Maintaining competition meant resisting the fallacy of the po­liti­cal neutrality of economic pro­cesses and of mechanistic visions of the economy as capable of being fine-­tuned and tweaked for dif­fer­ent outputs. Competition was not an object, a structure, or an endpoint. It could not be seen. "Uncertainty," Hoppmann put it, "is the prerequisite of freedom." "­Because of the 'openness of the historical pro­cess,' " all that was pos­si­ble to facilitate the ongoing reor­ga­ni­za­tion of ­human life effected by competition was to formulate minimally restrictive rules enshrined in binding law. Citing Hayek, he said that we ­were left with the choice between a "teleocratic" or purpose-­governed order that stymied the promethean character of competition or a "nomocratic" or "law-­governed" social order that encased competition with all its consequences.

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 705