Hayek in Hermosa

I am currently in LA; Hermosa Beach to be exact (which is, of course always a virtue (being exact, that is, not being in Hermosa Beach)). 

And to answer the questions I am often asked:  yes, I do miss California.  My hotel room wasn't ready for three hours after I arrived, so I had to wander down the beach for some time.  It was quiet (school is still in session I guess).  It felt like being home. 

But, I am not here to stroll down beaches--this is actually a business trip.  Or a "faculty junket" as Dan calls such things.  The Liberty Fund has brought me out here for a week-long conference on Hayek; I had to read an endless amount of Hayek, and I will spend the next week talking about him with 15 or so other people.

And, as a public service, here is a review of Hayek for everyone, so that when you decide to read him yourself, you will know where to start.  I do not recommend reading a lot of Hayek in a month-long burst--he gets a little repetitive when you read too much all at once.  So, think of this as a lifetime reading plan.  (Yes, I know that nobody is actually planning to read Hayek as a lifetime reading plan (well, except maybe Lily, this seems like the kind of thing she might do (of course, she doesn't know she will do this, and the very idea of doing it would cause her to exclaim that there is no way she would do it, but when she gets a little older, she will discover Hayek and become a Huge Fan (first, Sarah Palin (about whom she is already enamored), then Hayek--it is a natural progression (one hopes)))).)

And so the reading notes:

1. The Road to Serfdom
Start here; this book was actually a best-seller when it was first published; Reader's Digest published a condensed version.  It came out right after WWII and warned of creeping socialism.  It is also quite persuasive on the fact that the Nazis and the Communists are really just two variants of the same thing.  With this book, you can see Hayek's main point--markets are better at organizing society because there is simply too much local information for one mind to know it all.  Thus, any attempt at planning will fail.  As can be witnessed by recent political events, Hayek was not terribly persuasive.  I think this is the 3rd time I have read this book--it is still good.

2. The Constitution of Liberty
A good second book, well worth reading.  Indeed, it should be more widely read as one of the most important works of political philosophy in the 20th century. A useful and interesting argument after one has read Locke.

3. Law, Legislation and Liberty
This is where the reading starts becoming for specialists only--the general reader will profit from the first two books.  This entry is actually three separate volumes--I am not sure why the publisher has not lumped the three separate books into one longer book yet.  It is Hayek's culminating summary of his life's work--not quite his magnum opus, because The Constitution of Liberty is much more important and better.

4. Individualism and Economic Order
This book is a collection of essays. "Economics and Knowledge" is a good single article summarizing Hayek's thought.  The reflections in the three part series "Socialist Calculation" are an interesting look at the socialists of the 1930s.  Obama would fit right in--and before anyone screams that Obama isn't a socialist, it would be good to actually read something like these articles from the 1930s describing what the socialists actually believe.

5. The Counter-Revolution of Science
Pure methodology; Hayek argues that the natural sciences have had a pernicious influence on economic thought.  This is where Hayek goes a bit off the rails; his general point is OK, but he is far too hard on modern economics.

We also read a slew of essays not collected in any given volume, but the above are better starting places than any of the extraneous essays.