Re: Even more equilibrium, stasis and death

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In his early work, Hayek had been concerned with technolog, production theory
and prices of production. During the 1940s, he shifted his attention to a
subjective concern with individual behavior. According to Juan Martinez-Alier
(<Ecological Economics> 1987), one of his critics at LSE was the
biologist Lancelot Hogben who argued that economists neglected the ecological
relations of mankind and did not truly study the relationship between human
needs and resources since they lacked both a theory of needs and scientific and
technological knowledge. Hayek writes that the scientific advance of economics
depended on subjective approach and that neither commodities, nor money, nor
food should be defined in physical terms but rather in terms of opinions. Juan
notes that biologists would find it perplexing that food should not be defined
in food in physical and chemical terms. One can infer from this that Hayek
ceased to be concerned in any meaningful way with a realistic treatment of
technology and resources. Perhaps this sheds some light on why reading Hayek
has not prepared the East Europeans and ex-Soviets with any realistic sense of
the physical (and institutional) requirements of developing a market economy.
Its supposed to organize itself.
Paul Christensen
Hofstra University
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