Interesting discussion on Crooked Timber on using Hayek against free markets.

Scott’s argument suggests that Hayek on tacit knowledge contradicts Hayek on free markets.1 If you want to have non-local exchange (i.e. properly competitive impersonal markets), you have to do so on the basis of universal standards. But these standards fail to live up to the Hayekian ideal. Ergo, you can construct a Hayekian case against the creation of competitive impersonal markets, insofar as these markets involve the destruction of the kinds of tacit knowledge that are embedded in informal local standards.