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NOTE Friedrich Hayek and American Science Fiction

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The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with Jeff Rigenbach.

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Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna on the eighth day of May 1899.

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When he graduated from the University of Vienna in 1921 at the age of 22,

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II, he applied for a job with the Austrian Office of Claims Accounts, the government

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agency charged with paying the nation's war debts, as those had recently been defined

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in the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the treaty that, for those who lived in Austria, ended

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World War I. Hayek had a letter of recommendation from a very high-ranking and influential professor

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of economics at the university, Friedrich von Wieser, and it seems to have been largely

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on the Strength of Wieser's Recommendation that Hayek was hired by his new boss, a 40-year-old

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named Ludwig von Mises.

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When Hayek came into Mises' employ, he had favored the democratic socialist politics

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of Wieser, his mentor at the university, but it didn't take too many days of daily exposure

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to Mises to set Hayek on the right track with regard to that.

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Mises taught Hayek a great deal and gave him the two great subjects of his early years

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as a Wunterkant economist, the socialist calculation problem, and what has come in years since

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to be called Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

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It has been said, and not without justice, that when Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics

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in 1974, he was being honored for his elaboration of Mises' Theory of the Business Cycle.

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Yet, questions of originality aside, it always seemed to be Hayek who attracted public attention,

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attracted it first, and attracted more of it.

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This began in the 1940s and continued right up to the time of Hayek's death, 19 years

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ago last week, on March 23, 1992.

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Mises published two short books in 1944, Bureaucracy and Omnipotent Government, while Hayek published

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Only One.

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But Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, was an international bestseller that set the stage

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for a sensationally successful U.S. lecture tour.

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Thirty years later, it was Hayek, not Mises, who won the Nobel Prize.

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And in the last decade, it has been Hayek, not Mises, who has begun to worm his way into

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American popular culture.

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This, despite the fact that his prose style can be, shall we say, formidable?

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I remember years ago, sometime back in the 80s, I think, reading a brief comment by the

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American science fiction writer Samuel R. Delaney.

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In this passage, Delaney said of some author or other that his prose was almost opaque

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with precision.

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Delaney wasn't writing about Hayek, but I recall looking up from the page and thinking,

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Hayek, the most recent and therefore currently the most noticeable instance of this unlikely

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The only penetration of American popular culture by Hayek is the Hayek vs. Keynes Wrap, which,

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with amazing accuracy, depicts the famous ongoing public debate during the 1930s between

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Hayek and John Maynard Keynes over the business cycle and government policy.

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If somehow you have managed not to see this small masterpiece yet, run Don't Walk to

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to YouTube, and search for the Hayek vs. Keynes rap.

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Meanwhile, let me tell you about a less well-known appearance Friedrich Hayek made in American

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popular culture in the last decade, one involving ideas of his that he definitely did not learn

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from Ludwig von Mises.

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It was in 2003 in a novel called Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

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Gibson is a South Carolina native, now in his early 60s, who fled to Canada to escape

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the Vietnam-era draft and has lived in Vancouver ever since.

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With the publication of his revolutionary novel Neuromancer in 1984, he became the

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resident wunderkind of American science fiction, a status I think he could be said to have

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gone on holding through the 1990s.

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Then in 2003 he published Pattern Recognition, the first realistic novel of international

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business that might be said to be informed by an Austrian perspective.

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Hayekians will instantly notice Gibson's title, of course, and will suspect some connection

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between his novel and one of their masters' most deservedly famous essays, The Theory

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of Complex Phenomena.

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They will be right to do so.

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The main character of pattern recognition is Case Pollard, a 32-year-old independent

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marketing consultant with a rare skill set to offer the advertising agencies and design

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firms that make up her clientele.

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She is, Gibson tells us, a sort of dowser in the world of global marketing, a person

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whose job is finding whatever the next thing might be.

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As she explains to a hopeful young designer of hats at one point in the novel, what I

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What I do is pattern recognition.

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I try to recognize a pattern before anyone else does.

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In this, of course, she is no different from anyone else in the marketplace.

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In this, she is only human.

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As Hayek notes in The Theory of Complex Phenomena, no matter how urgently we may want to find

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our way in what appears just chaotic, so long as we do not know what to look for, even the

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The most attentive and persistent observation of the bare facts is not likely to make them

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more intelligible.

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Until we have definite questions to ask, we cannot employ our intellect.

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And of course, questions will arise at first only after our senses have discerned some

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recurring pattern or order in the events.

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It is a recognition of some regularity or recurring pattern or order of some similar

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Hayek reminds us, this trait of our minds is not without its drawbacks.

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Marvelous as the intuitive capacity of our senses for pattern recognition is, he writes,

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it is still limited.

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For one thing, only certain kinds of regular arrangements, not necessarily the simplest,

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obtrude themselves on our senses, many of the patterns of nature we can discover only

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after they have been constructed by our mind.

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Another built-in limitation is the uncomfortable fact that there are problems so complex that

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no one mind can solve them, no matter how formidable its powers of pattern recognition.

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As Hayek noted in 1945 in The Use of Knowledge in Society, another of his justly celebrated

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essays, the peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined

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precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use

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never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of

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Incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.

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The economic problem of society is thus a problem of how to secure the best use of resources

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known to any of the members of society for ends whose relative importance only these

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individuals know.

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Or to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given

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and to anyone in its totality.

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No one mind can grasp the pattern of the entire economy all at once, if only because that

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pattern is constantly changing, constantly evolving.

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In another sense, then, as Hayek puts it, the economic problem of society is mainly

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one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place.

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For the continuous flow of goods and services is maintained by constant deliberate adjustments,

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by new dispositions made every day in the light of circumstances not known the day before,

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by B stepping in at once when A fails to deliver.

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And people who can recognize patterns before anyone else does can do very well for themselves

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in the Marketplace, by knowing before anyone else exactly what adjustments need to be made.

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One such person is the entrepreneur, whose recognition of a pattern no one else sees

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enables him to launch successful new enterprises.

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Another is the radio or television programmer, the theatrical or musical booking agent, the

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buyer for a retail store, the person whose recognition of a pattern few others yet see

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enables her to profitably anticipate changes in the public taste.

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Yet another is the professional marketer, someone like Case Pollard.

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As the action of pattern recognition begins, sometime in the early 21st century, Case has

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been flown to London by an advertising firm called Blue Ant to pass judgment on a proposed

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new corporate logo for one of the agency's largest clients.

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It is to such logos that case has a special sensitivity, or perhaps it might better be

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called a set of finely tuned receptors, or a set of special talents.

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Her talents, Gibson tells us, which her boss at Blue Ant calls her tame pathologies, had

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carried her along, and gradually she'd let them define the nature of what it was that

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she did.

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He'd thought of that as going with the flow, but maybe, she thinks now, it had really been

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the path of least resistance.

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But of course, going with the flow is following the path of least resistance.

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It's going where the flow is unimpeded.

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And this is precisely what is required of every participant in the world of business

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who seeks monetary success, to find one's niche, to find the place where one's natural

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One is reminded here of the character John Strapp in another science fiction story set

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in the world of business, Time is the Traitor, by Alfred Bester.

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Bester, an acknowledged influence on Gibson's writing, introduces Strapp in a manner that

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would have made Hayek's heart fond.

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There was a man named John Strapp, Bester wrote, the most valuable, the most powerful,

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the most legendary man in a world containing 700 planets and 1700 billion people.

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He was prized for one quality alone.

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He could make decisions.

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Note the capital D.

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He was one of the few men who could make major decisions in a world of incredible complexity,

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and his decisions were 87% correct.

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He sold his decisions for high prices.

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There would be an industry named, say, Bruxton Biotics, with plants on Deneb Alpha, Mizar

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3, Terra, and main offices on Alcor 4.

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Bruxton's gross income was 270 billion credits.

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The involutions of Bruxton's trade relations with consumers and competitors required the

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specialized services of 200 company economists, each an expert on one tiny facet of the vast

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overall picture.

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No one was big enough to coordinate the entire picture.

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Still, the day would come when Bruxton would need a major decision on policy.

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A research expert named E.T.A. Golland in the Deneb Laboratories had discovered a new

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catalyst for biotic synthesis.

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It was an embryological hormone that rendered nucleonic molecules as plastic as clay.

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The clay could be modeled and developed in any direction.

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Query, should Bruxton abandon the old culture methods and retool for this new technique?

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The decision involved an intricate ramification of interreacting factors, cost, saving, time,

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supply, demand, training, patents, patent legislation, court actions and so on.

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There was only one answer, ask Strapp.

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Bruxton does, Strapp decides, and in return, Bruxton had an 87% assurance that the decision

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was correct.

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Yet, as Aldous Fisher, Strapp's liaison man notes, he doesn't know how he does it.

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If he did, he'd be 100% right, instead of 87%.

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It's an unconscious process.

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Case has no way of knowing how she knows.

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Strapp doesn't know how he does it, nor is either of their situations unique.

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Alfred Bester reports in his introduction to a 1976 reprinting of Time is the Traitor,

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which was originally published in 1953, that he himself did his own work in the marketplace

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without understanding fully how he did it.

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I don't coolly block a story in progressive steps like an attorney preparing a brief for

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the Supreme Court, he wrote.

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I'm more like Zara Colburn, the American idiot savant who could perform mathematical

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Hayek would say, I believe, that this is merely one of millions of possible examples of a

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phenomenon he describes as the capacity to act according to rules which we may be able

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to Discover, but which we need not be able to state in order to obey them.

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This is taken from yet another justly celebrated Hayekian essay, Rules, Perception and Intelligibility.

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In Hayek's view, the most striking instance of the phenomenon is the ability of small

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children to use language in accordance with the rules of grammar and idiom of which they

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are wholly unaware.

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But the phenomenon is a very comprehensive one, and includes all that we call skills.

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Skills like judging corporate logos, making decisions, writing fiction, or, as Hayek notes,

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the skill of a craftsman or athlete, or a player at the billiards table.

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Skills are also, of course, what each of us has to sell in the marketplace.

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So far as I know, no one else has pointed out this Hayekian angle in Gibson's novel,

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but it's there, and with any luck, it may intrigue a few more people into picking up

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Hayek himself to see what all the fuss has been about.

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For anyone hoping to see continued growth of the libertarian tradition in the years

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to come, such an outcome is profoundly to be desired.

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This is Jeff Rigenback.