PP247 Chapter Notes - Chapter 4-4: Friedrich Hayek, George Gilder, Parvenu
Document Summary
Libertarians praise the market because it produced material benefits and enhanced human freedom but deny markets have anything to do with morality. Friedrich hayek (liberalism) - in a free society it is neither desirable nor practicable that material rewards should be made generally to correspond to what men recognize as merit . Not practicable because no one can supply a non-arbitrary definition of merit (or justice); it is not desirable because any attempt to impose such a definition would create despotism (exercise of absolute power) Fear people would not support any economic order in which the will to success and privilege was severed from its moral moorings . As capitalism replaced feudal stagnation with material success, it replaced tradition with materialism; as privation was supplanted by abundance, prudence was displaced by prodigality. Capitalism created both a parvenu class of rich plutocrats and corporate climbers and a counterculture of critical intellectuals and disaffected youth.
