Friedrich August von Hayek
1899-1992 · Liberalism · Prominent
Hayek was an Austrian economist who settled in Britain and defended classical liberalism. Nobody designed the English language, or the common law, or the price of copper, and each one works. He called this spontaneous order, what grows out of human action without anyone planning it. No planner can gather the scattered, half-conscious knowledge held in millions of separate heads, so central planning fails.
Signature
The position Hayek is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Society
- leans Individualism
- Economy
- Market Capitalism
Positions on the 2 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Individualism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Polity
- strongly leans Liberalism (100 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
18 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Hayek refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Apatheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation / Embodied Perception
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Non-Utilitarian Consequentialism
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Market Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Custom
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Social Construction
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Common Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Socially Constructed
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?