Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 59 of F.A. Hayek’s penetrating October 6th, 1976, R.G. Mills Memorial Lecture (at the University of Sydney), titled “The Atavism of Social Justice,” as this lecture is reprinted in Hayek’s 1978 collection, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas:

It is a delusion to think of the individual in primitive society as free. There was no natural liberty for a social animal. Freedom is an artifact of civilisation. An individual person had in the group no recognised domain of independent action; even the head of the band could expect obedience, support and understanding of his signals only if they were for conventional activities. So long as each must serve that common order of rank for all needs, which present-day socialists dream of, there can be no free experimentation by the individual.