I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with a level of frustration that is nearly beyond human endurance. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.
Teleological much? Shockingly, there isn't one single strand of history that moves inexorably toward an inevitble conclusion. The fact that he is willing to state that he will be 'inevitably proven correct by events' suggests a real lack of scepticism and introspection when it comes to his beliefs. I am hoping that the author has never been a student of history; for historians, 'inevitably' is a four-letter word.
Libertarians spend their lives accurately predicting the future effects of government policy. Their predictions are accurate because they are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics.
This assessment bugs me - suggesting that study of Hayek's work means one can make accurate predictions gives the work a universality and absoluteness that seems misguided to me. Firstly, it seems to place him on a higher plane of understanding than any other thinker - and in my opinion represents a degree of intellectual snobbishness - and secondly, it does not account for the context in which Hayek worked. I don't see why invoking Hayek should constitute the end of an argument. I also remain sceptical that great works of philosophy should be taken as universal truths that can be divorced from the context in which they were written - although I do admit I am guilty of this at times myself.
