It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.
This means that to entrust to science – or to deliberate control according to scientific principles – more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.
We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.
‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.