The universe appears on a mission to prove Hayek right

A central part of Hayek’s concept of governance, of the world, is that the centre - whether that be messy politics or even a benevolent dictator - simply cannot ever have enough accurate data about the economy to be able to extract the information necessary to manage that world, or economy, in detail.

On Monday, just hours before Boris Johnson pushed back Freedom Day by four weeks, the Government published new modelling, warning that a deadly third wave was on the horizon.

Under the most pessimistic scenario, Imperial College estimated Britain could experience a further 203,824 deaths by next June, while even modest estimates from other groups suggested more than 50,000 would die.

Yet it has now emerged the models were based on out-of-date estimates of vaccine effectiveness, which assumed far fewer people protected by the jabs.

Which does raise an interesting question. There being two possible answers here. The first is simply that Hayek was right. The second is that the universe is striving mightily to prove him right. As we’re not sufficiently even Deist to believe that the universe strives to do anything at all we will run with the conclusion that Hayek was right in the first place. But given the only two possible answers that makes little difference.

It isn’t possible to plan in any detail as the information necessary to do so simply cannot be extracted from reality. Therefore we must stop attempting to plan in any detail. We are left with only the one option. Set the basic rules, yes, of property, incentives, of the law, then leave be and see what happens.