Here are two of Hayek's greatest essays in one small and beautiful volume at a very low price. It is a perfect way to introduce yourself and others to this giant of the 20th century. The book begins with Hayek's most excellent essay on money. It is also his most radical. He plainly says that central banks cannot be reformed. There can never be sound money so long as they are in charge. He calls for their complete abolition, no compromises accepted. He wants the market in charge of money from top to bottom. His words predicting crisis followed by wild swings in valuation are up to the minute. He also relates the quality of money with the recurrence of crisis, showing an excellent application of Austrian theory. Hayek was deeply influenced by Mises, and this shows here in the area of money. The second essay is "The Pretense of Knowledge," his shocking Nobel speech that explained why the very idea of government in our times is unintellectual, presumptuous, and untenable. He is as critical of socialism as he is of interventionism. He shows that the state is not capable of doing all that it is charged with doing, and why conceding it any role in social and economic management is dangerous to liberty. It was not the speech everyone expected. But it lived up to Hayek's lifelong commitment to telling truth to power. This small book is really a first in the Hayekian literature: small form, powerful words, and by the great man himself. [Description taken from Mises.org]
Author
Friedrich August von Hayek CH was an Austrian and British economist and philosopher known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought. He is considered by some to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. Hayek's account of how changing prices communicate signals which enable individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics. Hayek also wrote on the topics of jurisprudence, neuroscience and the history of ideas. Hayek is one of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, and in 1974 shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with Gunnar Myrdal "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from president George H. W. Bush. Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, and became a British subject in 1938.
