More Fatal Conceits

In The Fatal Conceit (1988), F.A. Hayek argued that cultural evolution has bequeathed to us a capitalist “extended order” of money, property rights, and competitive markets, all with matching morals, and that socialism is bad because it appeals instead to dysfunctional moral instincts that this order had suppressed, while flattering us into thinking that we can apply reason well to more things than we actually can. Socialism replaces many capitalist choices with choices from deliberate “rational” bureaucratic government agencies. Capitalism, in contrast, typically makes use of more info than can our reason, and was also designed using more info.

Hayek, however, seems fine with using reason to choose within big firms, and he admits that cultural evolution (a) has often induced simpler societies to prevent such capitalism, (b) has often induced governments to greatly hinder capitalism in their later civilization periods, and (c) seems a proximate cause of the recent rise of interest in socialism. So why not estimate that the levels of capitalism and reason use that we seem to be drifting toward are in fact the most adaptive? Why see all that as a mistake?

Hayek seems to actually rely here not on cultural evolution, but instead on his theoretical economic analysis, together with empirical correlations between capitalism and places and periods that have had especially large wealth and growth. Which allows him to conclude that allowing cultural evolution to push us far enough away from capitalism now would plausibly result in the fall of our civilization, causing many deaths and much suffering. Which would be bad more because suffering is bad, and less because cultural evolution would go awry.

Behind Hayek’s argument there, however, seems to be a judgment that our modern world looks especially vulnerable to appeals to deeply embedded ancient moral instincts, and to flattery about our abilities to reason. However, as he never says this explicitly, Hayek never offers arguments for why we should expect to be more vulnerable to such things now.

This is where I offer cultural drift analysis as a complement to Hayek’s story. At the level of cultural features that we can only vary effectively in large groups, over the last few centuries our civilization has drifted toward less variety, weaker selection pressures, and faster rates of change of culture and environments. All of which does plausibly make us more vulnerable to flattery and simplistic moral appeals undermining our commitments to morals supporting capitalism.

However, such analysis also predicts that these same forces make us vulnerable to many more fatal conceits, i.e., to decay in many other key features of our shared culture. Does Hayek also fear and warn against excess trust in reason and moral instincts there? Is it feasible for us to reason well enough to usefully overturn other non-capitalist morals that we have inherited from cultural evolution? Hayek said:

Rebellion against private property and the family was, in short, not restricted to socialists. … Limits of space as well as insufficient competence forbid me to deal in this book with the second of the traditional objects of atavistic reaction that I have just mentioned: the family. I ought however at least to mention that I believe that new factual knowledge has in some measure deprived traditional rules of sexual morality of some of their foundation, and that it seems likely that in this area substantial changes are bound to occur. (p.51) …

Nor do I dispute that reason may, although with caution and in humility, and in a piecemeal way, be directed to the examination, criticism and rejection of traditional institutions and moral principles. … I wish neither to deny reason the power to improve norms and institutions nor even to insist that it is incapable of recasting the whole of our moral system in the direction now commonly conceived as `social justice’. We can do so, however, only by probing every part of a system of morals. (p.8)

So Hayek is relatively open to rationality overturning traditional morals in one big area of life, and is in principle open in many other areas. So let me say this clearly: our usual styles of rational analysis deployed over the last few centuries seem to have been quite inadequate to the task of changing morals while preserving or enhancing their cultural adaptability. Maybe we could up our game, but that does look quite hard.