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The Use of Knowledge in Society
Hayek's 1945 argument that the economic problem is not allocating known resources but using knowledge that exists only in scattered fragments — the shipper who knows about the half-empty tramp-steamer, the man on the spot — and that the price system works as a telecommunications network, letting millions coordinate while knowing almost nothing of each other. The tightest explanation ever written of why central planning fails, in about twenty minutes.
