Yes, unlike Ayn Rand, Hayek does have plenty credibility, unfortunately the economic model proposed by ' the first Austrian school of economics' suffers from deflationary spirals. I should note that although Hayek is often associated with that school of thought he also believed in base line social services and in many ways deviated from that model.
Perhaps, but, per the monetarists and empirical evidence, inflation and deflation are both easily managed - and that's the monetarists primary contribution. I would never argue that any one school had a monopoly on truth. As for the whole social net issue, part of the reason for Ayn's summary denunciations (and they got more and more abrupt and frequent as she aged) was other's "Failure" to adhere to her idea of ideological purity. Hence, anything as practical as a basic net was anathema to her. As for me, I think we need not argue whether those should or should not be. We're so far past that point, such an argument is detached from all reality. My own view is that the LAffer curve says that optimal revenue is realized at around a 20% taxation rate on GDP. Take this historical average and stick to it by policy (because you're stuck with it, in fact, for reasons I can explain, regardless of what you do with marginal rates) and optimize coverage around that level of revenue.
Anecdote: mt old Flint School headmaster and his wife went to one of Rand's last speeches. They were introduced to her after the speech. It was some big deal held in NY where they brought her in in her own rail car, blah-blah. She was their with some handlers, including, of course, the always sycophantic Peikoff (think KEitel in the bunker, at this stage in her life). Somehow, after the intro, she started asking if the Stoll's (my headmaster and his wife) were the one who "ran that school that claims to be Objectivist". They had never claimed any such thing but that was beside the point to her. She proceeded to rip 'em a new one, right there in front of everyone. You don't know George nad Betty Stoll but, in some ways, it was poetic justics. However, it's typical of the treatment she was dishing near th eend.
All this led me to coin my first theorem of politics. It's a limit theorem. At th elimit, as ideological purity approaches infinity, faction size/number of adherents approach unity. I haven't got much use for it, given that I do corporate process/product development work, but I believe it correct.
A Tsarist, though? No. She denounced Tsarism as equally as communism. She didn't much like the Orthodox church, either. Recall Orwell's portrayal of this: the Raven, always talking toejame about "the big rock candy mountain".
