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Beyond Central Planning: Innovation in Government in the 21st Century
Author(s) -
Gruen Nicholas
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8462.2009.00539.x
Subject(s) - citation , government (linguistics) , library science , arrow , sociology , political science , law and economics , law , computer science , philosophy , linguistics , programming language
Resources and needs exist for practical purposes only through somebody knowing about them and there will always be infinitely more known to all the people together than can be known to the most competent authority. A successful solution can therefore not be based on the authority dealing directly with the objective facts, but must be based on a method of utilising the knowledge dispersed among all members of society, knowledge of which in any particular instance the central authority will usually know neither who possesses it nor whether it exists at all. It can therefore not be utilised by consciously integrating it into a coherent whole, but only through some mechanism which will delegate the particular decisions to those who possess it, and for that purpose supply them with such information about the general situation as will enable them to make the best use of the particular circumstances of which only they know. [Hayek 1955, p. 99]