Laurence S. Moss, 1944-2009

摘要

Larry Moss echoes Friedrich Hayek in considering the unintended and unexpected consequences of human action to be the central problem of social science. I would agree that it is a, though not the, central problem. It is not mysterious, as it sometimes seems said to be (as, for example, in the phrase, "magic of the market"). It is due to interaction and the aggregation of actions and of the results of interaction. From Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith to the present day, it has been considered both amenable to rational discussion and conducive to human well-being. Such a view has at least two problems. One arises because Hayek thought that nondeliberative collective decision making (to wit: the market) yields results superior to those generated by deliberative collective decision making. The other is that no guarantee exists that any of these results is necessarily conducive to human well-being. I think that, analytically, this view of Hayek's principle goes very far in explaining the differences of opinion that pervade the issues discussed by Larry Moss and Warren Samuels. Larry is in good company.