The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Book 1)

by Friedrich A. Hayek

The role played by governments is greatly exaggerated in historical accounts because we necessarily know so much more about what organised government did than about what the spontaneous coordination of individual efforts accomplished. This deception, which stems from the nature of those things preserved, such as documents and monuments, is exemplified by the story (which I hope is apocryphal) about the archaeologist who concluded from the fact that the earliest reports of particular prices were inscribed on a stone pillar that prices had always been set by governments. Yet this is hardly worse than finding, in a well-known work, the argument that, since no suitable open spaces were found in the excavation of Babylonian cities, no regular markets could as yet have existed there – as if in a hot climate such markets would have been held in the open!