Thursday, February 24, 2005

Requiem for a Heavyweight?

The seminal example of "spontaneous order" is
found in truly free-trade in free markets. It was
first put on the intellectual map by Austrian
Economist and Nobel Laureate Fredrick Hayek. It
is the opposite and antithesis of "central
planning
," -- and it's how "evolution" of all
kinds proceeds.

It works by what I would describe as "massively
parallel trial and error" -- lots of folks trying
lots of different approaches to almost everything.
Many fail, but the best are successful and spread
thruout a population by "memetic contamination"
(word of mouth, etc.) It's the sort of order that
evolves from this sort of process that allowed the
quasi free-trade united States to temporarily
out-last the centrally planned Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.

Note how Mr. White says, "temporarily out-last".

He's right.

The nation state is damned if it does and damned
if it doesn't...rule, regulate, order and plan.

The reason?

If they regulate at all, they're going to have to
regulate more until they go the way of their
fraternal bro, the FSU. It's just a matter of
time.

That's what states do. Try to make order out of
chaos and in so doing create more chaos.

If they don't do anything, why would you call them
nation states?

Excellent article.