What Hayek is responding to is the impossibility of humans to be able to know what is the best use of the available means.
One person will not have all the logical relevant information.
If this problem is solved through a computer having all the information from the individuals, it will still not solve the problem because human knowledge is constantly evolving, and it's immediate. The computer will tell you what to do and it will limit your learning, it can't anticipate expectations or learning. It will eliminate error, make mistakes that helps increase human learning.
Knowledge is dispersed in individuals. Not a problem of knowledge acquisition it;s how you use the knowledge in a society where individuals are interacting with one another.
Success comes from choosing the right means to attend your end
The problem is precisely how to be extend the span of out utilization of resources beyond the spand of the control of any one mind; and therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control, and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.
We should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing (metacognition)- but social beings have developed without knowing what they are doing.
We have build upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.
The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use, without understanding it. Man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible.
Nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it- such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill.
The practical problem arises because these facts are never so given to a single mind, and because, in consequence, it is necessary that in the solution of the problem knowledge should be used that is dispersed among many people. We must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge.
One person will not have all the logical relevant information.
If this problem is solved through a computer having all the information from the individuals, it will still not solve the problem because human knowledge is constantly evolving, and it's immediate. The computer will tell you what to do and it will limit your learning, it can't anticipate expectations or learning. It will eliminate error, make mistakes that helps increase human learning.
Knowledge is dispersed in individuals. Not a problem of knowledge acquisition it;s how you use the knowledge in a society where individuals are interacting with one another.
Success comes from choosing the right means to attend your end
The problem is precisely how to be extend the span of out utilization of resources beyond the spand of the control of any one mind; and therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control, and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.
We should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing (metacognition)- but social beings have developed without knowing what they are doing.
We have build upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.
The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use, without understanding it. Man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible.
Nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it- such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill.
The practical problem arises because these facts are never so given to a single mind, and because, in consequence, it is necessary that in the solution of the problem knowledge should be used that is dispersed among many people. We must show how a solution is produced by the interactions of people each of whom possesses only partial knowledge.