45. “The Current Evidence for Hayek’s Cultural Group Selection Theory”
by Brad Lowell Stone 
Abstract: In this article I summarize Friedrich Hayek’s cultural group selection theory and describe the evidence gathered by current cultural group selection theorists within the behavioral and social sciences supporting Hayek’s main assertions. I conclude with a few comments on Hayek and libertarianism.
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I believe that Hayek’s „spontaneous order“ and „cultural group evolution“ concepts are wrong.
Of course there was evolution of cultural institutions like property rights, individual freedom, contract law etc. and some cultural groups were more successful than others. With hindsight, everything is a result of evolution. This insight is true, but it is banality.
This does not prove that our evolved institutions are really good, or that those now extinct institutions were bad. What is good, does not always win. Good ideas might be suppressed by coercive power, bad ideas might win. Human history is full of examples of intellectual decay.
You might say that in evolutionary sense nothing is good which does not prevail. But if national socialist cultural group is powerful enough to exterminate all other groups in the world, should that mean that national socialist rules are superior? In such a hypothetical case, should we prefer nazi institutions?
Hayek does distinguish between “spontaneous order” rules and organizational constructivist rules, but why should anybody accept the evolutionary relevance of this distinction? Do not governments and coercive institutions evolve? In other words, one can argue that statist, organizational, constructivist rules (their presence or absence, quality, etc) are very important for group’s survival and evolutionary success. But this can be taken as a proof, that the current domination of statist rules and institutions is a result of cultural evolution.
In the end, using Hayek’s theory, anything goes. Is specific coercive rule good or bad? Evolutionary success can be the only criterion of Hayekian “collective intelligence”. Hayek’s teaching looks like an attempt to prove “scientifically” that social conservatism is correct.
In this line of thought Hayek overlooks ability of individual to use his reason to make judgments about ethics, justice and law, find what is good and bad, come up with unprecedented ideas and intentionally change his lot.