AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

This video from http://www.learnliberty.org talks about spontaneous ordering processes.

This quote by Thomas Sowell, “The abstract existence of knowledge means nothing unless it is applied at the point of decision or action“, explains why the spontaneous order of the market, efficiently produces more output than central planners can produce in a statist economy. The market economy brings abstract knowledge and decision makers together more effectively than central planning could ever hope to do.

Abstract knowledge can’t be known by one individual or board of individuals, this fact alone dooms central planning to failure. Even if planners knew all of the abstract knowledge of every individual , they wouldn’t know the exact time or place to apply this knowledge in the decision-making process. Voluntary cooperation through the free market process is the only way that this vast amount of abstract knowledge can be utilized to create the complex society in which we live. There are too many constantly changing variables to be considered in order for a central planner to be successful in creating a complex society. This complex society that the planners hope to produce exists today, and is a result of the spontaneous ordering processes of the market. All these planners are doing is making it more difficult to maintain, let alone expand, this complex society which spontaneously evolved in spite of their interventions.

Read two previous posts on this subject here and also here.

For more in-depth analysis read this article titled, “Complexity: Bureaucratic (Death Spiral) And Self-Organizing (Sustainability), By Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com. This is an excerpt from the article.

“Thus complexity can remain an asset, as long as it is self-organizing, self-correcting and self-regulating. A bureaucracy’s systemic response to any challenge or threat is always the same: devote precious resources to self-preservation above all else. Thus the responses needed to save the system never receive the resources they need to be successful, and the bureaucracy’s complexity and drive for self-preservation dooms it to collapse.”

“Complex self-organizing networks……… operate more like an ecosystem, evolving rapidly to systemic change without a Central State or management imposing “solutions”.”

This entry was posted on December 10, 2012 at 6:28 am and is filed under Econ. 101. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Central Planning, Complexity, Free market, Spontaneous Order, Thomas Sowell