The ‘Free’ Market Use of (Ideological) ‘Knowledge’ in Society

Abstract

In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek stated that ‘To do the bidding of others is for the employed the condition of achieving his purpose.’ And according to Mises, ‘again and again, the early historians of capitalism have—one can hardly use a milder word—falsified history.’ Historians are trained to evaluate evidence; while ideologues use it to serve a preconceived agenda. Every major assertion made by Bruce Caldwell about Hayek and Mises is either not supported by or flatly rejected by the evidence. Courtesy of the Koch-funded Centre for the History of Political Economy, Duke University appears to have embraced the denial of both science (climate change) and historical evidence. Caldwell and Leonidas Montes deny that ‘Hayek’s meeting with Pinochet constituted a personal governmental consultation prior to the final drafting’ of ‘The Constitution of Liberty’; or that the Hayekian, Jaime Guzmán, ‘was influenced by Hayek’s ideas’; or that ‘Hayek exercised further influence through his relationship’ with the Hayekian Carlos Cáceres. Murray Rothbard was motivated by pornographic arousal – he was ‘filled with a loathing for its content … almost driven to blast away at it, swearing a mighty oath that the offending verbiage would not be allowed to stand unanswered.’ According to Peter Boettke, Rothbard-inspired students at City Grove College and George Mason University get ‘hyped up on your ability to walk through fire for the truth.’ Can ‘Masonomics’ shed light on the process by which vulnerable young people become recruited to Jihad (the perceived duty to maintain religion)? The Austrian School of Economics maintains a ‘united front’ with ‘Neo-Nazis’ - and the Southern Economic Association and History of Economics Society are the vehicles through which they seek academic respectability. This chapter examines the ‘free’ market misuse of knowledge in society.