The Fatal Conceit

Subtitled: The Errors of Socialism
This is a book written by Frederick August Hayek, published in 1988.
Hayek, who passed on 1992, is considered a preeminent economist of libertarian thought. FA Hayek was co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974 and was recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991. The professor taught at the Universities of London, Chicago, and Freiburg. The economist's models help form policies during the administration's of Reagan Margaret Thatcher.
A difficult read in the sense that some chapters were very academic in their construction. There was a great deal for the average person to glean.
The book begins with the tracing of progressive-liberal-socialist construct, flowing from the writing so Aristotle. Hayek says that Aristotle thought of the world as essentially static and did not understand the by-products of specialization and population concentrations. Aristotle held the hunter gatherer model of man in the highest esteem and sought a path to recover that innocence. Hayek then goes on to show that agriculture, population concentration and specialization are what develop wealth. Later in the 19th century, Hume, Bismark and other socialists began to equate the new evolution theories to social economic development, these took on the persona of the scientists that espoused them. The belief that economic evolution can be explained by scientific means. What Hayek shows is that economic rules and morals are created within society by millions of separate exchanges all of which are driven by individual purpose but few unifying community interests. Such rules, such as thou shall not steal cannot be scientifically derived, in fact on the hunter-gatherer mode, such as the Spartans, stealing is considered a skill.
If I may condense, Hayek says that economies are always changing, changing by the perceived efficiencies of those doing the trading.  The presumption that governments can control a self-correcting process is naive.
And, that the right to own property (serveral property) is the motivating force behind specialization and wealth building.
Some of my favorite quotations from the book are:

There cannot be any entitlement to be exempted from the rules on which civilisation rests.  We may be able to asses the weak and disabled, the very young and old, but only if the sane and adult submit to the impersonal dicipline which gives us the means to do so.

and

than the rationalist delusion that man, by exercising his intelligence, invented morals that gave him the powerto achieve more than he could ever foresee.

and

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family.

I liked the book a great dea.

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