As a follow-up to my recent article about F. A. Hayek's classic article "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945), I thought it worth extending Hayek's exploration of this area of social theory. In 1968 the Nobel laureate-economist delivered a lecture in German known in English as "Competition as a Discovery Procedure." It's an alluring title, and anyone concerned with what makes for a good and prosperous society should be familiar with Hayek's basic point. Hayek gets right to it. He notes that standard macroeconomists are guilty of having "investigated competition primarily under assumptions...