F. A. Hayek's Analysis

To give credence to any argument, an author must impose a feeling of justice for the greater society upon the audience, or else be taken to account for the various pitfalls of their stance. Since we live in society largely based on a market model, the determination of how individuals come in act in systems of production, distribution, and exchange become subject to evaluations of justice. Many an argument is made in a vacuum of idealism where an author fails to realize the entirety of the scope of their given beliefs. Deciding the means in which an entire system of material interdependence is either composed or dispersed is by no means a short order. In trying his best to determine the preeminent arrangement for such a system, F.A. Hayek makes …show more content…
Hayek, we must address the values and organizing factors that create the context in which a theory of idealist liberalism will exist. The general organization of the western societies is one of a class-based system. This is a system, as described by Thorstein Veblen, in which “the upper classes are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations” and further that, “[…] this exemption is the economic expression of their superior rank,” (1). In contrast to the upper, or as Veblen calls them, the leisure class; the “inferior class” is left to attain the basics of everyday livelihood through the means of manual labor and industry (2). As explained by Veblen, this distinction between classes has been one of historic development in which an invidious comparison has grown and evolved to draw a strict line between members of the upper and lower classes (16). As actors in the polis are drawn apart, their interactions then begin to take on an exploitive character in which those that guide industry seek to exploit those that man industry. The showing of dominance in this act of guiding is given a level of envied esteem in the modern culture (12-14). According to Veblen the validity of such esteem is based in the early process of ownership in which man came to take dominion over women (22), about which he said that, “from the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their …show more content…
The leisure class is largely divided from society as a whole. This class has become conservative by nature (198). And conservatives do not seek progress, the progress that is believed to be so imperative to Hayek. Instead, in regards to social change and evolution, the leisure class seeks to, “retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent,” (198). It is important to realize that this class came to be under the guides of the current economic system, and does not seek to halt any of the material and political advantages that allowed them to gain a status of leisure. According to Veblen, “the wealthy class opposes innovation because it has a vested interest […] in maintaining the present conditions,” (199). The values that hold for a conservative class of people lie in the past with what allowed them to gain the status and the wealth that they came to possess. In the wake of the industrial revolution it is important to understand that, “as the industrial development goes on and property becomes massed in relatively fewer hands, the conventional standard of wealth of the upper class rises,” (55). Such wealth, in both accounts and property, is not easily relinquished by the upper class. So in a sense, this pension to emulate those of the leisure class does not seek to adequately address the detriment this system causes, and furthers the