This is a work of delightfully rampant interdisciplinarity. It draws “on evolutionary analysis, primatology, anthropology, moral psychology, analyses of complex systems, experimental economics, studies of norms, economic development, policy studies, analyses of governance and collective action, randomized control trials and much more” (ix). I am not expert in any of those fields, much less all of them. I said as much at a conference commenting on earlier versions of this material before Gaus’s untimely death. I went on to add, “Of course, neither is Gaus—but he has delved more deeply into them than most of us.” Even those who reject his conclusions will return time and again to Gaus’s book for its wonderful introductions to all of those literatures.
Officially, the book is organized around “three unsettling theses” from Hayek. But those—and frequent asides like “Hayek’s prescience is striking” (123), “about this Hayek was undoubtedly correct” (132), and “I …...
