The Hayek Interviews

Here's a series of very long and detailed video interviews with Friedrich Hayek conducted by various academics (most notably the Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, one of the co-founders of public choice economics). Aside from the usual topics in economics and political philosophy of which Hayek is known for, some of the interviews explore his relationships with teachers and contemporaries. There is even an fun segment in James Buchanan's interview about Hayek's cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein. So these interviews could be of use to those with an interest in intellectual history.

Each interview has a clickable table of contents, so you can skip all the boring stuff, like the socialism calculation debate and economic methodology.

Great stuff. I added it to his author page too. Bork and Hayek? Very interesting.

>For everyone who thought this was a topic about an interview with Selma
Hayek {like I did} click on this you tube video of her dance in the movie From Dusk to
Dawn. A couple of cuss words and a bikini involved when Selma has a
drink with Quentin Tarantino. If this is too off topic flame me
& I will delete it. ;-)

No, it's directly related. All hail those personal freedoms that Bork is so dismissive of!

It's worth raising the question—are economic freedoms the big guarantee of freedom, or are personal freedoms also important? Something tells me that, if, as Hayek feared, western democracies moved to nationalize key industries today--film, say, or the technology industry--a Borkian "passion" for such freedoms go a long way to stop it.

Incidentally, that was a terrible movie. Rodriguez's first movie, El Mariachi, was far better. The absurdly low-budget film was paid for by the director enrolling himself if a series of medical trials. Who says the US healthcare system gets it all wrong?

It's worth raising the question—are economic freedoms the big guarantee of freedom, or are personal freedoms also important? Something tells me that, if, as Hayek feared, western democracies moved to nationalize key industries today--film, say, or the technology industry--a Borkian "passion" for such freedoms go a long way to stop it.

Could you explain this a little more? Do personal freedoms guarantee economic freedoms, too?

Most of the literature I've read seems to indicate the opposite. Though a lot of that literature comes from conservative think tanks.

There's a fellow discussing this question here, with some statistics on diverse countries even. Clear cut the conclusions are not: www.be.wvu.edu/divecon/econ/douglas/seminar/LawsonHayek.pdf

I think it's not so easy to distinguish between personal freedoms and economic freedoms. Is smoking a personal freedom or an economic one? I guess it's an economic issue if it's exorbitantly taxed, but it's also an issue of a lifestyle choice (which lefties claim to favor). What about abortion? If a woman "owns" her body, that's sounds like it comes down to an economic choice relating to property usage (which righties claim to favor).

Perhaps all lifestyle choices are really property choices in which the property in question is the self.

Salma Hayek is America's greatest living intellectual. She single handedly synthesized Schutzian phenomenology with Marxian conflict theory to provide an account of how individuals interact with social structure. Revolutionary work. The social sciences have never been the same since.

Thanks for posting these interviews. It is a slow process to view them. The Salma Hayek video was quicker. Thanks also for posting that. I watched it first.

I like the part where Hayek pours beer down his leg into Bork's mouth.

Please, Tim. It's still morning here in Alaska.

#9 Tee Hee, funny post

I glanced through some of the commentary of some of the links & was wondering if anyone touched on entrepreneurship {an economic freedom?} and how that is effected by governments or policy? I would think the old soviet style government would lose the benefits of independent facile inventiveness of entrepreneurs as does some slow moving very large corporations. Funding sources would be an important issue I gather.

Maybe it is as a result of slanted news coverage but China seems to avoid this pitfall {of stifled creativity} by quickly implementing any world wide technological advances, which is a technology of its own. I have seen this type of discussion elsewhere but it seemed to bog down in partisan politics.