effective if they directed against the right target.

Be that as it may, the salient Hayek position is his proposition: “It is necessary in the first instance that the parties in the market should be free to sell at any price and buy at any price at which they can find a partner to the transaction, and that anybody shoud be free to produce, buy and sell anything that may be produced and sold at all,” and the concomitant notion that the only form of “planning” allowed is that “required to make competition as effective and beneficial as possible”. Taking this market fundamentalism as the starting point, from the perspective of critics, every exception is a “concession”, and the pattern of his concessions varies throughout his writing, as per my point (1).

Why are they ‘concessions’? Hayek opposed inteventions that attempted to override the price mechanism but supported policies like a guaranteed minimum income, state funded education and physical infrastructure. Where’s the inconsistency?

If you want to understand Hayek you need to understand the argument in ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’. Everything else flows from that.

I do think there are tensions, inconsistencies and gaps in Hayek’s work and that Sinclair managed to ignore them in his article. That’s why it’s frustrating when so much of the criticism of Hayek misses the mark.

1) The Sinclair stuff on state intervention is stock FvHFC cherry-picking. Sinclair largely passes over Serfdom, even though it is Hayek’s landmark work, and the only one that sold well, in favour of The Constitution etc and other more malleable references. This is somewhat akin to defining the meaning of Marx with reference to the Grundisse and ignoring The Communist Manifesto. Rudd deftly referred to Keynes’ famous reply to Hayek on Serfdom, but this could be readily deepened as a point of attack.

A systematic trawl through Hayek’s writing shows that he made inconsistent and ambiguous practical concessions to a role for the state all over the place. I don’t think these can be reconciled, except as pragmatic concessions to the prevailing wisdom in the different times over the long period during which he wrote (a Hayek polemical tradition that Davidson perpetuates as Exhibit A).

On the one hand, the cavalcade of inconsistency and ambiguity can be taken to undermine Hayek’s intellectual standing, reducing him to a market apologist; on the other hand, it can be taken to undermine his sincerity about supporting any concessions at all, reducing him to an even more extreme extremist. For a systematic trawl, see: Chris Guest, “Hayek on Government: Two Views or One”, History of Economics Review, 2, Winter-Summer, 1997, pp. 51-67.

2) Re the contradiction between the market and the family, which Rudd pressed very well, this also goes to a more general contradiction between Hayek’s general denunciation of state power and his silence on private power. While Rudd nicely picked up the point about private markets assaulting the family, there is a parallel contradiction in Hayek liberalism re the coercive power that private firms exercise over their subordinate employees, which could be usefully pressed in the context of WorkChoices. This is one of the themes in Andrew Gamble, Hayek:The Iron Cage of Liberty (Polity, 1996).

Two substantive points is sufficient, I trust, for blogospheric engagement.

Might have to get Steve Waugh along for a little “team chat”.

2pp 59/41 with an ALP primary of 50%, the highest recorded by Morgan since 1986.

Unless the Sunrise factor is kicking in much more than even I would possibly imagine, I don’t believe it for a minute - even if it is the fourth poll in a row of about the same order. Still, there is one particular house over at Kirribilli where I’m sure all this is going down a real treat.

A: “Emperor Nasi Goreng … built the Wall of China …. to keep the rabbits out.”

Anyway in the spirit of practical reconciliation, I’m also pissed and I’ll also offer my apologies. Sorry about the snark, but cs, I wish you’d engage rather than dismiss. That doesn’t justify my snark thought for which I’m truly sorry.

Love and kisses

Your Kimberella

Comment all you like Mark. By all means

Thanks for the permission, cs.

Just sayin…

I trust I am also free to say I think you are wrong, in this case, dead wrong.

Oh, most certainly. If you could provide some argument as to why, as opposed to assertion, I’d be delighted to revise my view in light of it. As I’ve said, I hope Rudd is all that you say he is. I’m not convinced yet.

Can we go back to talking about breakfast television, please?

Heh.

(commenting about politics on a blog at 11pm on a friday night — instant forsaking of the right to talk about what normal people think about politics? Discuss.)

However, when you have been a minder to the Labor leader who broke national party rule in Qld

Mark was offered a job as a political advisor in Goss’ office in 1991. Despite the fact that he was then living on Austudy and the pay package was 60 grand, he knocked it back because of his disagreement on principle with some aspects of Goss’ policy. I suppose he shouldn’t have, so he’d have been able to have arguments with cs 15 years later.

Patronising doesn’t begin to express cs’ problems with anyone who disagrees with him on Rudd, evidently.

But cs will ask me if I’m channelling Tim Blair, and therefore none of you esteemed strategists and political advisors and Mandarin speakers and margin increasers should take any notice of this comment.

 Just sayin’ 

Is that a new lip piercing Mark? Or just the hook cs baited for you?

I’ve found your comments patronising and insulting personally.

I’m happy to stick to the arguments, but I don’t recognise that I don’t have anything to contribute to the debate because I’m not Kevin Rudd, or cs, so if it’s all fine with you, I’ll continue to argue the merits of the case. I’ll stay away from the meta, but I’m not going to be deterred from criticising him by some claim that I don’t have standing to do so. At any intellectual level, and by any rules of discourse, that’s absurd. People can discount what I say, and take me on on what I say, but I don’t recognise some argument from authority.

If that’s a problem for you, well, then, I’m sorry, but it’s not my problem.

And, like Kim, your advocacy for your mate isn’t doing anything to sway me, by virtue of the manner in which you couch it such that any contradiction of you is met by anything other than engagement on the arguments.