 Well, I'm very happy to be to be here this splendid meeting and have the opportunity of speaking about Hayek Hayek was of course one of the leading lights of the free market oriented and freedom oriented philosophy in our time and it's very fitting that an Organization Meeting such as this devote some time to commemorate him For I begin One little Comment on the Terminological aspect about liberals and libertarians and whether Hayek Would have been a libertarian Hayek had great difficulty in defining himself The word liberal in Europe means what I think more or less what the word libertarian Means in the United States in the United States the word liberal was appropriated by the left So that creates a great confusion The Also in Europe and in countries in in the part of Latin America where I come from The word libertarian is means anarchist so that creates another problem Hayek ended by defining himself as an old wick Which is arcane to most people, but he had great difficulty in defining himself He was not far away from people who call call call themselves Libertarians Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna on The 8th of May 1899 He came from a middle-class family His father a doctor practiced as the civil servant Both doctor and mrs. Hayek Were from Roman Catholic Catholic origin, but they they were not practicing and Friedrich was Raised as an Agnostic and remained so all his life but As I will be able to as I will mention later. He came to Attach great importance to religion for the maintenance of liberty as a transmitter of ethical ethical traditions When Friedrich Hayek was finishing his secondary school the first world war broke out and He was conscripted into the austra-hungarian army and Served in the Italian front That of course was it was lucky that he didn't Have to go to the horrible butchery of the western front in fact We know little about his soldiering days except One of the few things we do know is that Accumulated in arms Lent him a couple of books on economics at the front during a lull at the piave and This sealed is a professional future On on returning from the war he went to college He went to the University of Vienna Where he studied economics at the law school because following the French tradition the austra-hungarian taught economics at the law school and He he found the The atmosphere of the law school the university in general very stimulating intellectually He he was encouraged to follow many courses. He took courses in in Greek drama and history of art and He he did very well at the university better than he had at secondary school and in 1921 he got his master's degree and in 23 his PhD And then something very important happened he under very adventurous circumstances went to the United States on his own decision he was banking at the promise of Professor in Columbia University To the effect that he would employ him as a research assistant So he could afford to buy just a one-way passage and Had $20 in his pocket when he arrived And to his horror He found out that Jenks Isiah Jenks was the American professor was on holiday and Unreachable and Then he was confronted with the very black prospects he He had very good English not enough to get a decent job and he was about to Accept a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant in 6th Avenue When finally Jenks arrived and rescued him and he employed him for six months As a research assistant and then obtained a modest scholarship for him That lasted another nine months. So these 15 months in an Anglo-Saxon atmosphere giving perfect command of English and knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon academic life and world Which were extremely important? Subsequently in his life back in Vienna he Was employed by a commission that was had something to do with the enforcement of the peace treaty in in which Von Mises was a director as a representative of the Chamber of Commerce and He began writing He started his book a prices and production Which is the only book that the Nobel Committee quoted on awarding him the price Nobel in 1974 and then he wrote a number of articles for journals for economic journals a Number of them on the subject of The theory of consumption of under consumption rather which was very much in the in the air given the depression the 1922 23 Recession and Just by chance again he Hayek Wrote I mean an article by Hayek Attracted the attention of An English Economist Robbins Lord Robbins as he later was and Another coincidence was that Robbins was the only English economist who understood German and he was attracted at Hayek's articles because he thought he would be a suitable Debater to oppose Keynes So he had him invited to give four lectures at the London School of Economics or LSE and These he did go he had just married and with his wife and They were great great success and So they invited him to teach as a visiting professor in 1931 32 and This was also very successful and So they they offered him a permanent chair So he he Establishes residents in England. He found himself perfectly at home in England of course this wouldn't have happened if he hadn't had the level of English that he had acquired in the United States and he's Immersion in the Anglo-Saxon culture that was extremely important. I he he acquired English nationality and Which he kept until until his death I think that There is a lot very frequent mentions of the Austrian school as an influence on Hayek. I it's true of the famous Trilogy Veena visa and Berm bar work He was the student of Veena and He also Was very influenced by by book by by by visa but Actually, actually, I think if I were to say What the great influences would weren't him? I would think of English writers such as Adam Smith and Burke So he sat down in in England and He debated with Keynes He was a young man at the time in his early 30s But all of a sudden he became a very famous economist because Keynes of course was prominent in Foremost in in fame in in England at the time and The debate Against him were a couple of very famous English economists and he he was added to them So he more or less Acquired the same level of prestige and was very very I mean he had tremendous tremendous good name He strongly criticized Keynes's Treaties on money and Eventually got Keynes to admit that he was wrong over his theory of capital and interest So Hayek said well this man is finished after this admission When he when Keynes published the general theory of money Employment interest and money Hayek strangely did not write about it later on he said he had given Keynes up as as as debunked and and But he admitted it had been an error of his that he should have commented But actually at the time he was Immersed in a in a debate With longer other and other Marxist economies on whether the System of central planning was viable As you probably know Mises and he held the view that the central planning would not be viable That central planning Implied missing a tremendous amount of knowledge that can only be Diffused accumulated and diffused by the market and of course about half a century later the verdict of of history Was returned with tremendous clarity. They were right and and and and Lange and company were wrong then In world when World War two broke out the LSE moved to Cambridge he went to Cambridge and and loved it and there He began writing the book that would give him international fame um Which is the road the road to surf them the road to surf them appeared in 1944 it was published simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic and It was a roaring success from the word go it was translated into many languages the readers digest Ran an abridgement of it and that that was a bestseller and The editors arranged a lecture lecture tour in the United States which was very very successful Just but not free from strong attacks from the left those of you who can read confined Hayek on Hayek, which is a book of interviews on Hayek, which I highly recommend we'll see the Viciousness with which he was attacked at the time by a few people who Would be called liberals Of course Hayek called himself a liberal in a different a totally different sense the the book is Generally given credit for having Contribute it to stemming the totalitarian way that seemed Was going to Inundate the Western world with together with other books that in in in in their general inspiration were akin like 1984 by George Orwell and Darkness at noon by Arthur Kirstam 1944 was a very important year in Hayek's work because apart from publishing A road to surfdom he did another very important thing He gave a lecture in Cambridge In which he announced that he proposed to found a society of Classical liberals To promote the exchange of ideas to Overcome the isolation in which many of them were in their own countries and This was 1944 Europe was impoverished by by the war and Europeans alike and So he had great difficulty and only in 1947 did he succeed in bringing 39 outstanding intellectuals of Similar philosophy to the mountain village of more Pelerin near Geneva And near the lake of Geneva venia of the day and They were 39 17 from the United States eight from Great Britain four from Switzerland four from France and One from each of Italy, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Belgium and Sweden Popper who was Mentioned today several times by by the president of this country and And Mises were there Friedman and Stiegler both very young men were there the French Maurice Alley and Bertrand de Juvenel Rebke and Oiken to Germans robins and dukes to Englishmen all very famous of these 39 people Four became eventually Nobel laureates when when Hayek announced the formation with society his Purpose of founding such a society he suggested the name of the Acton-tocqueville society mentioning to historians not to economists of to European liberals in the classical sense again and But this this was turned down This was turned out and they couldn't agree on any name So one said why not call it after the place where we are Holding this meeting so they called it the Mopera society only because they were at Mopera the Mopera society has just Turned its 50th anniversary Is a Very special kind of society It doesn't have any any premises any staff And it shuns contact with the press doesn't publish anything Of course members Or guests who present papers are free to publish them and they often have The site itself does very little of that the purpose is Not to Publicize Free market it's just to allow People of a like mind as as as the original purpose Decoration of purposes says of like mind to exchange ideas to gather strength for the debate that occurs outside He Hayek was elected and reelected president several times and eventually he was named a life life president Honorary president for life After the war Hayek's work had Great unity he became less interested in Economic theory particularly in the technical aspects and much more in in Political philosophy in 1950 he left the London School of Economics for Chicago But not as an economist but as a political philosopher that he had in fact become in The University of Chicago he wrote one of his monumental works One was the Constitution of Liberty that I mentioned No, this was the Constitution of Liberty that he wrote well while in Chicago and several tracks on on monetary aspects such as one that is very well known About the denationalization of money choice in currency it's called published by the IEA At the age of 70 he retired from from Chicago and Accepted a chair in the University of Freiburg in Germany There he he wrote another monumental work law legislation and liberty Notice the word law legislation and the difference that he was drawing between the two As well as his his last book the fatal conceit Which is a worthy brooch to his system Which finally I would like to summarize in in the little time that I have left freedom social life in the greatest in the great society that is a society of the modern type by contrast with the tribes or extent or bands or extended families of primitive societies imply the interaction of Many individuals a great many individuals millions of individuals how? can freedom How is freedom compatible with order? To many people There is no possibility that Order can exist without a central direction This is really the I think the main problem that Hayek addressed To some people freedom means that the political coordination of all these great many people is done democratically every every Man or woman of age and sound mind can vote But this is not what Hayek meant by freedom far from it. He was aware that the tyranny of Majorities is has played a tremendous role in history So he concentrated in the con on the concept of spontaneous orders Adam Smith had spoken about the the invisible hand He was tremendously misunderstood by many people particularly about theologians who thought that he was referring to Providence by no means he he was just Trying to symbolize The working of spontaneous order the economy works without a direction Provided the There are rules of just conduct that are enforced and That must be followed by by by everybody You would you don't you don't need anyone to say to say this I'm this good is becoming scarce economize on it prices will tell that the reverse Boost your consumption of this other good because lower prices would be would be telling that so He made a study of the spontaneous orders this I think is a great contribution of Hayek's to finish let me say that A very interesting aspect of Hayek is his insistence that freedom will work Under certain cultural constraints Under certain on a certain cultural ground Not all Cultural grounds are propitious. In fact It should be visible that free societies are something very new If they have been Reached and Civilization is is an phenomenon that is six thousand years old. He said that the foundations of the presuppositions on which which must exist for a Market economy to evolve Are of ethical nature That without Honesty disposition to hard work And and a number of virtues that include several virtues related to the family the Market economy could not could not function In that in this in this sense in the sense that he He associates the free system of freedom With culture with history with traditions He is a special Kind of liberal. There are others Who believe that? Any society that all men partake of the same rationality Therefore, if you have a system that will enforce Contracts and protect property and a small government. They will they will work Hayek is concerned about moral aspects that for instance at present constitute a threat To the Western civilization. He does not take civilization for granted The two the two kinds of Libertarians or liberals, whatever you want to call them are compatible most of the time they agree but When we look at Our society to the future and Come to wonder whether our System will flourish or deteriorate then I think the the guide of Hayek is is of prime importance Now I'm prepared to answer any questions that you I'm trying to answer any questions that you may have