On the one hand, the signaling function of prices was reliable for economic decisions and forecasts insofar as markets were competitive. Information, as relayed by prices, was not only carried but generated through the market—a crucial insight. On the other hand, this limited the kind of problems that economic science could solve. Widely shared among neoliberals, Hayek’s critique pivoted around one single axis: the (seemingly infinite) cognitive function of markets worked hand in hand with the epistemic limitations of other disciplines and institutions aiming to correct its workings. Knowledge remained irrevocably local, dispersed, and impossible to centralize; the marketplace produced a continuous stream of new data within the confines of a radical skepticism towards intervention.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 68