Thanks to the generosity of our donors, the Mises Institute has given away 100,000 copies of Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics in One Lesson and 100,000 copies of Murray Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money? Impressed by the success of our giveaways, the US Justice Charitable Foundation approached us with a generous offer to finance the publication and distribution of 100,000 copies of a collection of essays by Austrian School economist and Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek, whom Ludwig von Mises described as “one of the great economists” of all time. The vision of this book was to serve as a primer for the layperson, introducing a new generation of readers to Hayek’s writings.
The inspiration for the title of the book came from a February 7, 2000, article by John Cassidy in The New Yorker. Cassidy wrote that because of the profound influence of Hayek’s writings on socialism, markets, Keynesianism, business cycle theory, free market capitalism, decentralized knowledge in economic decision-making, and more, it was “hardly an exaggeration to refer to the twentieth century as the Hayek century.”
But great ideas have no expiration date; hence the title Hayek for the 21st Century.
Every one of the seven chapters in this book is directly applicable to understanding today’s economic and political worlds. Hayek foreshadowed the advent of the internet, cell phones, the digital revolution, and even cryptocurrencies decades before they became available and mass-produced.
Everyone interested in understanding the roots of the ideas that shape our culture and economic landscape today should read this collection and pass it along to friends, family members, colleagues, book clubs, and others.