The chief signifi cance of the comprehensive systems of unemployment compensation that have been adopted in all Western countries, however, is that t… - F.A. Hayek

Complete rationality of action in the Cartesian sense demands complete knowledge of all the relevant facts. A designer or engineer needs all the data and full power to control or manipulate them if he is to organize the material objects to produce the intended result. But the success of action in society depends on more particular facts than anyone can possibly know. And our whole civilization in consequence rests, and must rest, on our believing rnuch that we cannot know to be true in the Cartesian sense.

That the freedom of the employed depends upon the existence of a great number and variety of employers is clear when we consider the situation that would exist if there were only on employer — namely, the state — and if taking employment were the only permitted means of livelihood. And a consistent application of socialist principles, however much it might be disguised by the delegation of the power of employment to nominally independent public corporations and the like, would necessarily lead to the presence of a single employer. Whether this employer acted directly or indirectly, he would clearly possess unlimited power to coerce the individual.

The fact that German anti-Semitism and anticapitalism spring from the same root is of great importance for the understanding of what has happened there, but this is rarely grasped by foreign observers.