Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Liberty Quote Of The Day: Frederich Hayek

Amongst the collection of brilliant attendees of Mises's weekly seminars back in Vienna, Frederich Hayek would distinguish himself as first amongst equals when he later won a Nobel Prize for building on Mises's groundbreaking work in developing an understanding of the impact of credit creation in business cycles.

Hayek was a proponent of liberty and understood that the government could not solve man's inherent problems (they are inherent) and that in its efforts to do good, it would generally have a multiplier of negative unintended consequences. This is Hayek's second Liberty Quote of the Day.

"What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves."
- Frederich August Hayek - The Road to Serfdom: 1944