ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical development of the Austrians’ political-epistemological approach. Ludwig von Mises’ socialist calculation argument does little more than draw out the implications for the effectiveness of central planning of the central planners’ impoverished epistemic circumstances: without private property in the factors of production, there would be no markets for these factors. Mises’ argument presupposed that the ends of central planning were those advanced by its defenders. Indeed, Mises actually worried about a much humbler prerequisite to the realization of the socialists’ grander ambitions. Although much of his work was of epistemological significance, F. A. Hayek never wrote a comprehensive epistemological treatise. Hayek’s concern for the theory problem was also implicit in his well-known criticisms of Keynes’ Treatise on Money in the early 1930s. Hayek argued, in effect, that acquiring these latter data would constitute an epistemic burden that could not be overcome by any human policymaker, and not merely because of the extent of the data required.
