“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”- Friedrich Hayek
Imagining one can design a better economic system than the free market is what Hayek more broadly referred to as “the fatal conceit,” the title of his 1988 book.
I thought of this today while ruminating on wealth taxes and the reasoning of those who suport them. Proponents of such a tax seek to take money away, but they don't think clearly about to whom that money will be entrusted: the fatally conceited.
