The pretence of knowledge

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.

The full text is here. It is basically a warning to politicians to be humble and to realise what they don’t know about what they are about to do before unleashing their plans on civilisation. Hayek called this ‘men's fatal striving to control society,’ a phrase that has an eerie echo in light of the pink batt fiasco.

Greg Lindsay is the Executive Director at the Centre.