Hmm, Perhaps Some Spontaneous Order Will Evolve to Provide Law?

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In the comments to this post, Jonathan Catalan writes:

"It sounds less ridiculous [to say that the market can provide law] when you acknowledge that when a lot of people say 'markets' they mean spontaneous order (of which market institutions are oftentimes a product of)."

It is quite true that humans are capable of spontaneously evolving an institution to handle law. Over several thousands of years, starting from a situation in which all humans lived in small bands with custom but no law, without anyone planning its appearance, humans spontaneously arrived at... the state! It is true that at times states have tried to plan the economic order, but nobody ever sat down and said "Let's create the state!" The state may impose planned orders, but the state itself is a spontaneous order.

If what you want is a spontaneously evolved institution to handle the provision of law, you've got it already.

Comments

  1. Jonathan Finegold Catalán3:20 AM

    No doubt, but God forbid people think that there are alternatives!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gcallah11:01 AM

      Do you think I am the thought police, Jonathan?

      Or is what you are saying that efforts to replace the current evolved order with an alternate one planned out by M. Rothbard in a fit of revolutionary passion should be immune to criticism?

      Delete

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