On the importance of dissent...........

     Hayek, on the other hand, argued in The Road to Serfdom that dissent from the consensus was necessary for the "life of thought."   So long as dissent is not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propaganda.   This interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views, is what constitutes the life of thought.  Hayek argued that the absence of  "different views" — that is, Myrdal's unanimity — in fact inhibits the progress of thought.  "The growth of reason is a social process based on the existence of such differences." 
     Hayek condemned those who wanted to suppress debate, what he called "the presumption of any group of people" — such as Myrdal's unanimous development experts — "to claim the right to determine what people out to think or believe."  The absence of dissent would "produce a stagnation of thought and a decline of reason."

-William Easterly,  The Tyranny Of Experts:  Economists, Dictators, And The Forgotten Rights Of The Poor