Re: Isn't spontanious order overrated?

Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Tue, 8 Sep 1998 08:31:13 -0700

maxm@maxmcorp.dk ("Max M") writes:
>Especially in politics and economics spontanious order and the invisible
>hand is hot. But if the free market is the answer to most economical and
>political problems, then it's a bit like saying that intelligence has lit=
>tle
>value. If simple interconnected systems can perform wel in complex
>enviroments why the have intelligence done so well until now.

Few advocates of spontaneous order would expect a system made up of stupid components to act as intelligently as one made of smart components. The issue is distributed intelligence versus centralized intelligence. The centralized version looks at first glance like it makes more use of intelligence because the role of that intelligence is easier to observe, but the distributed version can usually make good use of a larger number of separate intelligences.

mark@unicorn.com (mark@unicorn.com) writes:
>Microsoft is precisely the kind of organisation which couldn't exist in a
>free market without tax-funded copyright enforcement.

A system in which copyright owners funded the enforcement would almost certainly have produced the same kind of results. Even if copyright were unenforceable, there are plenty of other large, centralized organisations that would still exist.

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