Epistemic arguments play a significant role in Hayek's defense of market liberalism. His claim that market competition is a discovery procedure that serves the common good is a case in point. The hypothesis of the markets' efficient use of existing knowledge is supplemented by the idea that...

The question of what kind of innovations can secure our future is in this paper put in perspective with the unknown risks which innovations may imply. Innovations sometimes turn out to cause severe negative externalities after they have successfully passed the market test. In such cases, the...