friedrich hayek the constitution of liberty

In this paper, I address Gaus’ central arguments in NDT, and focus on what I argue to be the key epistemological distinction of his account-namely, the argument that the relevant diversity, which is conducive to political and moral learning and should therefore be protected by an institutional order, should not be defended or defined by reference to its performance with regards to discovery of true beliefs, but by reference to the independent epistemic value of protection of disagreeing, redundant and distant investigators. NDT argues that diversity and disagreement are fundamental to political and moral learning.

In this paper, I develop an epistemological argument for freedom from poverty, building on Gerald Gaus’ work on political and moral disagreement in New Diversity Theory (NDT). as support for my theory, I conclude that Troesken’s alleged tradeoff ought to be met with greater skepticism. Using events from the history of public health in the U.S. Irreversible and self-reinforcing growth in political institutions established to enhance health can have an unintended negative impact on health during future crises, where political agents must operate in a more cumbersome and error-prone institutional environment. These policies, once implemented, are difficult to reverse due to the path dependent nature of political institutions. Contra Troesken, I argue that decision-makers, amidst a crisis of contagion, neglect intertemporal tradeoffs, thereby discounting long run costs while favoring short run policies. According to Troesken, individual freedom presents a danger to the public health in the face of infectious disease, while constitutional constraints restrict the government’s ability to implement effective policy. In The Pox of Liberty, Werner Troesken details the tradeoff between liberal institutions and communicable disease.

Friedrich hayek the constitution of liberty