The 20th century proved that Friedrich A. Hayek was right: socialism doesn’t work; government control of money results in inflation and business cycles; and collectivism breeds war, totalitarianism, and impoverishment.
Thanks to a generous donor, our next 100,000 book giveaway is a new collection of essays Hayek for the 21st Century: Essays in Political Economy. As with Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson and Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money?, we plan to give this new book away for free to anyone and everyone.
This book is a primer for the layperson, introducing a new generation of readers to Hayek’s writings and hopefully avoiding the 20th century’s mistakes in the 21st century.
Every one of the seven chapters in this book is directly applicable to understanding today’s economic and political climates. Hayek foreshadowed the advent of the internet, cell phones, the digital revolution, and even cryptocurrencies before they became available and mass-produced.
Hayek explains that central planners lack the decentralized knowledge required to arrange production in a consumer-satisfying way. Without markets, how do the producers or the consumers know what things really cost? The collapse of socialist experiments like Maoist China and the USSR was no surprise to Hayek.
Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on business cycle theory, developing it from his mentor, Ludwig von Mises. Hayek suggests a path away from government control of money. In Hayek’s words, “Why should we not let people choose freely what money they want to use?” Hayek saw the government’s exclusive control over money as a “dangerous monopoly.” You can see why cryptocurrency advocates are big fans of Hayek.
Avoiding the disastrous mistakes of the 20th century hinges on enough people understanding the benefits of free markets, limited government, and individualism. It requires bold “intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal,” as Hayek wrote in “The Intellectuals and Socialism.”
Help us give away 100,000 copies of Hayek for the 21st Century. Everyone interested in understanding the roots of the ideas that shape our culture and economic landscape today should read this collection and pass it along to friends, family members, colleagues, book clubs, students, teachers, businesspeople, professionals, libraries, classrooms, and others.
That’s why the Mises Institute, whose mission is to promote the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, is eager to get this book into the hands of as many people as possible. We want everyone to read this book.
There is no expiration date on good ideas.