![[Hayekian Wisdom]](/ps/images/salma2.png)
At the Dispatch, Peter Boettke outlines What Hayek Understood About Markets. (archive.today link)
From President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs and acquisition of government stakes in industrial and tech businesses to Zohran Mamdani’s avowedly socialist New York mayoral campaign, politicians in 2025 are not shy about central economic planning. That makes the work of the acclaimed economist F.A. Hayek, including the “knowledge problem” he exposed as a fundamental flaw in such enterprises, as relevant as ever.
Hayek’s insights were formed as world governments made their great foray into central planning in the 1930s. His entire career was framed by World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Totalitarian threats from the left and right were ever present and served as the historical background against which he made his contributions to social science.
His most famous work, 1944’s The Road to Serfdom, was one result. In it, he illuminated how socialism—a term for government planning and ownership of the means of production, whether or not politicians describe their policies this way—is incompatible with liberal democracy and material progress. In the British context within which Hayek wrote, his argument amounted to the claim that the promise of a “New Jerusalem” would produce instead a new hell on earth. “That democratic socialism,” Hayek wrote, “the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who now wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.”
Or, as our Eye Candy du Jour says… well, you can read it for yourself. Yes, it is recycled from a few years ago. Nobody sued me then, I'm hoping my luck continues.
[Relevant UPDATE from Jack Nicastro at Reason:
This Virginia Company Says Donald Trump's Tariffs Make 'Rational Business Planning Impossible'. As foretold by
Salma Friedrich!]
Also of note:
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Gee, let's hope not. Damon Root wonders at Reason: Trump hopes to bully SCOTUS into upholding his tariffs. Will it work?
President Barack Obama was roundly criticized by conservatives in 2012 after he used the presidential bully pulpit to pressure the U.S. Supreme Court into upholding the federal health care law known as Obamacare. It was April 2, several days after the Court heard oral arguments in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, and Obama took the opportunity to publicly lecture the justices against taking the "unprecedented extraordinary step" of overturning his signature policy. Two months later, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld Obamacare.
Next week, the signature policy of another president will be having its day in court when the justices hear oral arguments in Learning Resources v. Trump and Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, the consolidated cases challenging the legality of President Donald Trump's unilateral trade war. And much like Obama before him, Trump is now using the presidential bully pulpit in a blatant effort to influence the Supreme Court's decision-making process. Will it work?
A note on usage: back when Teddy Roosevelt referred to the presidency as a "bully pulpit", "bully" was understood as an adjective meaning "superb" or "wonderful".
Meanings change, I guess. As Damon implies, more recent presidents seem to think "bully pulpit" means "I can bully people from this pulpit."
[UPDATE: That's the Wikipedia link for "Bully pulpit" above. On a whim, I looked at the corresponding entry at Elon's shiny new Grokipedia. It's very different! And I think it's much better, but you'll want to check that for yourself.]
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Speaking of bullies… The College Fix notes a local tyrant trying to make her fiefdom a First Amendment-free zone: Arizona university bans ‘DEI IS RACISM’ poster wording.
An Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University administrator has told conservative students that a poster they seek to hang to advertise their upcoming guest speaker cannot include the words “DEI is racism.”
“The following statements must be removed: DEI IS RACISM,” states an email from Molly Webb, the Student Engagement Advisor at the Arizona-based institution. The school also has a campus in Florida.
A copy of the email was published by Young America’s Foundation, as its Young Americans For Freedom Embry-Riddle chapter is slated to host Lt. Col. Allen West in early November.
That email is kind of a hoot. After demanding that the student group (Young Americans for Freedom) remove any hint of what Lt. Col. West will be talking about from, she signs off with
All the best,
Molly Webb (she/her)I don't really think Molly's offering her best.
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Proportional representation, for real. Two recent articles say we should try it. First up, Jack Santucci at City Journal says Republicans Should Consider Electoral Reform.
Earlier this month, Vice President J. D. Vance posted on X, “New England’s six states vote about 40 percent Republican and have literally zero Republican representatives in Congress.”
Vance is not the first to identify this problem. But a simple solution exists: elect the House of Representatives by proportional representation (PR). In a PR system, a party with 40 percent of the votes gets 40 percent of seats.
Conservatives have long been skeptical of PR, and of election reform more generally. But it’s a smart way to ensure that Republicans in blue states get their voices heard.
What would PR look like in New England? One approach is to combine the six states’ 21 districts into one district, with 21 seats. Then ask voters which party they like more: Democrats, Republicans, or any other party that might be on the ballot. Finally, allocate seats to parties in proportion to their vote shares. Since 40 percent of 21 is 8.4, Republicans would get about eight seats.
And over at the UnPopulist, Andy Craig takes a small break from that site's otherwise non-stop Trump-bashing and offers: Want to End the Gerrymandering Wars? Embrace Proportional Representation. After noting the flaws in the current system and how "reform" efforts fall short:
Proportional representation addresses these flaws at the root. Instead of slicing states into single-member districts, proportional representation uses larger, multi-member districts where seats are distributed according to vote share. If Democrats win 45% of the vote in Texas, they earn about 45% of Texas’s seats. If Republicans win a third of the vote in California, they secure about a third of California’s delegation.
The effect is immediate: the shape of the map no longer determines the outcome. Gerrymandering becomes pointless, because the competition is no longer just to get a plurality of the vote within a district. Instead, vote swings everywhere have the ability to flip seats in equal measure.
Both articles advocate voting for parties, not people. I'm not a fan.
I left the same comment at both sites:
I'd propose a slightly different proportional representation scheme: if a candidate for the House gets over some small share of the vote (like 1%), he or she is entitled to go to DC and cast that fractional vote in Congress. (Maybe also getting a corresponding fractional salary.)
For example, in my district (NH01) last year, Democrat Chris Pappas beat Republican Russell Prescott 54.00% to 45.93%. So if this scheme was in place, Pappas would get to cast 0.5400 of a vote in DC, Prescott 0.4593 of a vote.
So: voters get "represented" by the person they voted for. This would expand the House population, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
This would almost certainly change voting incentives, I think for the better. Notably, it would encourage voter participation in even lopsided Red or Blue districts. Third-party candidates and Independents would get a better shot. And I think it would make gerrymandering a thing of the past.
Yes, it's my very own crackpot scheme, first described here back in 2017.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
