Hayek and the Sorcerer's Apprentice: Whither the Hayekian Logic of Intervention?

Commentators claim that H ayek's work readily explains what consequences are likely to result from the allegedly socialist policies finding favor with the O bama Administration. They have ready cause to invoke his name as H ayek himself has a penchant for promiscuously invoking “planning” with widespread descriptive applicability. This article draws upon archival material to show that H ayek did indeed think that persisting with middle‐way policies ( H ayek's supposed “muddle of the middle”) would lead to full‐blown command planning. In particular, H ayek argued that middle‐way policies would induce psychological changes in the populace that would lead it to supposedly favor and call for ever greater government intervention. For H ayek, these supposed psychological changes allegedly provide much grease for any slippery slope that leads to serfdom.