From Chapter 9, ‘Social’ or distributive justice, of his profound Law, Legislation, and Liberty:
“As primitive thinking usually does when first noticing some regular processes, the results of the spontaneous ordering of the market were interpreted as if some thinking being deliberately directed them, or as if the particular benefits or harm different persons derived from them were determined by deliberate acts of will, and could therefore be guided by moral rules. This conception of ‘social’ justice is thus a direct consequence of that anthropomorphism or personification by which naive thinking tries to account for all self-ordering processes. It is a sign of the immaturity of our minds that we have not yet outgrown these primitive concepts and still demand from an impersonal process which brings about a greater satisfaction of human desires than any deliberate human organization could achieve, that it conform to the moral precepts men have evolved for the guidance of their individual actions.”
I’ve noticed a strange tendency among those that scoff at adherents of an intelligent design theory of life and the universe simultaneously, and ironically, adhere to an identical theory in the economic realm, in the sense that the processes of the economy have been created by some single entity, and can be successfully controlled and directed by an all-powerful entity, almost always the government. 20th century communism proclaimed atheism, despite worshiping an all-powerful State and bestowing upon it unlimited power to interfere in the market, with hideous consequences.
