Hayek and Orwell

To Hayek, less government intervention meant more economic freedom. But this opinion was more than ideological, it was practical. He believed that when people are free to choose, the economy runs more efficiently. Central planners could make technical decisions but not economic ones. Under "central planning, there was no economic calculation--no way to make a rational decision to put this resource here or buy that good there, because there was no price system to weigh the alternatives," he wrote.

More than an author, George Orwell was also an interesting political thinker who went through a number of evolutions. He hated religion--especially Catholicism--and moved from a socialist to something of an anarchist who trusted no government. (This opinion on Hayek gives a bit more credit to government.) Orwell responded to Hayek's writings on economies with both praise and criticism, stating, "in the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often – at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough – that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of." Yet he also warned, "[A] return to 'free' competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the state."

This, I think,  contains the basic conflict between Progressivism and the Hayek-conservative-de Tocqueville position: The irresponsible market versus the irresponsible government. But, again, it is more than a philosophical difference, it is practical. Hayak showed that manipulation of the economy, fueled too much by debt and not enough by productive income, sacrificed long term decisions for short term ones--the exact error we criticize single-quarter/bottom-line-obsessed companies for. 

So that the economic decisions of the future are sacrificed for the immediate and the future can do nothing but harvest those planted errors.