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In a succinct paragraph Butler and Kondratas specify "ideas like public housing tenant man agement, where the residents call the shots. Ideas like education vouchers so that poor fam ilies no longer have to put up with schools that seem to be run in the interests of the teachers' unions, not the children. Ideas like switching service contracts from outsiders to groups from within the community, who are more in tune with community needs. Ideas like changing day care rules so that Mrs. Smith is no longer a law-breaker if she looks after the kids of mothers who want to work." Workfare The idea of workfare is now stirring in various stages. Butler and Kondratas approve, but they realize it will cost money. They are not against measures that might be considered harsh, such as compelling teenagers to remain in their parents' homes with illegitimate chil dren until the fathers can be located.

"Efforts to step up the collection of child support payments from absent fathers," Butler and Kondratas write, "are an appropriate and long overdue step toward encouraging parental responsibility. In the case of unwed mothers, especially teenage mothers, enforcing paternal responsibility is more problematic. Yet we have an obligation, for the child's sake, to at tempt to enforce it. There is no reason why the new wave of workfare reforms should not in clude job clubs, mandatory job search, and fa thering courses for unemployed fathers of ille gitimate children. Whether or not they 'worked' initially, society would be sending a firm message to tell those parents what is expected. Government should not allow chil dren to be held hostage so that parents can have their chosen lifestyles financed at public expense. . . . Both sets of grandparents of ille gitimate children born to minors should be held legally responsible for supporting their grand children. "

Since delinquent fathers are so adept at fading into the woodwork, it will surely be a long time before much can be done about them. Butler and Kondratas are more convincing when they talk about such things as the growing momentum for tenant management in public housing. 79 "A few years ago," they say, "tenant man agement was a mildly interesting and contro versial curiosity. Today tenant managers are regularly featured in newspaper articles, in na tional news magazines, and at congressional hearings. The reason? The Washington-based National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise started to work closely with a number of management groups. Reporters eager for a good story were directed to showcase projects by the National Center's president, Robert Woodson." Robert Woodson is apparently somebody with whom to conjure. Together with Kimi Gray, he has promoted the Washington Kenil worth Tenant Managed Project. A study of this project by Coopers and Lybrand has found enormous cost savings, service improvements, and job creation attributable to resident control.

The approach of Butler and Kondratas won't satisfy those conservatives or libertarians. who want to get rid of the whole rigmarole of food stamps and the. rest of the entitlements pro grams. But Butler and Kondratas are obviously right when they say we are a nation of altruists willing to dally with state compulsions. Ayn Rand has failed to convert enough people. The mitigating approach may be the best that can be managed until· the ravages of what has been called the "malarial economy" have convinced enough people at the grassroots that something more fundamental is required. D HAYEK ON LIBERTY by John Gray New York: Basil Blackwell-1986 - 270 pp. - $12.95 paperback Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling I n the 1930s Friedrich A. Hayek was recog nized as one of the leading opponents of the emerging Keynesian Revolution in eco nomic policy. In the 1940s he was equally rec ognized as one of the most articulate and inci sive critics of socialism and government central planning. But the 1950s and 1960s were the in tellectual highwater marks of both Keynes ianism and socialism, and Hayek was "for gotten. "

80 THE FREEMAN. FEBRUARY 1988 By the 1970s, however, Keynesian eco nomics and socialism were in retreat and their demise was symbolized by the 1974 awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Professor Hayek. Since then interest has reawakened in his earlier writings, he has published several important new works, and a number of volumes have appeared analyzing his contribu tions to the various social sciences. One of the best of these critical evaluations is John Gray's Hayek on Liberty, which recently has been published in a second, revised edition. Professor Gray's training is in philosophy, pol itics, and economics, and he brings these skills to bear in offering an integrated analysis of Hayek's ideas as a coherent system of thought. The heart of Hayek's system, as Professor Gray emphasizes, is his view of man and the constraints on man's ability to know and under stand the world in which he lives. Being one of the elements forming the world, man lacks a privileged position that would enable him to step "outside" and see objectively how reality and its "laws" all fit together. His knowledge of the natural and social world, as well as of himself, is, therefore, always limited, uncer tain, and incomplete. There is always more to know than the human mind can ever hope to fully comprehend.

Professor Gray explains that this led Hayek to question those social theories that claimed that the order and patterns discernible in social and economic life were the result of overall planning and design. Rather, Hayek turned to and developed further the theories of Adam Smith and Carl Menger (the founder of the Austrian School of Economics) which ex plained how the social and economic order, that we take for granted and which enables a high degree of interpersonal coordination in human affairs, is the result of rational actions but has not been created out of intentional de signs. Instead, much of what we refer to as the "social order" emerged, evolved, and has taken shape out of the interactions of a multi tude of individuals pursuing their respective self-interests. And the institutionalization and habituation of their actions in particular forms have generated a "spontaneous order" of human intercourse.

The realization that society and its structures are the cumulative, evolutionary product of many generations of people interacting and contributing some element and reinforcement to the social order made Hayek suspicious of those who proposed to redesign society "ac cording to plan." Professor Gray lucidly ex plains and evaluates Hayek's writings on the origin and purpose of law, the limits and dangers of interventionist and socialist eco nomic policies, and the disastrous conse quences of government management of money in the form of the business cycle. Finally, Professor Gray contrasts Hayek's ideas with those of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper, and Milton Friedman. This leads Gray to his own critical evaluation of Hayek's system. Here he shows himself to be a sympathetic critic. He believes that Hayek has seen and explained essential aspects of a successful theory of social and economic order.

Yet, he says, Hayek fails to "ground" his system on any explicit moral principles, other than that a spontaneous order is more natural than any attempted created one and, therefore, a spontaneous order is "good" and superior. And, second, Professor Gray criticizes some of Hayek's writings where the argument seems to imply that any social order that has spontane ously evolved and "survived" has proven its worth. Gray correctly asks, I believe, why we should assume that evolutionary processes never lead to undesirable social outcomes or dead ends. Professor Gray concludes with a suggestion that an improvement on Hayek's theory may possibly be found in the "Contractarian" ap proach of James Buchanan and the Public Choice theorists. This approach suggests that society be viewed as the result of a constitu tional contract among free men, guided by ra tional choice, concerning the general "rules of the game" under which agents act and interact in society. But, as Gray admits, the tacit as sumption is that the participants share a common belief in the Western individualist tra dition. This still avoids, therefore, the crucial question: What are the moral and philosophical bases of individual liberty and rights, upon which a free society flourishes? 0 THEFREE IDEAS ON LIBERTY 84 Rewarding Uniformity Kenneth A. Bisson A push toward conformity threatens the integrity of the individual.