Prelude to Politics (12) -- Spontaneous Order and Design & Freedom and Democracy -- An Emerging Thread of Arguments

Image credit. A grey and rainy April day, from morning to evening. The tea tastes even better than usual.

Continued from here.


Politics (7) - Politics (18):

(11):

• the fact that unconscious cognitive orientation is indispensable and ubiquitous in humans, forming the very basis on which our rational faculties are built, does not by itself already constitute a convincing argument in favour of laissez faire

• by exercising his critical faculty man constantly challenges given market constellations, including the basic rules and institutional features

• markets are shot though with political, legal, (self-)regulatory and commercially strategic aspects which are subject to restructuring all the time 

• it is wrong to juxtapose spontaneous order and rational action as if they were mutually exclusive - underestimating the impact of rational man on the overall order

• under conditions of freedom man's competitive urge to change the status quo is even encouraged

• markets are no exception to the many other areas in which human experimentation takes place and ought to be allowed 

• the right to question, challenge and change prevalent conditions should be defended with regard to market structures no less than in the case of other fields where people's visions, values and, aims compete

• market structure is constantly subject to competitive efforts at change, not only in terms of production and product but also in term of basic or decisive rules underling it   

• it is a fundamental misrepresentation of the market process to conceptualise it as the opposite of politics

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• distrust of democracy is a staple in liberal thought 

• it is clearly rooted in the metaphysics of spontaneous order and the prejudice that human discretion is apt to violate natural regularities

• caught in such preconception, it does not occur to Hayek that political "markets" may be no less liable to evolutionary improvement than economic markets.

• concerning politics, Hayek's liberal presumption against human discretion trumps his predilection for the miraculous powers of spontaneous order 

• it is awkward that the champion of personal liberty puts more trust in human obedience to iron laws than in man's talent by judicious experimentation and design to make the world a more resourceful place for the human race

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• practises characteristic of the rule of law, personal and economic freedom are protected by a subset and intersecting set of rights equally requisite to maintain democracy 

• in order to keep democracy alive one mustn’t undermine these common rights 

• though democracy may be popular because it opens up options to act in ways that can be directed against freedom, still continued effectiveness of democracy is wedded to the need to respect rights that lend a certain robustness to freedom, too

• in fact, freedom implies democracy, and cannot be maintained in the long run without democratic structures

Continued here.