 Hayek had no particular complaint about providing public education or the minimal elements of a welfare state, but not because such institutions are essential. Hayek would simply have said that such institutions need not devolve into central planning and thus need not be antithetical to a free society. Issuing vouchers, for example, to subsidize the purchase of epipens or education would to some extent distort markets in the subsidized products (having an inflationary impact on prices for those products) but it would not distort to the extent that price controls would.