ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that several of the tools, concepts, and arguments of the modern Austrian School of economics are potentially pertinent to the development of this research program. It shows that the problem of policymaker ignorance is logically prior to the problem that has traditionally, but erroneously, been thought of as the primary problem of politics, namely the problem of policy-maker incentives. The book introduces the central concept of Hayekian political epistemology, that of an epistemic burden, i.e., the nature and extent of the ignorance that an actor in a particular context must overcome in order to use some means to deliberately realize some end. The historical development of the Austrians’ criticisms of central planning and other forms of economic policy intervention exhibited a gradual generalizing over time of the contexts and policy goals to which political-epistemological reasoning was applied.
