<
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-26/atlas-network-mont-pelerin-society-neoliberal-think-tanks/105700628>
“In 1976, a famous economist found himself standing in a farm paddock in north
Queensland.
Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian-born economist, had been
invited to Australia during the biggest economic crisis in decades, when
inflation was soaring globally and unemployment was jumping higher.
Hayek's ideas about how to kill inflation had been gaining notoriety, and he'd
come to Australia for a speaking tour.
In the middle of the tour, he'd stopped at the farm for a four-day break. It
was on the Atherton Tablelands, and it belonged to the miner Ronald Kitching,
one of the organisers of the tour.
While drinking Scotch together, Hayek noticed a photo on the wall of Kitching's
prize-winning Brahman bull, which weighed 2,500 pounds (1,134 kilograms).
Kitching said he'd nicknamed the beast "Inflation" because "he would not stop
growing".
Maybe it was the Scotch, maybe it was the Top End air, but Hayek said he wanted
to meet it.
"Next day, I took him down the paddock and took several pictures of him and the
bull when another idea popped into my head, and I quietly mentioned it to him.
He was delighted to have a bit of fun," Kitching recalled.
"The caption, of course, was to be, 'Hayek's Got Inflation By The Balls.'"
The humorous photo became famous in certain circles. A copy was even presented
to Margaret Thatcher.
But his speaking tour left a bigger legacy than that.”
Via Clarice Boomshakala.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
