There may be something to Bob McDaniel's analogy between free markets and
amoebas after all. A lot of the "good old days" building code regulations
were weakened in Vancouver and many entrepreneurs saw through and exploited
the opportunities. The result? Leaky condos and lots of SLIME MOLD. Now if
Bob would explain to the purchasers of those moldy condos that they are
dwelling in SPONTANEOUS ORDER and don't really have a damp, smelly,
unhealthy and expensive PROBLEM on their hands I'm sure they would be a lot
happier.
Granted that economic order is not linear. But it takes more than "vision"
to see the "awesome diversity, beauty and balance" in slime mold. It also
takes a heap of distance, indifference and abstraction that comes with
believing one is exempt from the real consequences of the idealizations and
utopias one extolls. Free markets were a utopia before Karl Marx was born.
They will always be a utopia, no more realizable than "perfect communism".
People will always try to impose linear solutions on non-linear "order" when
that order threatens to disrupt the accustomed order of their lives. The
word "order" doesn't mean precisely what the Humpty-Dumpty Hayekians want it
to mean.
The spontaneous order argument, following from Hayek, assumes that price
performs the function of coordinating diverse wants and scarce resources --
sort of like the amoeba's AMP molecules. The problem for Hayek's argument is
that people are conscious of the coordinating role of prices and as a
consequence IF THEY CAN they expend more effort distorting prices than they
do adjusting supply or demand to "spontaneous" prices. Such activity may be
"irrational" from the perspective of system efficiency and even of long run
personal interest, but as Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead.
Preaching the superior efficiency and rationality of free markets is no
different than preaching the superior efficiency and rationality of
centralized planning -- they're both preaching.
The really objectionable thing about free market preaching is that it is
done and financed to an enormous extent by the military-industrial and
financial recipients of state privilege and monopoly. The big pigs are not
opposed to their own feeding at the trough of state subsidies, they are only
opposed "in principle" to little pigs getting any. Follow the money. Next
time Mobil or McDonnell-Douglas or Banc America croons to you about the
"magic of the marketplace" ask 'em how much they spent last year on
lobbyists and political campaign contributions.
And it's true, the amoebic bodies of the politicians, defense contractors,
banks and oil companies do seem to stream toward each other until they merge
into one big slime mold.
>PART VI: FEEDBACK LOOPS AND FREE MARKETS
>
>Chapter 23: Spontaneous Order
>
> 1.A slime mold is just one phase in the lifecycle of an amoeba
>species. Since an amoeba moves so slowly, as soon as it has engulfed all
>the bacteria within immediate reach, it begins to starve. But instead of
>curling up to die, it pumps out pulses of a chemical distress call,
>cyclical AMP.
>
> 2.Nearby amoebas sense the AMP molecules. They respond by moving
>toward the source of the chemical wave and emit their own pulses of
>cyclical AMP. As many as 100,000 amoebas stream toward each other until
>their bodies merge together into a slime mold.
>
> 3.The slime mold fascinates us because it challenges our deepest
>intuitions about consciousness and control. The slime mold's self
>organization makes us face the ultimate question: is it really possible
>that an unconscious, spontaneous phenomenon brought forth a natural
>world of such awesome diversity, beauty and balance?
>
> 4.The notion that no one is in control - that economic order
>spontaneously emerges from the chaotic interactions of millions of
>individuals and firms -is quite hard to swallow.
>
> 5.Feedback-loop equations are "nonlinear." Instead of steady
>curves, nonlinear formulas generate wildly erratic, zigzagging lines.
>Few bothered to crunch these numbers because of the unpredictability of
>nonlinear equations makes the effort pointless. The great tragedy in
>this is the most natural phenomena are nonlinear. Much of physics, most
>of chemistry, and all of biology falls outside linear science.
>
> 6.Chaos is not disorder, it is a higher form of order. Chaos covers
>everything that seems to be disorderly but in fact adheres to underlying
>patterns. The weather is a perfect example.
>
> 7.A diseased heart beats with extreme regularity. It is the healthy
>heart that beats chaotically. Brain waves of the mentally healthy are
>chaotic, while those of an epileptic during a seizure are regular.
>
> 8.Instead of viewing the body as a remarkably complex machine
>controlled by the brain, new scientists see a collection of 10,000
>billion cells incessantly conversing via chemical messages.
>
> 9.A market is something more than a sequence of independent trades.
>A market represents the collective behavior of its traders.
>
> 10.Without a central controller, a flexible and efficient use of
>resources spontaneously emerges from buying and selling among
>independent agents.
>
>Source: <http://www.sat.net/~hermital/index.htm>
>--
>___________________________________________________________________
>http://publish.uwo.ca/~mcdaniel/
