Recently, I rethought a question: why do some thinkers' viewpoints become sharper and more relevant decades later?

In 1974, when Hayek took the Nobel Prize podium, probably no one expected that four years later he would openly challenge all opponents in Paris—inviting anyone to debate, and no one would accept. But what’s truly noteworthy is not the silence itself, but the reason behind it: Hayek’s ideas had become so sharp that to oppose him was to oppose reality.

He left behind seven viewpoints, each like a surgical knife cutting through the dark sides of power, institutions, and human nature. The most striking thing is that these viewpoints are still valid today.

For example, he said that money is the only tool open to the poor, but power never is. The logic is simple: money can be accessed through labor and transactions, but power has thresholds, circles, and connections. When wealth begins to be acquired through power rather than value creation, society starts to decay.

He also pointed out a truth about bureaucratic systems—that many problems are never solved because the people solving problems are the ones creating them. Large organizations prefer to create processes and bureaucracy because that proves their necessity. Institutional expansion is not progress, but another form of loss.

The coldest viewpoint comes from this statement: the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. The most brutal regimes in history never start with evil; they begin with “for your own good.” When people wake up, paradise is out of reach, and chains are already fastened. The real danger is not evil itself, but absolute power disguised as “good.”

Hayek spent his life proving a truth: human prosperity comes from liberalism, not collectivism. In “The Constitution of Liberty,” he wrote that markets are not designed but spontaneously formed orders in history. Personal freedom is the only true source of human prosperity.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, people realized—Hayek was not predicting, but revealing the inevitable outcome in advance. Some lament that if only 5% of the world truly understood Hayek, many tragedies could be avoided.

In March 1992, Hayek passed away at the age of 92. Popper once said that he learned more from Hayek than from all other living thinkers.

Looking back now, the world is undergoing great change—whether the bad order is making a comeback or a new bloom of good order is emerging. The answer depends on our understanding of thinkers like Hayek, who truly transcend time. For everyone concerned with freedom and destiny, his works are worth reading repeatedly. The more people understand Hayek, the greater the safeguard for freedom.