Javier Milei’s Gift for Pope Leo

‘Man is not born wise, rational and good, but has to be taught to become so.’—Hayek

By Andy Kessler. Excerpts:

"Hayek’s fatal conceit is that “man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes.” It’s a hearty defense of free markets—of classical liberalism. My colleague Matthew Hennessey got taken to task by the vice president for defending free markets." 

"markets are about price discovery. Wealth creation “is determined not by objective physical facts known to any one mind but by the separate, differing, information of millions, which is precipitated in prices that serve to guide further decisions.”" 

" By buying and selling in free markets to determine prices, you and I, and “millions who are connected only by signals resulting from long and infinitely ramified chains of trade,” drive the economy. We do it better than the . . . intelligentsia."

"“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”"

"“To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it might seem absurd” that order and economic growth “can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions.” Hayek notes the fallacy because “decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”"

"It isn’t that markets are anti-intelligence, it’s that they are best when run on their own, without interference, collecting all our price decisions."

"Did central planners tell engineers to invent microprocessors? No. Internet browsers? Netflix? GLP-1 drugs? Large language models? A thousand times no."

"human interactions governed by our morals make possible the growth of reason."