For Hayek, prices in a market economy are the aggregation of information acquired when the people who own resources are free to use their [[dispersed knowledge|individual knowledge]]. Price then allows everyone dealing in a commodity or its substitutes to make decisions based on more information than he or she could personally acquire, information not statistically conveyable to a centralized authority. Interference from a central authority which affects price will have consequences they could not foresee because they do not know all of the particulars involved.
Hayek, or at least his followers on the contemporary British and American political scene ‐ have wrongly inferred strong conclusions from these theories which are inimical to the welfare state by failing to reconcile the rule of law to social justice.<ref>MACCORMICK, D.N. (1989), Spontaneous Order and the Rule of Law: Some Problems. Ratio Juris, 2: 41-54. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9337.1989.tb00025.x</ref>