Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty—a guarded retrospective

Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty is justly regarded as making a comprehensive case for the protection of individual liberty against excessive government intrusion. But even as its ends are correct, its analysis of key conceptions of equality, coercion and monopoly is incomplete because of Hayek’s refusal to adopt a consistent theoretical framework that accounts for the difference between formal and substantive forms of regulation, on the one hand, and why the refusal to deal is critical in competitive markets but subject to regulation in monopolistic ones. His deep skepticism about central planning rests upon an overbroad account of collective ignorance that unwisely understates the dangers of self-interest in collective deliberations. That weakness then leads him to exhibit an excessive skepticism toward written constitutions on both matters of structure and individual rights, which in turn leads him toward undue deference to economic regulation of the economy.