Who Were the Sea Peoples?

In "Knowledge Problems and Their Solutions," Kirzner makes the important distinction between type A and type B knowledge problems. Type A problems involve undue optimism, and are self-correcting: if I think I can sell my programming services for $1 million per hour, I surely will be disappointed, and, if wise, I will lower my price. My very attempt to act on my over-optimistic beliefs reveals their falsity. Type B problems, on the other hand, involve undue pessimism, and are not self-correcting. I may believe that my current boss, who is paying me $50 per hour, is the best employer I can find. But, unbeknownst to me, just down the block is someone who would happily pay me $100 per hour, if he knew of my existence . And I would happily go work for him, if I knew of his . For type B problems to be "corrected" requires entrepreneurial action, perhaps, say, a job placement firm that will alert both the potential new employer and me to each other's presence...

In the comments section of this post , Bob Murphy writes, "There is clearly a meaning to the phrase 'spontaneous order.' I'm not saying you have to be an anarchist if you like the idea--Hayek himself wasn't an anarchist. But it is an abuse of language to say the state is an example of spontaneous order." Yes, indeed, to claim the state is a spontaneous order would be stupid. Which is why I never said that, nor anything even very close to that. But Bob's confusion is understandable, given all the ideological baggage that has been heaped upon these concepts, and others may partake of it, so let me explain this at the top level, rather than in the comments. Set aside for a moment the matter of the state, and let us turn to the firm. The firm is (largely) a planned order. But, 1500 years ago, no one said to himself, "You know, let me invent an economy full of firms!" No the firm is a (largely) planned order that arose spontaneously. As must...

Joseph Fetz posts an interesting video on a day without a traffic light versus one with the light at a fairly busy intersection. It certainly gives one things to think about. But if you click through to YouTube, you find people making ludicrous claims about what the video "proves": no regulations are necessary and so on. Here is the actual question the video raises: when do we need explicit signalling mechanisms to coordinate our actions, and when can we get by without them? It has nothing at all to do with state versus non-state solutions: Plenty of private entities create plenty of explicit signalling mechanisms: factories have bells to start and end work, private parking lots erect stop signs and create one-way lanes, drummers count bands into a song, coaches call out set plays in basketball, the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer. Sometimes these are a good idea, sometimes not: For instance, I have seen it suggested that basketball coaches are far too anxious to r...

Here : Both Long and Johnson support, in principle, spontaneous social orders, but they make two claims that make me worried about such orders in general and anarchy in particular: 1. According to Johnson, some dispersed, polycentric, acts are acts of wrongful violence. 2. According to Long, state power itself depends on spontaneous order mechanisms. If Johnson is right, the anarchist seems to have no reason to reject the state, for the mere rejection of an  archē , a sovereign, does not guarantee a good social order. In other words, the evil we should be concerned with is not necessarily the evil of the state. If Long is right, the anarchist seems to have no reason to be an adherent of spontaneous order, for it may lead to the creation of a state.

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.

In my post on spontaneous and planned social orders at Think Markets, I wondered whether there were any real cases of purely planned or purely spontaneous social orders. In fact, I believe that a purely planned social order, with no elements of spontaneous order, is impossible. But its opposite is not. For instance, if, in fact, the menstrual cycles of women living together do tend to synchronize (there is some question of whether they do), then that would be an entirely spontaneous order, assuming none of the women intended this to happen. Of course, it would be first and foremost a biological order, but it would certainly spill over into the social sphere in various ways. Any other examples?